Badger Herald Gridiron Podcast: Northern Illinois by The Badger Herald
If there was any doubt about whether the SEC was heading into the season with plans other than taking home another BCS Championship, the first two weeks of the season have erased that notion beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Even the last place, 0-2 and essentially-eliminated, Georgia Bulldogs are better than some of the teams in the upper halves of their respective conferences. Georgia entered the season ranked in the top 25, but dropped its first two games to two teams now ranked in the top 10, No. 4 Boise State and No. 10 South Carolina.
Georgia head coach Mark Richt is already hearing the deafening chants of “off with his head” (well something like that), and this is a guy who is in his 10th year at Georgia with a 96-36 (.727) regular season record and a 7-3 record in bowl games. University presidents across the country would kill to have a guy with those credentials at the helm of their football program, but instead, Richt is in serious jeopardy of losing his job.
That isn’t really how the traditional college schedule is supposed to go, is it? As Adam Sandler says as Paul Crewe in “The Longest Yard,” “We’d start off every season against Appalachian State or some slack Division II team. Kick the living shit out of them and get [the team’s] confidence up.”
I don’t call No. 4 and No. 10 slack Division II schools, but you know what? That is why the SEC is so unforgivably good every single year, and the rest of the “power” conferences look around at the end of each season wondering why an SEC school is holding the glass football.
It is almost unfair how good each of those SEC teams is. Just last week, then-No. 3 Alabama went up to Happy Valley to take on No. 23 Penn State in one of the most raucous and intimidating crowds in the country and made winning look easy. A whiteout meant nothing to the Tide, and it’s unclear as to whether a January snowstorm-type whiteout would have made a difference.
Alabama didn’t even have an experienced, elite-level quarterback to roll the Tide to victory, either. Sophomore quarterback AJ McCarron didn’t dazzle like Michigan’s Denard Robinson; he simply did what was asked, passed for a pedestrian 163 yards and the running game and the defense did the rest.
Louisiana State University is experiencing quite a curious bout of success. The Tigers lost their starting quarterback, Jordan Jefferson, to one of the stupidest instances of lack of self-control, getting in a bar fight and leaving one man lying on the ground with multiple broken vertebrae.
What happens next? LSU is so deep, backup quarterback Jarrett Lee ducks under center and immediately leads the Tigers to a win over last year’s national runner-up, No. 3 Oregon. The way LSU has been playing, they look to be on their way to an epic clash versus Alabama that could be No. 1 versus No. 2 – if No. 5 Florida State can prevail over No. 1 Oklahoma this weekend.
Then you have No. 10 South Carolina. Complete with sophomore running back and Heisman Trophy candidate Marcus Lattimore, stud wide receiver Alshon Jeffrey and the ever-enigmatic, yet talented quarterback, Stephen Garcia.
The combination makes for a lethally explosive offense that can score on just about anyone. The favorite to win the East division of the SEC, South Carolina is as fun of a team to watch as there is in college football. And Coach Richt can thank the Gamecocks for putting him in every Georgia fan’s proverbial (and in this case literal) doghouse last Saturday.
Alabama, LSU and South Carolina are just three of seven SEC teams saturating the AP Top-25 poll.
Rounding out the seven are No. 14 Arkansas, No. 16 Florida, No. 21 Auburn and No. 25 Mississippi State. Who wants to play any of them at the beginning of the season?
Arkansas has allowed 10 points on the season and is flying high on the arm of junior quarterback Tyler Wilson, who has been extremely consistent in throwing for 260 and 259 yards in each of the Razorbacks’ first two games, respectively. That has also been while splitting snaps in Arkansas’s two-quarterback system.
Florida has given up three points in two games this season, winning by a combined score of 80-3. Yes, the competition for the Gators has been poor, but University of Nevada Las Vegas put up 17 points on the Badgers, and the Rebels were ranked No. 112 in the CBSsports.com poll, so three points is three points in my book.
That leaves Auburn and Mississippi State, and one needs little introduction since it is barely eight months since the Tigers won the NCAA Championship game under Cam Newton.
Cam who?
Junior quarterback Barrett Trotter has stepped in to fill the void, making the transition nearly flawless. Already knocking off Mississippi State, Trotter is 33-for-46 (71.7%) with 407 yards and five touchdowns after throwing only nine passes all of last season.
Mississippi State will likely drop from the rankings after they play LSU Thursday night, but they will have opportunities to climb back in with upcoming games versus South Carolina, Alabama and Arkansas, two of which are at home. And who knows, maybe every SEC hater’s dream will come true Thursday night, and the Bulldogs will pull off the upset.
So what does such a talent-rich and dominant conference mean for the rest of college football? Probably nothing more than continuing to complain about the conference’s over-powering nature.
But there is hope – hope that the SEC is too good this year, that teams will alternately knock each other off the top of the polls week after week while entertaining us all with exhilarating football. For any of the other schools with dreams of a national title, it may be the only way they can be rewarded with a championship season.
Brett is a senior majoring in journalism. What do you think about the SEC this year? Let him know at [email protected] and be sure to follow @BHeraldSports on Twitter for all the latest Badgers news.
