SEC WEST: Thoughts of the Day

July 4, 2023

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:

The old girl is about to get a facelift, a tummy tuck, a bit of lipo and some Botox. Yes, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium is about to get a much-needed makeover. Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin has set a price tag of $400 million to modernize the iconic stadium, a hefty, but necessary expense.

The secret for this new do will be to modernize the stadium without losing ambience. Way too often something is lost when stadiums are refurbished and it would be a shame for BHG to lose some of the things that make it one of the more intimidating places to play in all of college football. It may involve decreasing capacity by a few thousand seats to eliminate the feeling everyone is shoehorned in. Chairbacks will definitely be a nice addition as will wider concourses and easier to access concession stands. While they’re about it, they should do something about a press box that ranks 13th among the 14 SEC schools. The only one worse is Vanderbilt, but Vanderbilt Stadium ranks dead last in everything.

Don’t do anything that would lower the decibel level nor do anything that would make opposing teams feel less claustrophobic. One thing that might be a nice addition would be pink paint for the opposing locker room. Hayden Fry did that at Iowa years ago after psychological studies showed pink has a rather mellowing affect on people.

A look at the SEC West

Alabama

Last year was supposed to be the Nick Saban Revenge Tour after the ambush in the 2021 national championship game. Well, Bama didn’t even make the SEC Championship Game much less the national championship game. Two years, no national championship and Kirby Smart being declared by many the best coach in the nation. So what does Nick do about it? He brings in Kevin Steele to coordinate the defense and Tommy Rees from Notre Dame to take over the offense. Not exactly overwhelming choices. Not even whelming choices.

If it were anyone else but Nick Saban and anywhere else but Alabama, you would think the sun is setting on the Alabama dynasty, especially since the quarterbacks in the spring were so bad that Rees brought in Tyler Buchner, who has completed more passes to the other team (8) than he has thrown TDPs (6) in two years with the Domers. They said similar things in 2015 when FSU transfer Jacob Coker was the QB. All he did was lead Bama to a 14-1 season and a national championship.

Talent is not an issue. In fact, there might be so much talent on defense that even Kevin Steele can’t screw it up. Offense? It will be ground and pound. Remember the name Justice Haynes. He is a beast who might break all the Alabama rushing records by the time he’s finished.

Texas, Arkansas, Ole Miss and Tennessee are homers. The Aggies and Auburn are on the road. Anything less than 11 wins will have people ready to impale themselves on Ginsu knives they bought of an infomercial.

Arkansas

Arkansas finished dead last nationally in pass defense a year ago. Opponents sliced and diced the Hogs for 294 yards a game and 24 TDPs, which might have something to do with a 7-6 record. Arkansas should have won 10 games last year with that offense. They’re going to score points again this year, but new defensive coordinator Travis Williams doesn’t have the talent to stop anybody.

KJ Jefferson has an Anthony Richardson body and arm. He’s 6-4, 245 pounds and will wow everyone at the NFL Combine with his size, speed and arm. Rocket Sanders is a 237-pound bull who requires two or three tacklers to bring him down. The O-line has three new starters, but any team Sam Pittman coaches will be good enough up front. Catching the ball? Question mark there. Stopping people? Forget about it. It’s not going to happen.

The schedule says four wins max, but the Razorbacks probably will win a couple they shouldn’t in shootout form. Six wins. Seven is a dream.

Auburn

Only one coach has beaten Nick Saban in back-to-back years since he took the job at Alabama and that coach is now the HBC at Auburn after spending four seasons getting his sins cleansed at Liberty. When he was at Ole Miss, Hugh Freeze beat Alabama in Oxford in 2014 and again in Tuscaloosa in 2015. He is not going to be intimidated by Nick Saban nor the Alabama aura. Of course, the same thing was said about Gus Malzahn, who took his $24 million buyout to UCF.

So how is Hugh Freeze going to pull Auburn into the same conversation with Alabama? It starts with the portal, where there have been serious upgrades, particularly at quarterback (Payton Thorne from Michigan State) and wide receiver (Zakhari Franklin from UT-San Antonio and Tre Harris from Louisiana Tech). At least 10 transfers will start for the Tigers, six on the offensive side of the football. A year ago Auburn couldn’t put points on the board, but that should change dramatically in 2023.

Can Auburn stop anyone, particularly on the ground? That will be the question that has to be answered quickly. A year ago, the Tigers gave up 448 rushing yards to Ole Miss, 292 to Georgia, 276 to Arkansas and 245 to Penn State. If Auburn can figure a way to stuff opponents running the ball and get off the field, it’s going to be a surprising year.

There is a four-game gauntlet of (at) Texas A&M, Georgia, (at) LSU and Ole Miss, plus the season-ender Iron Bowl game with Bama. On paper this looks like a 5-loss season, but figure Auburn will win at least one game it shouldn’t. Eight wins.

LSU

Kim Mulkey won the women’s basketball national title in year two and Jay Johnson just won the baseball national title in year two. So, in Tigerthink, Brian Kelly will win the national championship this year, right? Well, maybe. LSU has a lot of very good players, but are the Tigers better than Alabama, who they play in Tuscaloosa in November? If they win the SEC West are they better than Georgia? Georgia clobbered them in the SEC Championship Game last year.

Kelly has gone heavy into the portal for a second straight year, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. The offense figures to be exceptional with Jayden Daniels at QB, four returning starters on the O-line and transfer running back Logan Diggs from Notre Dame. Stopping people should be easier with stud EDGE Harold Perkins and DT Mekhi Wingo returning, bolstered by Oregon State transfer MLB Omar Speights and Syracuse transfer CB Duce Chestnut.

If LSU handles Florida State with ease in game one, buckle your seatbelt because there is every good chance they’ll be in the national title hunt, but it will still come down to this: Is LSU better than Alabama and Georgia? Maybe, but probably not. Ten or 11 wins, just not the one LSU will need in Tuscaloosa.

Mississippi State

The Bulldogs had a good thing going with Mike Leach because it takes more than a week to adequately prep for the Air Raid. When Leach died, Mississippi State promoted defensive coordinator Zach Arnett to HBC. He promptly tossed out the Air Raid for something more conventional. It will be back to pre-Dan Mullen in StarkVegas, which is to say three and four win seasons will be the norm.

Mike Leach and QB Will Rogers were a scary tandem. Rogers is back but he’ll be under center a lot and handing the ball off a whole lot more because Arnett is convinced the Bulldogs need to run the football. How’s that going to happen with an entire offense that was recruited to throw the football 600 times a year? The defense will be good, but good enough to win against a schedule that includes LSU, (at) South Carolina, Alabama (at) Arkansas, (at) Texas A&M and Ole Miss?

Joe Moorhead was fired after going 14-12 in two seasons after the departure of Mullen to Florida. Zach Arnett will be lucky to win that many. Four wins this season, five at the most.

Ole Miss

Nobody likes to play a Lane Kiffin-coached team because they know he will stretch their defense every which way and sideways. Lane’s going to put points on the board, always has, always will. Definitely will this year. Stopping people? That’s been a big problem. The guy who’s job it is to fix that teensy little issue is Pete Golding, formerly of Alabama. Officially, he left Bama on his own accord. Probably he got an ever so slight nudge from Nick, but his defenses were top five in the SEC every single year. Top five defensively at Ole Miss in 2023 is a pipe dream, but can Pete Golding give the Rebels one or two more possessions every game?

The Rebels have the best quarterback situation in the SEC with Jaxson Dart and Spencer Sanders, the best RB in the country in Quinshon Judkins and quality receivers out the wazzoo. If tight end Michael Trigg stays healthy he will be somebody’s nightmare to defend. Four starters return on an O-line that gave up only 16 sacks and paved the way for 256 rushing yards per game. Pete Golding will have to figure out how to stop people.

The schedule is daunting with (at) Alabama, LSU, Arkansas and (at) Auburn on consecutive weeks along with a late season visit to Georgia. Because the Rebels will score a lot of points, eight wins. Anyone but Lane would be lucky to break even.

Texas A&M

Instead of a Jimbo vs. Nick conversation starter we have the shotgun marriage of Jimbo to new offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino to talk about. The Aggies need an infusion of new blood to deal with all that talent Jimbo Fisher has assembled, but Bobby Petrino, when Kendal Briles, who knows Texas like the back of his hand, was available (he wound up at TCU)? Maybe Jimbo knows something nobody else knows. This is either going to work magnificently well or else it’s going to end in divorce. Smart money is on divorce.

Jimbo is on the hot seat. He lost six games in a row last year, something that hadn’t been done since 1972. He’s halfway through the buyout, not that finding the money to pay off a coach is a big deal to big bucks Aggie boosters. It is said – and true – that the only ones with more money than the Aggies are God and the Longhorns. For Jimbo to remain in the good graces of folks whose bank account numbers are separated by multiple commas, Conner Weigman better be good all season long as he was when the Aggies ambushed LSU in the final regular season game. Nine starters return from a defense that was middle of the pack in the SEC. Does a year older make them a year better?

Anything less than eight wins and Jimbo might as well call the local Two Men and a Truck guys to clean out his office. We’ll know how good the Aggies are when they complete the four-game stretch of Auburn, Arkansas (in Arlington), Alabama and (at) Tennessee. There are also roadies to Ole Miss and LSU. Seven wins. Eight at the most.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Today is the Fourth of July. We celebrate 247 years of independence as a country. For all our problems – there are many – there aren’t any that can’t be solved if our people can simply take the time to talk things through. Arguing incessantly isn’t solving anything. Talk. Then listen. Amazing what might happen if we get the people in charge to give that a shot.

One thing a free country has given us is the marvelous gift of college sports. I can’t think of anything that has brought more people from diverse backgrounds together the way college sports have throughout the years. Entire communities have been lifted up because college sports have provided the scholarships to young people who may not have afforded an education. They’ve gone back to the communities from which they came and offered helping hands to other young people and the entire community benefitted.

I grew up in the old south as the barriers of segregation began to tumble down. I think back to those years and then see how so much has changed in the last 60 or so years. It’s not perfect by a long shot, but I see how far we’ve come. As a writer I see how sports – college sports especially – have had such an important role in fundamentally changing our society. They’ve helped to teach us that it’s possible to work together for a common goal, that all the athletes we cheer for on the field or on the court sweat the exact same color.

That is worth celebrating. Happy Fourth!