gamCBS has announced its first trio of SEC games that will be played at 3.30pm.

The first game on September 1st will see Tennessee host West Virginia – some people’s favorite to win the Big 12 – in Jeremy Pruitt’s first game as head coach of the Volunteers.

The next week will see Georgia go to South Carolina in an SEC East clash, and then on September 15th Auburn will try and avenge their horrific 2017 loss in Tiger Stadium when it hosts LSU.

Later in the year on October 27th, the bastion of sobriety known as The World’s Biggest Cocktail Party between Georgia and Florida in Jacksonville will be a 3.30pm game (CBS will be playing that it’s not a repeat of the 2017 blow-out), as will the SEC Championship Game on December 1st.

It might be strange not to see Alabama on the initial schedule, but you can be assured that the LSU game on November 11th will be a night kick-off. We would also be shocked if the 22nd September trip to Texas A&M to face Jimbo Fisher won’t be on at 3.30pm, as well as The Iron Bowl on 24th November.

For the first time in years (and with the aforementioned Alabama-A&M game), it looks as though the Florida vs Tennessee game will be at night and on the SEC Network).

Like last year, we won’t see many interdivisional clashes between SEC East teams. We don’t expect Kentucky, Missouri or Vanderbilt to feature on CBS ‘prime-time’. The UGA vs South Carolina and UGA vs UF games may be the only SEC clashes we see all season long. That’s because the SEC East is going to be bad, y’all.

Unfortunately, most of the games will involve Gary Danielson giving his opinion on matters.

Nick Saban and Kirby Smart have gone head-to-head on transfers at the SEC Spring Meetings this week.

The Alabama head coach has long been derided for denying players the right to go where they want – particularly inside the SEC. This year he’s getting the heat for not allowing graduate student (and back-up center) Brandon Kennedy the right to transfer to Auburn or Tennessee. This comes a couple of years after the Maurice Smith debacle, where the SEC eventually had to intervene and let the player transfer to Georgia.

Smart wants to do quite the opposite – and let players transfer to whatever school they wish.

Typically, Saban shrugged his shoulders during a press conference and said that it is not him who makes the rules, but the SEC. “I don’t think it should be on me,” he said. “If we agree in the SEC at these meetings that we’re going to have free agency in our league and everybody can go where they want to go when they graduate and that’s what’s best for the game, then I think that’s what we should do,” he said. “”And Brandon Kennedy can go where he wants to go. But if we don’t do that, why is it on me? Because we have a conference rule that says he can’t do it. And he can do it but he’s supposed to sit out for a year. So why is it on me? It’s not even my decision.”

In one of his well-known sermons/rants from the media plinth, Saban added: “”Let me ask you a question: If we make a rule that guys can transfer whenever they want, how are we supposed to get people to do what they should do?” Saban said. “I’m not talking about as football players, I’m talking about as people. I’m talking about making good choices and decisions. … If a guy is missing class and I say you’re not going to play in this game because you’re missing class, which I’ve done on occasion, and he says, ‘I’m transferring,’ is that good?”

Of course, with every Saban speech there’s always something underlying. Losing Brandon Kennedy would leave no-one (that we can work out) behind starting center Ross Pierschbacher. Remember Saban decrying football played a lightning speed? He worked that one out pretty quickly.

But Smart thinks that the ban on interconference transfers should be lifted. “I certainly feel philosophically that if the person graduates from undergrad, they’ve done their graduation work and they choose to go somewhere else.”

He noted that the rationale that players would take information from one school to another simply was stupid. “You mean just like we do with coaches, right?” Smart said. “Just like I left Alabama and all of the secrets that I learned when I was there went with me. Muschamp took all those secrets from LSU. Jimbo took all those secrets from LSU. Now Jeremy has all those secrets. I don’t see it that way.”

He added this on graduate students: “”Most people get a graduate degree where? Where they got their undergrad or somewhere else? Usually somewhere else,” Smart said. “So if they’re going to graduate school for that purpose somewhere else, I don’t see the issue. … If they want to do that, they should be able to do that.”

Former SEC Commissioner Mike Slive has passed away aged 77 after losing his battle with cancer.

He lived from 1940 to 2018, and is survived by Liz, his wife of 49 years.

Slive was the commissioner of the SEC from 2002 to 2015, where under his guise the conference won numerous national championships across a number of sports – most famously including football. In all, the SEC won 81 national championships in 17 of its 21 sponsored sports during Slive’s tenure, the press release announcing his passing away said.

With Slive as commissioner, the SEC expanded from 12 to 14, adding Missouri and Texas A&M.

Under Slive’s tenure, the SEC also formed a powerful TV partnership with ESPN, which generated untold millions for the conference, helping to accelerate the development of university facilities for all 14 universities.

During his time in Birmingham, Slive was also the driving force behind a four-team college football play-off, which ended up paying off. A SEC team has been an ever-present since the play-off started.

Slive also started Conference USA and NCAA Division II conference the Great Midwest Conference.

It’s a strange few weeks in college football. It’s not the summer yet so we haven’t seen SEC players get arrested for robbery, possession of weed, public intoxication, and fights. Spring practice has ended so there are plenty of questions. Players who aren’t going to start are looking to graduate to other programs. We think it’s a childish approach, but then again, that’s just us.

So we decided on a retrospective. Here are your top SEC games of the 2017 season.

1. Georgia 54, Oklahoma 48: Down 31-17 at the half of the National Championship Semi-Final, Georgia takes the game to double-overtime before Sony Michel takes it to the house for a 27-yard touchdown. Talk about redemption for Michel: It was his fumble with 6:52 left in the fourth quarter that came back for a TD and nearly blew the game for the Bulldogs (and then Nick Chubb saved the day).
2. Alabama 26, Georgia 23: Alabama sometimes wins driving a stick up your behind, and sometimes they win dramatically. But Nick Saban knows one thing: How to win. After an awful first half by Jalen Hurts, Alabama switches its man behind the O-Line to Tua Tagovailoa, who is sensational, throwing the ball to DeVonta Smith for the winning TD. The coaches watching the game as part of the live feed saw the bad coverage coming a mile off, but for UGA fans, it meant yet another wait for a major championship. Still, what a game….
3. Missouri 48, Arkansas 45: Missouri showed us for one final time in the 2017 season: The offense was awesome, the defense was clueless. And Bret Bielema was fired after the game. The game itself was a fun one, featuring FIVE lead changes, and over 1,300 yards of total offense (and three turnovers).
4. Florida 26, Tennessee 20: Winning a game on a Hail Mary is always a cool thing to do. I was watching the game in a bar in California waiting for the Ole Miss vs Cal game to start, and everyone was stunned. Particularly the dude in the orange. The reaction from the UF Student Section is just amazing. I would have sworn too if I was there.
5. Texas A&M 50, Arkansas 43 (OT):  This rivalry has never failed to deliver in JerryWorld. Razorbacks’ hearts were once again broken, and Aggies fans had something to smile about. It might not have been one for the defensive purists, but SEVEN lead changes makes it quite the game for anyone who loves watching football (unless you’re a fan of either team, and then you’re probably still recovering from your heart attack).
6. Alabama 31, Mississippi State 24: After having an awful first half, Jalen Hurts comes back from the dead to lead Bama to an unbeaten season-preserving victory, throwing the game-winner with 25 seconds left. Mississippi managed to get two tries at a Hail Mary, but college football’s rule about pass interference saved the day.
7. LSU 27, Auburn 23: With two minutes to go in the first half of of one of the hottest games in LSU history, Ed Orgeron was out of a job. LSU was down 23-7 to one of their biggest SEC West rivals. Then with 32 seconds left, Russell Gage scored to make it 23-14. The Tigers held Auburn in the third quarter and scored 13 in the fourth to win out, and no-one could quite understand what had happened. Suddenly, the seat was warming for Gus Malzahn. And then Auburn smashed Georgia and Alabama on successive weeks.
8. Ole Miss 37, Kentucky 34: Kentucky once again find a way to lose. This time it was with 5 seconds left. Oxford crowned a new king of The Grove, Jordan Ta’amu.
9. Georgia 20, Notre Dame 19: Georgia fans certainly got their mouths moving before this one, crowding out Wrigley Field , getting screwed over for game tickets , and Calling The Dawgs during Brian Kelly’s Notre Dame Radio Show in a bar. The game was pretty good, too, with QB Jake Fromm getting crowned as the New King Of Athens.
10. LSU 17, Florida 16: You think it’s strange why I put this exhibition of inept offense as one of the games of the season, but I give you two things. The Florida fans’ excellent rendition of Tom Petty’s “I won’t back down” , other UF fans getting upset at the LSU band for playing “Neck”, and Florida’s kicker Eddie Piniero made a pinata of himself in the third quarter by missing an extra point that ended up winning the game for LSU.

Georgia has given Kirby Smart a massive contract extension following the Dawgs’ SEC Championship-winning season (and heartbreaking play-off loss).

Smart will earn $49 million over seven years, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in the SEC, as well as the country.

“I’d like to first thank President [Jere] Morehead and athletics director Greg McGarity for allowing me to lead this program,” Smart said in a statement. “I’m humbled by the faith they’ve placed in me and won’t ever take that for granted. I’d also like to thank our staff and our entire football family. Without their hard work and dedication we wouldn’t have been able to have the kind of success we’ve had in such a short period of time.”

Smart took over from Mark Richt two seasons ago, and since then, Georgia has been talked about as being the ‘new Alabama’.

We will see if this translates into National Championship title(s).