Previewing all Power-4 Conference Championships

As we said recently, our take on Conference Championships this year is that they don’t matter. It’s not a way of teams ‘settling it on the field’, it’s a money-grab by the conferences. That’s not to say that the winners won’t be over-the-moon and the losers won’t feel the pain of defeat, but there’s not as much skin in the game. And in the SEC Championship Game and B1G Championship Games, which feature Georgia-Texas and Oregon-Penn State, this is particularly the case. All teams play the games extra close, then the Top 4 won’t change. On the other side, it’s jeopardy on steroids in the Big 12 and ACC Championship games though. The loser of the ACC (SMU and Clemson)

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SEC Week 1 Round-up: Vanderbilt and Georgia impress, Florida does not, dross in the middle

The SEC was involved in four major match-ups with weekend, with Georgia playing Clemson, LSU playing Southern Cal (USC), Texas A&M at home to Notre Dame, and Florida hosting Miami. Oh, and Vanderbilt played the other game FBS game SEC schools were involved in, battling out with Virginia Tech. It was hard not to be impressed with Georgia’s kerb-stomping of Clemson. But LSU losing a neutral site game to USC was OK. We’re a lot happier with the state of the Tigers than we are with Texas A&M’s offense loss to higher-ranked Notre Dame or almost everything that was the Florida Gators. But Vanderbilt? Jeez. The Commodores were 13 1/2 point underdogs. But they won. Even after blowing a 17

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The final week….Is Rivalry Week: Week 13 SEC Predictions

Happy Thanksgiving. Finally, we’ll all be able to see each other again. We’ll crack jokes, maybe laugh a little, and try and tell ourselves that we like sweet potato pie and can definitely have two helping of Momma’s Yams. During those family reunions, cousins of different in-state college dispositions will meet up, drink far too much bourbon, and argue like children. There will be discussions of tree-poisoning, and dog-pissing. But everywhere – from internet to in-your-face- will become a cesspool of bitter collegiate football division. Those arguments will develop into fist-fights, probable divorces and definitely decisions never to go to Uncle Joe’s. Ever. Again. And elsewhere, Texas and Texas A&M – the bastions of bitching – will sit each other

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100 things that I love about College Football

Kevin Duffey of Saturday Down South wrote an amazing article about 100 things that he loved about college football, and I felt inspired. So here’s a 100 things that I love about college football (including, of course, the SEC!). And this is no particular order. That college football came back after it looked like COVID-19 would shut it all down. College Gameday. That moment when it starts, and you get the ‘Welcome to….” and you take a deep breath and get excited, very quickly. At last, your Saturday is starting. Fox’s show is fine, but Gameday is Gameday. Rivalry games. No.1 best rivalry title? “The Holy War” (Utah vs BYU), although ‘The Civil War’ and “Good, Ole Fashioned-Hate” comes close. “Red

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Is Alabama’s opener with Missouri in jeopardy?

This College Football season has already had a few highlights. We’ve had the return of Miami’s Turnover Chain, revamped and restudded (Miami’s also 2-0, so people are already saying: “IS MIAMI BACK?” (Clue: Yes, until they play Clemson and get beat by 40). There’s the laughter at the Big 12, who seem to be embarrassing themselves at every opportunity. There’s the Big Ten, who have managed to put the train back on the tracks, and frankly, we can’t wait until their match-ups start at the end of October, because More College Football. But there have also been the cancellations or postponements. There’s COVID-19 cases and contact tracing and schools scurrying to make sure that all hell doesn’t break loose. Baylor

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How do you keep players ‘in the bubble’?

  Right, so keeping players in the bubble’s going to be tough. It’s pretty obvious that the kids who are going back to school think that just because they passed a COVID test between March and now that they aren’t ever gonna get the plague, so they are gonna hang out, drink and do dumb stuff, because they are students. Football players aren’t different, particularly with all the distractions. And no, we ain’t talking about studies, since a lot of college football players wouldn’t be in college if it wasn’t for football. Hell, it’s a miracle most of them got through high school. A great friend of mine was pursuing the sort of lifestyle that would have made Hunter S Thompson proud

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SEC, ACC: No plans to scrap college football

The SEC and ACC have both said that they have no plans to quash their college football plans after the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences said that they are cancelling fall football. B SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement: “I look forward to learning more about the factors that led the Big Ten and Pac-12 leadership to take these actions today. I remain comfortable with the thorough and deliberate approach that the SEC and our 14 members are taking to support a healthy environment for our student-athletes. We will continue to further refine our policies and protocols for a safe return to sports as we monitor developments around COVID-19 in a continued effort to support, educate and care

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The Terminator Chronicles: Big Ten/Pac-12 edition

August 11, 2020, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 fired the first missiles. After arguing as to whether the fall college football season should be delayed or not, the conference decided that that was it: They were cancelling fall football. There were words of players practicing at Nebraska and Iowa. There was a sense of hope that everything could get sorted with a player-pushed protest. News of all but Iowa and Nebraska deciding to resist came through yesterday, but they had said there wasn’t a vote. There was. And the red button was pushed. But now, there will be no Game. There will be no bitter battles for weird jugs, trophies and helmets. We won’t be able to jump around, white out,

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Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC are moving to Conference-only games

And so the dominos continue to fall. According to multiple media sources, the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 have all decided that they will play a nine-game conference-only season It is an effort to cut down the season and make it work, as well as give schools some wiggle-room if there an outbreak of COVID-19 on teams and campuses. For the SEC a bunch of non-conference games will be affected, including (sadly), Clemson vs South Carolina, Georgia vs Georgia Tech, Louisville vs Kentucky and Florida State vs Florida. Notre Dame have been told that the ACC will accommodate Notre Dame in its own schedule. For the Big Ten the biggest match-ups being lost are Notre Dame’s game with Wisconsin, Penn

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