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Georgia football monster favorite over South Carolina in SEC opener
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Georgia football monster favorite over South Carolina in SEC opener
ATHENS — Georgia football can finally sink its teeth into a Power 5 opponent this week with South Carolina next up at Sanford Stadium.
Comments
Wait a minute, Alabama is playing AT South Florida?? Somethings wrong with that.
Vandy is favored!!!!
Not a good start of the season for the SEC. The Aggies, LSU, Alabama, Auburn, South Carolina and Florida all had humiliating losses in nonconference play. Vanderbilt also lost to a Wake Forest program that lost their record-setting QB to Notre Dame (in the transfer portal era, WFU, who does a great job identifying 2 and 3 star prospects and developing them, is being treated as a minor league and it is sad). There were a lot of underwhelming wins against FCS and FBS schools, including Missouri nearly blowing a 4th quarter lead - that wasn't very big to begin with - to MTSU. Only the state of Mississippi has represented. But ... even there, Mississippi State needed overtime to put away an Arizona team that went 5-7 last year and has a new coach, and Ole Miss played a Tulane team that while ranked (beat USC in the Rose Bowl last year) was missing their NFL prospect QB.
The goings-on at A&M, Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina etc. has to make one wonder about player development. Saban seems to have really fallen off, and some of the other guys - Jimbo Fisher, Hugh Freeze, Josh Heupel - are spread guys with no background in that. Some of the others - Shane Beamer, Lane Kiffin - aren't either and seem to rely on the portal. Looks like the SEC has fallen back to some of the 80s habits of making VERY suspect coaching hires, which Spurrier's arrival forced them to change. Too many SEC programs have abandoned the basics - running the football, playing defense, dominance on both lines - in order to chase fads that never even worked for the Big 12 and Pac-12 teams that introduced them in the first place (and now the Pac-12 is dead and the Big 12 is a pastiche of mid-majors and Pac-12 refugees).
The good news is that in the short term it will make it easier for UGA to roll over everyone on their way to the playoff. The bad news is that the sailing won't be as easy when they get there as UGA won't be as battle-tested as the SEC made you in the past. That was the case with Spurrier in the 1990s. Back then the SEC was lame - to be honest - so his toughest games each year honestly were Florida State and the bowl game. That was why an undefeated Gators team got hammered in a national title game 62-24 by Nebraska. It would be terrible to go back to that era, where a bunch of talented teams in the SEC were basically wasted by coaching staffs that couldn't develop it.
Great comment, @thadec. One correction: Auburn hasn't lost yet -- although 14-10 against Cal, even in Berkeley, was hardly impressive.
Again you craft a response to support a narrative that doesn't logically exist and ignore the obvious. The main reason the SEC isn't dominating (some would say it never did. Only AL did) is because the talent numbers across the country are rising and being developed at the HS level. The talent gap between the SEC and other places is shrinking as the increased talent numbers spreads out nationally.
Falloff for TN, AL and FL should've been expected. They all lost exceptional QB's. (go back and watch UT/FL last year) TN lost its QB and leading wr's.
I high tide raises all boats. Just like we saw the rising of national basketball talent ending UCLA's domination and bringing more parity. It has taken longer in football because in football there are 22 players playing O & D instead of 5 playing O & D in basketball. There were also have's and have not's from a facilities/training standpoint. That aided in recruiting and development. All the big programs have facilities now. There is more talent to go around. leveling the playing field.