SEC Football Blog

A NIL Manifesto!

First of all, I’d like to note that I’m not an old fogey or a male version of a ‘Karen’. I fully believe that College players of all sports should be paid. After all, their appearances make all of the networks a ton of money, as well as the schools who are ‘in partnership with the networks’, as well as the businesses who want to be associated with their school, because thanks to their talent, they are always in a National Championship or March Madness shout. But this thing has become a cluster-f**k, and we all know it. First of all, the NCAA can’t work out what to do. They’ve been throwing out this idea that every school should pay

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Has the ‘Alabama mystique’ gone?

The news that safety sensation Caleb Downs and starting offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor put themselves into the transfer portal a few days after the retirement of Nick Saban and the rehiring of Kalen DeBoer has made a lot of people ask the question: ‘Has the Alabama mystique gone?” Saban had the mystique – in the same way as any long-tenured, high-winning head coach (see Mssrs Bryant, Paterno, Spurrier, Meyer, Hayes, Schembechler and Smart for details) – does. When a team wins and wins and wins and wins and wins in the way that Alabama did under Saban’s time, it gets the reputation as a development factory for the NFL. Saban dined out on this while recruiting (He used to say:

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Alabama hires Kalen DeBoer as new head coach

Alabama has hired former Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer as head coach. Under DeBoer’s tutelage, the Huskies made the National Championship Game after an unbeaten regular season and beating Texas in the semi-final, where they were hammered by Michigan (after playing zero defense in the first quarter). News of DeBoer’s contract aren’t out yet, but it should be a pretty seamless offensive move. DeBoer’s team averaged 36 points per game last year, and 39.7 the year before in his two years in Seattle, en route to an overall 25-3 record. He has an overall coaching record of an astonishing 104-12 – although some of this was at the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota, a NAIA school. Alabama will

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The King is dead: Who’s gonna be the King?

Nick Saban is gone. No, not ‘gone gone’, but just retired. But it felt like a death. Especially in Tuscaloosa where they laid cokes and biscuits at the foot of their saviour’s statue (but not at Auburn, where trees were toilet-papered in celebration). So who’s going to come on board? Here are your runners and riders (in our opinion) THE FAVORITES Dan Lanning (Oregon): Oregon head coach. Brilliant DC at Georgia, which meant that he’s good at recruiting in the SEC. Young, fresh-faced, and has the Sabanesque qualities of extreme focus and being a damn good recruiter. Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss): Been there before in terms of working in Tuscaloosa, and is pretty well-liked in those parts. Even though he’s

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A very quick SEC Bowl Preview

It’s Christmas-time. You and I have a ton of stuff to do, so here are my one-paragrah takes on the non-play-off bowl games, in order of our interest.   Dec 29: COTTON BOWL (DALLAS) – Missouri (-1) v Ohio State (JerryWorld): Ohio State is going to be missing starting QB Kyle McCord (transfer portal), WR Julian Fleming (Portal), and one of its best RBs in Miyan Williams (NFL) Ryan Day has said that WR extraordinaire Marvin Harrison Jr, RB TreVeyon Henderson, TE Cade Stover, DE J.T. Tuimoloau and a number of other defensive players have been practicising and haven’t made their decision on whether to go pro or not. WR Emeka Egbuka has opted in as well as some other draft-eligible

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Evan Stewart enters the transfer portal

If things couldn’t have gotten a lot worse after the Jimbo Fisher era for Texas A&M, the school’s best receiver – Evan Stewart – has entered the transfer portal. Alabama, Texas and Florida are said to be vying for his signature, with Alabama deemed to be top of the food chain in that department. If Alabama or Texas wins out, then it automatically gives them fuel for the play-off, while for Florida, it would change the momentum of Billy Napier’s program. I put out a tweet saying: “Holy shit! Didn’t see that one coming!”, but then I thought again. This had been rumored for weeks. Either it was Stewart’s camp putting fuel into the fire to get teams wanting his

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SEC SCHEDULE FOR 2024 RELEASED

The SEC released their new, Texas and OU-expanded schedule. There are a lot of interesting games, and a lot of dullards. A lot of SEC fans have talked about Texas v Oklahoma being an exiting game because it’s now a S-E-C game, but if you weren’t excited about that match-up every year anyway, then you’re probably ignorant. The great thing about this schedule is that there are some cracker non-conference match-ups, including Texas going to Michigan, Florida v Miami, LSU v USC, Georgia v Clemson and Alabama’s trip to Wisconsin, as well as and an underrated monster in Arkansas going to Oklahoma State. There are a lot of non-conference match-ups we hate that the SEC produces every week, but in

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NCAA (finally!) makes NIL proposal

The NCAA has finally made a NIL proposal that might be logical and good, rather than try and starve their most important commodity of their most important commodity – money. While a letter from the NCAA’s new president Charlie Barker didn’t implicitly say this, he’s obviously fed up with the lines that Mark Emmert had trotted out about the fact that scholarships should be enough for a kid to want to play D-I sports. He’s also noticed that the govermental powers-that-be are not falling over themselves to help the NCAA in their antitrust scheme, either. In the letter, he put forward a proposal that all D-I schools should be required to invest no less than $30,000 in an educational trust

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Quick bowl reaction: Bama in, FSU/ Georgia out

After they beat Georgia in the National Championship Game and Florida State’s offense looked so ragged against Louisville, it seemed inevitable that Alabama was going to be the final team into the College Football Play-Off. They will play No.1 Michigan, while No.2 Washington and No.3 Texas face off in the other one. Georgia fans could moan about not being one of the best teams in, but they sank themselves by back-to-back not-great performances against Georgia Tech and Alabama respectively. In the end, they ended up No.6 in the nation, and will face Florida State in the Orange Bowl – something we suspect won’t have a lot of weight if you consider the amount of players who won’t play. But the bottom

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SEC Championship Preview (and others): Georgia v Alabama, folks

Before the season, if you said that Georgia and Alabama would be playing this weekend at the SEC Championship Game, you wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But after the Alabama generally dreadful performances at the start of the season, including one where Crimson Tide had struggled – and I mean struggled – against South Florida, the prevailing thought that they wouldn’t make it was 60-40. Alabama was definitely helped by three factors: LSU couldn’t find a defense, and Auburn couldn’t work out a defense on 4th and 31. Oh, and Lane Kiffin continued his trend of ineptitude against Top 10 opponents. The third was Jalin Milroe, a freshman out of Katy, TX, who ran like Vince Young and had enough

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SEC END OF SEASON AWARDS

It’s award season, so we want to throw around some awards ourselves, before those Heisman people get in our way and make us look bad. So here we go. Some of them for the best….some of them for the worst. Thanks for a wonderful season. FEEL FREE TO TELL US WHERE WE WERE WRONG! SEC HEISMAN Jayden Daniels (LSU): Daniels hardly put a foot wrong this season, throwing for 3,800 yards and 40 TDs and rushing for 1,100 yards more and 10 more. He’s on the real Heisman favorite, too. Nominated: Cody Schrader (Missouri), Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss) Jayden Daniels won the Heisman. SEC RUSHER OF THE YEAR Cody Schrader (Missouri): Ran for 1,499 yards and 13 yards in the

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Adieu, CBS

Like any good divorces, it finished because of money. CBS had the media deal of a lifetime, only spending $825 million to the SEC on a 15-year contract, giving the schools $55 million per year each and itself the primary rights to each weekend. They refused to move on the ‘Best Contract On Earth’, and when ESPN threw in a $3 billion, 10-year offer for the conference, the SEC jumped at it. And so at this year’s SEC Championship game, we say goodbye to an old friend…. On Saturday afternoon, we bid goodbye to CBS’ coverage on CBS, which has been the partner of the Conference That Means The Most for 20 years. Most of the coverage of the last

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Texas A&M hires Mike Elko: How will he fare?

Mike Elko has been announced as the head coach of Texas A&M. The former Duke head coach (where he guided the Blue Devils to back-to-back bowl appearances, something rarely seen in Raleigh) returns to College Station, where he was defensive co-ordinator under Jimbo Fisher before his departure. There was a celebratory press conference, filled with good graces and an Aggie War Hymn in front of about 200 Aggies fans who obviously had nothing better to do with their time came on Monday afternoon. “There’s not many times when you go into the first team meeting and 50 of the players come up and give you a big hug and welcome you back,” Elko told the party. “But then I think

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Your SEC Turkey Day(s) Preview!

So it’s Thanksgiving. You’ve had 400 pounds worth of turkey, eaten too much bacon, stuffed yourself with too much stuffing, and listened to Uncle Leonard drone on about ‘woke’ society, and you look at your phone. “Gotta go”, you say. “It’s Egg Bowl time”. Thank God for The Egg Bowl. Whatever the year is, and however poor one or both teams are, there are two things that are certain. Firstly, that they will play each other on Thanksgiving Evening and give us a break from Uncle Leonard. Secondly, they absolutely hate each other, to the point that an Ole Miss instagram was firing around alleged conversations between Mississippi State QB Will Rogers and an unnamed Ole Miss chick. On Friday,

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The things each SEC team should be thankful for (and not!)

It’s Thanksgiving, so here’s one thing that each SEC team should – and should not – be thankful for (or maybe more) this year… ALABAMA Thankful: That Tommy Rees has finally worked out how to use Jalen Milroe. Suddenly they look like a machine again. Not thankful: That it took Rees so long to figure this out, and now they are behind Texas, so it means that if UT wins out, they won’t get into the play-off for the second straight year. Which means Nick Saban’s trees are in trouble, folks! ARKANSAS Thankful: That the season’s going to end soon, and Sam Pittman will be out the door. Not thankful: That there’s still one game to go in the season,

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