If Alabama wins out, the Crimson Tide has a good shot at defending its BCS national title. That’s true because Bama’s remaining schedule is deemed the toughest in the nation with its three FBS foes — LSU, Mississippi State and Auburn — having a combined record of 21-3.
All of the opposing trio are also ranked in the Top 25 — Auburn at No. 2, LSU 12 and Miss. St. 21. Of course, running the table for Alabama would mean meeting and defeating an almost certainly still undefeated Auburn team in what will have to be one of the biggest Iron Bowls in a long, long time.
But before that epic battle, Alabama has to win the Battle of Baton Rouge this Saturday.
With both teams coming in tied for the runner-up spot in the SEC West with matching 4-1 league, 7-1 overall records, the No. 5-ranked Tide at No. 12 LSU (Line: Alabama by 6) is the biggest of three league games on tap for Week 10 of the 2010 SEC grid season. It is the main attraction of the week — something that Alabama can thank its lucky stars is the case.
As we head into Week 7 of the 2010 Southeastern Conference football season, all bets are off on who will compete for the league title in December in the Georgia Dome. Before what has been called “the shocker in Columbia,” Alabama was riding high in the driver’s seat at No. 1, undefeated and, so it appeared, unstoppable.
In fact, the question posed in this very column was, “Can anybody stop the Crimson Tide offense?” The answer was, obviously, “Yes, South Carolina can.”
Not that the Gamecocks’ upset — and it was that — was a complete surprise. Some, including yours truly, said before the season began that the South Carolina might be the most dangerous on the schedule.
It’s Week 6 of the 2010 Southeastern Conference season and at the halfway point a few things stand out.
First off, the league has been playing like it has been hyped — the best football conference in the nation.
Second, the defending national champion Alabama Crimson Tide is at least as good as figured preseason. After five weeks, the Bama defense has looked better and better, while the offense has functioned like a well-oiled machine with movable parts. In fact, the question has become — can anybody stop the Crimson Tide offense? If the defense keeps improving game by game as has been the case, the question will become — can anybody stay on the field with Bama?
A third stand out has to be the Auburn Tigers. The Eagles have turned out to be better than almost anyone thought and AU quarterback Cam Newton looks more and more Tim Tebow-like every week. Behind Newton’s direction, the Tigers lead the nation in passing efficiency and Newton leads the Tigers in rushing. His ability to make a big play out of a broken play and the pressure his running puts on opposing defenses is invaluable. Word is that Newton’s name is going up the Heisman list. Two winners in a row from the state of Alabama?
Week six finds half the league’s teams still listed in the Top 20, a quarter or them in the Top 10, Bama leading the way, followed by Auburn (8), LSU (9), Florida (12), Arkansas (13) and South Carolina (19). The top game of the week probably depends on who is “your” team.
Students interview University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant at Parker High School in Birmingham the day before the A-Day game in the spring of 1973. Filmed by teacher Dan Fulton. Posted here with permission for the first time ever on the Web, by Glynn Wilson, LocustFork.Net.
The young people were all Boy Scouts and students at Hill Elementary School, down the street from Parker High School, Fulton said in a telephone interview after sending me the DVD and MP4 file. Holding the microphone to the right of Coach Bryant is Fidel Patterson. To the left is Kerry Seals. Facing Coach Bryant is Reginald Jones.
It was also Wendell Hudson Day. Hudson is now the eighth head women’s basketball coach at the University of Alabama.
Bryant had already integrated the team with African-Americans, non-scholarship, walk-on players, by the early 1970s.
Hurrah … there will be some “real” games on the Week Two 2010 SEC football season schedule.
Although there was a full slate of 12 games last week with all league schools in action against out-of-conference foes, there wasn’t a “real” game among them. The closest was Kentucky’s win over in-state rival and perennial Big East title contender Louisville. The LSU-North Carolina contest would have been in the “real” category if not for the fact that over half of the Tarheels’ starters were declared ineligible by the NCAA.
The rest of the league’s 11 wins were scrimmages, practice games, for the teams and fans alike. And yes, 11 wins – the lone league loss was by Vanderbilt, which lost to Big Ten member Northwestern.
The SEC’s “Best Conference in College Football” flag was flying high after the first week of the season. Over half of the conference’s 12 teams, seven to be exact, landed in the Top 25 polls, with Alabama at No. 1, followed by Florida (6), Arkansas (14), LSU (16), Georgia (19), Auburn (20), and South Carolina (24).
Saturday’s eight-game lineup includes three conference matchups and one huge intersectional contest.
The game of the week, of course, one that has “Big Game” written all over it. It’s top-ranked Bama hosting No. 18 Penn State and Joe Paterno at Tuscaloosa (Line: Alabama by 12).
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.
You know, it’s sort of fitting that Week No. 13 of the Southeastern Conference 2009 football season is also Grudge Match Week — where in-state or traditional rivals get together. You know, the “you can throw the record books out on this one” kind of games where a win for one team can salvage a losing season, send the fans home into the long dreary night of no-football with happy memories with which to sustain them.
There are seven SEC games on a long-Thanksgiving Week schedule that begins with one game Friday and has a full slate on Saturday. Four of the seven are league encounters and all of the games are of the traditional type.
Of course, the biggest game of the week, the annual Iron Bowl, where Alabama and Auburn battle to decide state bragging rights for the upcoming year, leads off the action, set for Friday afternoon. And you can say that this year’s edition is special … OK, OK, you are right … every Iron Bowl is special, but for different reasons each time around. (Maybe something will happen this year to inspire a new name for the game, since it hasn’t really been the Iron Bowl since leaving Legend Field in Birmingham).
With the two top spots already decided and nine league teams already bowl eligible, the Week 12 Southeastern Conference football schedule seems a bit out of kilter, almost unnecessary.
Most folks — except those in Alabama of course, for whom the world would surely come to an end if there wasn’t an Iron Bowl, which is set for next Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, on CBS — would just like to fast forward to the SEC Championship Game in December. There are six games on this week’s schedule, with both division leaders spinning their wheels playing cupcake opponents.
Alabama (10-0), ranked No. 2 nationally, will entertain Chattanooga (6-4) in Tuscaloosa and No. 1 Florida (10-0) will host Florida International (3-7) in Gainesville. These are games that both teams would rather skip. Looking at these two games from the prospective of teams poised to play for a conference title with a shot at the national title to follow for the winner and one has to ask, “Do those games really have to take place?”
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
