It’s nighttime in Death Valley. The War Eagle Flies. We’re running through the T. We’re chomping. We’re asking how ‘bout them Dawgs. We’re clanging, pig sooein’, rammer jammerin’, Ole miss by damn’. We’re a 12^th Man, the ZOU in MIZ, a Commodore, and a Wildcat. There’s even 2001 or maybe a Sandstorm.

Our churches aren’t small. They are megachurches, holding a screaming congregation that will bury you with noise. They’ve even been allowed some in-game communion wine to add to their palates during services now. It should make Saturday church a little louder. When they win with a God-given upset, they jump over railings, get stuck in hedges, surf goalposts through crowded streets and toilet paper trees. When they lose, they look like their world has been torn apart. The pretty sorority girls and young frats with their bow ties look miserable. The painted clowns look clownish and stunned. All of them use words to the heavens that they wouldn’t take with grandma to church.

But in our churches, it’s important to know our pastors. There are 14 of them. If they bring home The Ultimate Prize, then the size of the statue won’t do the achievement justice. Of course, the pastor must obey the main commandment of SEC football: Thou Shalt Not Lose. Particularly if it’s the cardinal sin of losing Eggs, third Saturdays, big games or Cocktail Parties – or losing too many SEC games. If they do, hotter seats than hell will appear and behinds will sit on them. Pastor Gus of Auburn has sought redemption a couple of time from being excommunicated. But this year’s another year. It doesn’t matter if you’re likeable. If you don’t help the congregation reach the higher plain, you’re out. Some elders will give a new pastor two or three years to work their magic, but after that, notice will be hammered on the door like Martin Luther did with his articles.

To make a pastor successful to his congregations, he must be able to bring in the moving parts from smaller, younger churches every season. Churches aren’t expected to fizzle out. We at the SEC don’t mind paying for talent, as long as we don’t get caught. Much. And after their success in college, they go to Big Church Sundays. We implore Mr Goodell, high elder of the professional league, to skip the preliminaries and just call your professional conference the SEC-FL? After all, our boosters probably pay more than some of your teams do. This year, Tua will again make the tongues waggle, although we’re also excited by Bryant, Swift, Fromm, Delphit, Jeudy, Mond, Williams, Stingley and a guy based in the Mid-West known only as ‘Albert O’. But there will be many more names by season-end. Because this is the SEC.

The pastors and the congregrations know who the biggest church in our movement are. At the moment, they are in Tuscaloosa and Athens. They are going to be pretty good in the Year of Our Lord 2019, we hear. They’ve got the West and East divisions running scared and their schedules measure up sweetly. It’s hard to see who is going to beat them. Hell, it’s hard to see who’s going to give them a good fight. We expect more drama at the SEC Championship Game. And no trick plays please, Kirby. The likes of LSU, Auburn and Florida will feel like ‘also-rans’, even if that’s not the case. There’s always room for the upset. See the last time Georgia rolled into Death Valley. Take a moment in thinking about the orders of service for 14 teams for the Pastor Jimbo’s congregation in College Station. It’s downright evil.

But there will be competition for the Ultimate Prize this year from other denominations. The congregation in Clemson in the Atlantic Denomination is pretty good. As are Sooners from Oklahoma in the Southwest. There are the people of ‘The’ and ‘Big Blue’ in icier Big 11, and we’re heard that there might even be a good team in the NorthWest who are known as Huskies or Ducks in the driven down out West. But against us, can they really hold their own? If there’s two teams that will compete with us for the Ultimate Prize, we’ll go for the ‘Eyes and the Tigers. The rest will falter and fall.

I saw on a tweet today that a Georgia fan that Nick Saban’s effort to explain Alabama’s ‘weak’ 2019 schedule in a presser was showing a ‘chink in the armor’.

“Not very Saban of him to say “we tried”. He wouldn’t accept that from his players and coaches! He hides behind being for an expanded SEC schedule while criticizing people for not showing up for HIS pitiful schedule. This is THE crack in the Saban armor. #GoDawgs #wisewords” 

Mr Wisedawg’s comments come after Saban’s answer to Colin Cowherd’s rage at Bama’s poor scheduling this year. Saban said: “I think the culture of college football would benefit if we said Power 5 teams have to play all Power 5 teams. I’ve been an advocate of this for several years,” he said on ESPN “I’ve been an advocate of playing more SEC games. Well, I think you should do it like basketball, they have RPI, or whatever it’s called. And basketball says these are the teams that played the best schedule and won the biggest games. So that’s how you qualify for a bowl game, not how many games you win. So that it would be better for fans, it would be better for fan interest….. “So we’ve tried to schedule two opponents — Power Five opponents — every year. We have one time in the next 10 years, we’ve succeeded at doing that. So unless we change the culture of how we all agree to schedule, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The fact is this for the 2019 schedule: Alabama’s 2019 schedule is far weaker than Georgia’s. The Crimson Tide’s biggest non-conference game is mighty Duke, while Georgia’s is a fascinating home game against Notre Dame. Non-conference wise, Alabama plays South Carolina and Tennessee, while Georgia gets the enviable task of playing Auburn and Texas A&M (Of course, both schedules pale into comparison with Texas A&M’s, who have to play a non-conference monster in Clemson, as well as Alabama and Georgia this year).

Saban has said on many-an-occasion to lobby the SEC to increase the schedule by 9 games. This notion isn’t actually advantageous to Alabama in the fact that Maths would dictate that it gets to play Georgia and Florida more often. Kirby Smart has jumped on Saban’s bandwagon now, saying that he too would favor 9 games.

But there’s also the scheduling factor for Saban and Alabama. People simply don’t want to play Alabama. The way the Crimson Tide are stacked, it’s an almost guaranteed loss for any Power-5 team. If that Power-5 team thinks it has a chance to get into the play-off, the risk of getting blown out of the water by a rampant Tide team severely damages those prospects (This goes the same for Texas A&M and Clemson. Why Texas A&M chose to boot Oregon and scheduled Clemson instead in 2014 is somewhat of a mystery, but it’s amazing for college football as a whole).

And while Georgia fans will tell you that it’s all Saban’s fault for scheduling bad teams, there aren’t exactly a lot of Power-5 teams looking to prove themselves (apart from Wisconsin, who were just announced as a future combatant in 2024/5). This goes the same for Georgia, who have mighty Virginia and Oregon in 2020 and 2022 in Atlanta, which might as well be a home game for the Bulldogs.

Look, Saban and Smart (as well as Auburn HC Gus Malzahn) are right. The SEC needs to go a nine-game in-conference schedule. As should the ACC. Otherwise, there will be non-stop bitching and complaining about ‘Alabama and Clemson bias’. Saban is also right when he talks about RPI. He seems to want to see Alabama – as much as anyone – play big-time match-ups.

But no-one has mentioned the elephant in the room – the regular season neutral site games. The reason why it’s not mentioned – by Saban or anyone else – is the fact that the poverty-stricken athletic departments have to play these games as money-spinners (they get in the region of $5 million). I mean, they all really need to get the same sort of beds that LSU has. The major programs are denying fanbases big-time games by these season-opening bowl games. After all, it costs a lot of money to go across the country to an alien dome to see your team play (plus the charges of match tickets, hotels and concessions). Their ticket isn’t guaranteed by the school because there is no home game, and also, they lose out on a ‘good’ game to go to. The same goes for students, who generally can’t afford long treks, and aren’t going to be fighting outside the stadium to see LSU vs Kent State anytime soon.