Editor’s Note: While the people of the Gulf Coast are still hurting from the BP oil and chemical disaster, it is a fact that humans need a break from serious news and tragedy. With that said, it is that time of year again, time to kick off our weekly college football column we run every Friday to make it easy on the Web to find out what games are on television, an easy click to check the time and network. This is put together every week by long-time sports writer and columnist Dan Rutledge, who wrote for Gulf Coast Newspapers for about 30 years before retiring after Hurricane Ivan devastated the Alabama coast.

Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

Isn’t life grand? For many of us here down South and not quite as many elsewhere in these United States of America, life is wonderful once the college football season gets underway.

College football is a fix for the jitters caused by trying to deal with the everyday bull hockey (insert S-word) of living. Much like a little heroin does for a junkie, football takes its addicts away from the “real” world and its many problems.

Now, for a while — say through the December-January bowl season — we can forget about things like global warming and associated disasters like the melting of the polar ice caps, 2012 scenarios of doom, assaults on the 14th Amendment, unemployment, the economy, Islamaphobia, the oil spill and related environmental disasters not yet realized and many other worries that suck up our attention and plague our consciousness.

Now we only have to be concerned about how our team and conference fared last week and who’s coming up next Saturday (or, with games now scheduled for TV, Thursday, Friday, and every other day/night of the week).

It might be a better world if everyone all over the globe got hypnotized by football and if football season lasted year round. People are always putting down sports in general, saying that it is a waste of time. Not true.

TV Lineup and Lines Below

Human beings are by nature aggressive. Those aggressive, competitive instincts are bred into the breed for purposed of survival. Without them, man would not be the dominant species on the planet, probably not even be around anymore. Those aggressive tendencies don’t just go away. And if repressed, the way they finally come out is often not pretty.

Sports provides a way, a place where you can be as aggressive as you want to be. You can go all out and not worry about hurting anyone else. It would be wonderful if all international disputes could be settled with some kind of sporting challenge instead of war. OK, enough on the soapbox.

On with the football preview.

The 2010 grid season looks to be a good one (aren’t they all?), especially for SEC fans.

The Southeastern Conference is now, finally, being recognized nationally as what SEC fans have long known — the best conference in college football. You read it all the time in sports magazine and you’ll hear sports broadcasters say it every time an SEC game is on TV.

All I can say is that it took the rest of the nation awhile to catch on, or overcome their regional pride.

There was a lot of evidence. After all, for the last four years (five out of seven), an SEC team has ended up in taking home the national championship trophy. No other conference can make that claim because since the first Associated Press poll crowned the first national champ in 1936, it’s never been done. And the SEC likes the new BCS system. Since the new way of crowning a national champion began in 1998, SEC teams have won half the titles.

There is a reason for that. Although it is not a national playoff, the BCS title game does allow two of the best teams in the nation to actually compete for the title on the field. Under the old “poll system,” it was only a perception thing and regional pride often -– perhaps always -– slanted the voting and thus the result.

Which of the SEC teams are most likely to wind up in the national title game this year?

Well, nationally the Alabama Crimson Tide has been pegged as the heavy favorite.

But LSU and even Auburn will be trying to take the SEC West crown away from the Tide. LSU is always loaded with talent and if Coach Les Miles can resist his impulses that often get him into hot water, the Bengal Tigers could be very good this year.

Auburn is not as thin as last year, although the Tigers will be playing a lot of true freshmen a lot of minute. That is not always a bad thing. In fact, the good thing about it is that by midseason, those freshmen are close to being sophomores.

On the East side, the Gators will as usual top the list. But the questions about the loss of Tim Tebow and several others to graduation, as well as the health of Coach Urban Meyer who resigned, then un-resigned last spring, remain.

The Georgia Bulldogs are always a threat. The same is usually said about the Tennessee Vols. But under a new head coach – well, not this year. Derek Dooley may be another Bear Bryant or Nick Saban, but the SEC is a tough place to win in the first year.

The surprise of the season may be South Carolina. The perennial-losers have always been an afterthought like Kentucky and Vanderbilt (both of whom have new coaches and will be of less concern, if possible, than usual this year). But that has changed since the Ol’ Ball Coach, Steve Spurrier, arrived five years ago. The Gamecocks have had winning seasons each year since Spurrier’s arrival and his sixth year may be the charm. USC kicked off the SEC season last night by demolishing a pretty good Southern Miss team by a score of 41-13.

Alabama has the talent and coaching to go undefeated in the West in the regular season. But the odds are against the Tide. They have been unbeaten in each of the last two regular seasons and no one has ever done it three times in a row.

As said before, the SEC is the best league in the land and part of the reason that is true in parity. Every league game is a tough game. There are no breaks.

Bama has a lot to replace on defense. Offensively, the Tide may be better than last year with both Heisman winner Mark Ingram and sophomore Trent Richardson. There probably isn’t a better tandem of running backs in the nation. Add to that wide receiver Julio Jones and senior quarterback Greg McElroy. When you have a senior signal-caller that has not lost a game in which he was the starting QB since the eighth grade, it sounds unbeatable.

What about this week? Well, in college football, opening games are more often than not exhibition games pitting a “name team” against a “wanna be” with a meaningless blowout the consequence. That is so on opening week 2010.

Only four of the weekend’s 12 games should be competitive.

The week’s top game has to be LSU at North Carolina (Line: LSU by 3). Both the Tigers and Tarheels were ranked in the top 20 in preseason polls. This one could also be not that close, too. North Carolina has had to suspend a number of players, several were starters, which could make LSU’s job easier.

Southeastern Teams

The Northwestern-Vanderbilt game could be close in spite of the predictions (Line: Northwestern by 17). Vandy will be playing at home, but that could be offset be the fact the Commodores are another team led by a first-year head coach.

On the other hand, Kentucky, also with a first-year head man, is favored at home against always — tough Louisville out of the Big East (Line: Kentucky by 3).

Mississippi State, in its second year under head coach Dan Mullen, could also, like Auburn, benefit from the reverse-sophomore-jinx going for SEC head coaches. The Bulldogs are big favorites at home to Memphis (Line: Miss. St. by 21). The thing about the Kentucky-Louisville and Miss. St.-Memphis games is that they are both cross-conference matchups that are also traditional rivalry games. In those kind of games, anything can happen and often does.

The other seven SEC game on tap for Saturday are no-brainers. Even with the loss of Heisman winner Ingram out with an injury and defensive end Marcell Dareus suspended by the NCAA, Alabama will have plenty enough to roll over West Coast visitor San Jose State (Line: Alabama by 37).

Auburn is similarly favored over the Sun Belt’s Arkansas State (Line: Auburn by 31), Florida is expected to have little trouble in hosting Miami of Ohio (Line: Florida by 35) and Georgia should have its way between the Hedges with Louisiana-Layfayette (Line: Georgia by 28).

The other three SEC teams playing Saturday are such heavy favorites there are no betting lines on their games. Those include Jacksonville State at Ole Miss, Tennessee-Martin at Tennessee and Tennessee Tech at Arkansas.

WEEKEND TV LINEUP

The season kicked off early with a number of Thursday night games, one of them involving a SEC team with Coach Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks taking care of visiting Southern Mississippi with ease in the ESPN opening-season feature. There is also a Friday night ESPN game on tap, featuring Arizona at Toledo at 7 p.m.

Saturday’s television schedule is as follows:

11 a.m.
Louisiana-Lafayette at Georgia (SEC Network), Miami (Ohio) at Florida (ESPN), Samford at FSU (ESPNU), Eastern Ill. at Iowa (Big Ten Network), Youngstown St. at Penn. St. (Big Ten Network), W. Michigan at Mich. St. (ESPN2)

1 p.m.
Colorado at Colorado St. (Mountain Network)

2 p.m.
Appalachian St. at Chattanooga (SportSouth)

2:30 p.m.
Connecticut at Michigan (ESPN2), Jacksonville St. at Ole Miss (CSS), Kentucky at Louisville (ABC), William & Mary at UMass (ComCast).

6 p.m.
San Jose St. at Alabama (PayPerView or Radio), Arkansas St. at Auburn (FSN), Memphis at Miss. St. (ESPNU), Washington at BYU (CBS College Sports)

6:30 p.m.
Northwestern at Vanderbilt (CSS)

6:45 p.m.
Oregon St. at TCU (ESPN)

7 p.m.
LSU at North Carolina (ABC)

9 p.m.
Cincinnati at Fresno St. (ESPN2)

10 p.m.
Wisconsin at UNLV (Versus)

Since it is a holiday (Labor Day), the opening-week TV football schedule is extra full with three Sunday games -– Delaware St. at Southern at 11.m. on ESPN, Tulsa at East Carolina at 1 p.m. on ESPN2, and SMU at Texas Tech at 2:30, also on ESPN. ESPN will also offer up a Monday doubleheader with Maryland visiting Navy at 3 p.m., followed by on e of the more interesting intra-conference matchups of the whole weekend, Boise St. vs. Virginia Tech at 7 p.m.

Tags: Alabama Football, Are You Ready for Some Football?, College Football, Southeastern Conference Football

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