TV Lineup and Lines Below

Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

It’s Week 14, the SEC Championship Game Week, the week all football fans have been waiting on all season long. Let’s not kid ourselves. Saturday’s affair in the Georgia Dome is THE GAME … the real national title game.

Oh, they will put on what they will call the BCS Championship Game on Jan. 7 in the Rose Bowl. It will be quite a show, out in California and all. But that’s what it will be, a show. Whichever wins Saturday at the Georgia Dome in the SEC title tilt, Florida or Alabama, will be the favorite and should handily defeat whoever the BCS puts up against them – be it Texas, TCU, or Cincinnati, or ……

That is not meant as an insult to the Longhorns, Horned Frogs or anyone else. It’s just the way it is this season.

All season long, it’s been Florida or Alabama at No. 1 and the other at No. 2. Everyone has watched as the Tide and Gators ticked off win after win … everyone holding their breaths, hoping neither would slip. And they didn’t. Now we are here. Both teams come to Atlanta with perfect 12-0 marks. Only one can leave still undefeated.

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TV Lineup and Lines Below

Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

Wow, can you believe it’s halfway through the 2009 college football season? It seems like just yesterday that teams were playing their first games of the year.

Alabama, Auburn and South Carolina are three teams that have exceeded pre-season expectations in the first half of the season. Florida is undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the land –- but that is no surprise, just what was expected.

Ole Miss, Georgia and Mississippi State are a trio that has failed to live up to pre-season hopes. The attention of the football world was focused on the SEC last weekend as the schedule featured a plethora of big conference games. This week, however, the nation’s attention will shift to the Southwest, where Oklahoma invades Texas in a Big-12 headliner, and to the annual Southern Cal-Notre Dame battle.

This week’s SEC lineup features four games, two of which will be of intense national interest –- games involving the No. 1 (Florida) and No. 2 (Alabama) teams in the nation usually are.

What was Bama schedulers thinking when they were picking out future homecoming foes? Teams will usually pencil in teams from, say the Sun Belt Conference, or a 1AA sacrificial lamb, to play at homecoming — you know, so the alums plenty of opportunity to scream and celebrate.

But the Crimson Tide (6-0, 3-0) faces a good also-ranked (No. 22) South Carolina team (5-1, 2-1) that is no pushover by any means (Line: Alabama by 17).

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