Nick Saban inks monster contract extension

The SEC West’s all about oneupmanship, and that’s why we like it. Florida is looking like a National Championsip contender for arrests, and Alabama has oneupped the rest of the SEC West with another contract extension for Nick Saban. The school announced that Saban’s extension will be through the 2025 season, and pay him a tidy $8.3m for 2018. Saban’s base salary will rise to $7.5m per season – and $400,000 a season for every season after that. Although that might seem peanuts compared to the $11.1m contract extension he signed last year, but if you take out the $4m that he was given as a signing bonus, then it’s still a slick pay rise. He said: “We are very excited about

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Mississippi State 2018 Preview: New coach, new offense?

If you’re a fan of offense, then Mississippi State got one of the hires of the season when they brought in Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead to replace Dan Mullen as its new head coach. When he was in Happy Valley, he made Saquon Barkley a top-five NFL draft pick, Trace McSorley one of the best quarterbacks in college football, and a juggernaut, lightning-quick offense that jumped from 42nd to 19th from 2016 to 2017, and ranked 12th against conference in touchdowns. Moorhead immediately comes across as a pretty affable guy – something that we’ll find interesting how this translates to the cowbells and stress that comes with a SEC job. It might not be his first job (before he got

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Tennessee Preview 2018: Will the Vols get off the mat?

2017 was an awful, awful year for the Tennessee Volunteers. Butch Jones was such an unpopular coach that signs saying “Fire Butch Jones” went viral. At games not involving Jones or Tennessee. When he was fired after the team lost to Kentucky, there was an audible sense of relief. You know, for two seconds until the Knoxville roadshow went on overdrive as they tried to find a successor (remember the Greg Schiano incident?) – with former Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt eventually coming through the mire to claim the top job. This year, there is every possibility that the Vols will be the basement-dwellers of their division. They aren’t a whole lot better than the terrible 4-8 team that stunk up the

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Florida incoming freshman player arrested (again)

Florida incoming freshman cornerback – and four-star recruit Justin Watkins has been arrested for the second time in three months. He has been suspended indefinitely by coach Dan Mullen. Watkins’ first arrest was trespassing on another high school’s grounds that he didn’t attend (which isn’t a big one), but a quadruple felony. This included two first-degree counts of kidnap (false imprisonment), a third-degree count of domestic battery by strangulation, according to records. The freshman was offered by Alabama, LSU, Florida State, Clemson and Texas before deciding to go to Gainseville. Looks as though he’s going somewhere else after this short stint.  

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LSU Preview: Can Ed Orgeron save his job?

Thanks to the firing of 50% of the SEC coaches, Ed Orgeron is on the hottest seat in the SEC. In fact, after a season when LSU was awful offensively, failed to beat Alabama, didn’t even figure in the SEC West AND was upset by Troy to boot, it’s a small miracle that he stayed in Baton Rouge for the 2018 season. Yes, the 9-4 record may have stood out with a 6-2 record in the SEC, but if you look deeply into the season, the Tigers were more unimpressive than impressive all season long – particularly on points-scoring side of the ball. Despite all of this, LSU had seven picks in the 2018 NFL Draft (yes, even Danny Etling was

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Missouri 2018 Preview: Will Drew Lock light up the offense?

Midway through the 2017 season, Missouri was the Titanic. The ship was leaky, the wide receivers were dropping catches like there was no tomorrow, and everything was bad. After the Tigers were slapped by Auburn, head coach Barry Odom became the laughing stock of the SEC – and college football – by giving a sermon. But after they rattled off six games in a row at the end of the season (before they lost to Texas in the Texas Bowl), there is a degree of confidence for Missouri. And that’s been heightened by the decision by quarterback Drew Lock to stay. The press doesn’t believe it. They believe that Missouri will finish 4th in the SEC East. The Mizzodcast – one

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SEC Media Days: The important parts

We missed the fact that SEC Media Days weren’t in Birmingham, Alabama this year. As much as people love Atlanta (apart from the terrible traffic, an even worse airport and a city climate during summer that you wouldn’t wish on Gary Danielson), it just doesn’t feel like SEC territory. SEC teams – apart from Vanderbilt in Nashville – are in small college towns all over the Southeast. The big cities don’t seem to suit them – unless they are getting paid millions to play season openers, hosting a Championship Game, or winning National Championships. Of course, the SEC regulars were there. Bespeckled SEC homer Paul Finebaum, fresh from a re-up in his contract after his agent started rumors that he was

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SEC Media Day quotes: Texas A&M, LSU, Kentucky

It was the first day of SEC Media Days on Tuesday, and there were a couple of changes: Firstly, the crazy train rolled up to Atlanta rather than Hoover, Alabama, and second, there seem to be 401 new head coaches. Thankfully, they are all used to crazy people, so walking in the first shouldn’t have been too much of a problem. On the first day of FinebaumStock, Texas A&M’s head coach Jimbo Fisher, LSU’s Ed Orgeron and Kentucky’s Mark Stoops took the stage to face off against such questions as: “Do you feel good about your team this year?” and “What’s it like coming to the SEC?” and “How much pressure is there to beat Alabama win the SEC West?”. Anyway,

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Alabama boots former four-star linebacker

Alabama has booted sophomore linebacker VanDarius Cowan for a violating team rules. Cowan’s issues included getting arrested for a fight in Tuscaloosa where he punched a 26-year old man in the face, and he was also sidelined from some of Alabama’s Spring Practice for his poor academics – something that’s quite a feat at the 110th university nationally for academics. “VanDarius has been dismissed from the team and is no longer a part of our football program due to a violation of team rules,” Saban said in a statement. “Each of us has a responsibility to represent The University of Alabama in a first-class way, and failure to meet those standards can’t be tolerated. We wish VanDarius the very best

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CBS announces first 3.30pm SEC games

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

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