Are you ready for some football?

September 5 is the first game against Louisville. Already have our pig reserved.

I'm hearing nothing but good things coming out of Auburn, particularly about our defense, which, by all accounts, is going to be a beast. I think we're going to have a good season, but that it's going to take another year to really gel.

On the other hand, we have Muschamp back, which is great to have Gus and Mus back together.

I also believe this year will see the beginning of the decline of Bama's dominance and more of the usual little girl whining from Saban.

Auburn rising slowly, Bama declining slowly.

 

I expect to see Florida moving forward this year.

 

No, I'm ready for a lot of it!

 

AAC Championship: East Carolina vs Memphis
ACC Championship: Georgia Tech vs Clemson
PAC-12 Championship: Oregon vs USC
Big Ten Championship: Ohio State vs Wisconsin
SEC Championship: Alabama vs Georgia
Big XII Champion: Baylor

Heisman Trophy: either UGA RB Nick Chubb or TCU QB Trevone Boykin.

Playoff Games:
Orange Bowl: Alabama vs Baylor
Cotton Bowl: USC vs Ohio State

Other Bowl Games:
Fiesta Bowl: Boise State vs Oregon
Sugar Bowl: TCU vs Georgia
Citrus Bowl: Notre Dame vs Auburn
Rose Bowl: Arizona State vs Michigan State
Outback Bowl: LSU vs Nebraska
Peach Bowl: Clemson vs Wisconsin

 

Yes, expecting to see a lot of this. :applause:

 

Tennessee just lost a major player due to injury already.

 

I would love to see a resurgent Tennessee, but I still feel like they are a year away. I'm not buying into Auburn just yet, either.

 

It'll be interesting to see how Butch Jones & the TN Vols will fare this season.

Jones has done a fairly good job both in his draft picks earlier this year as well as his, shall we say, ability to lure good players away from other schools as well as having a good scouting team with the ability to encourage high school players to check out what UTK can offer those who wish to continue playing football at the college level.

The SEC is one of the hardest football conferences to predict who'll wind up as the conference's final winner. Just about every team has its share of excellent players & coaches, so predicting who'll wind up on top in the SEC before the regular playing season begins is always a risky proposition at best.

Naturally WPE3BQL would love to see the TN Vols on top at the end, but within my group of football fans, as far as the SEC is concerned, it's usually split between TN, KY, FL, & AL as to which team will be on top at the end of the season--usually it's one of those 4, but sometimes it's none of them. In recent years teams such as LSU & Auburn, & even SC have come away with the conference title.

Oh yes, Bro. Friend of Spurgeon, in the past the UT's officials have forbidden its college band from going along with the football players when they play the FL Gators because Gator fans would pelt the band with oranges. If you're a player or someone on their field's sidelines, you can sometimes run away from the volley of oranges [or whatever else a Gator fan might toss at them], but when you're a band player ensconced on the stands, there's not much you can do to evade the onslaught of oranges [or whatever].

A few years back, one of UT's tuba players nearly got chocked to death when an orange got lodged in his tuba as he was playing it.

It takes lots of wind to play a tuba, but when the tuba is blocked, the player's air has no place to go but back into the player's throat. That's what happened a few years back--the player almost died due to his own breath being forced back into his lungs.

Thankfully, some UT fans were able to perform CPR and revive his breathing before the EMT's arrived--otherwise it may have been too late for that tuba player.

None of the Gator fans admitted tossing the orange that almost killed the UT player since his orange was just one of a dozen or more that were thrown at the UT band.

One might expect the football players to be injured during the game, but seldom would you expect a tuba player to be injured like this one was.

 

All College football teams have people who do that stupid stuff. No one is exempt.

 

Just want to see the UT Vols as that is the only college football I care about. As I am strictly NFL.

But really Butch Jones seems to be a cool guy already. And a great coach who cares about his players. Just needs to be given time.

 

These posts pretty much echo my predictions as well. I'm not that sold on FSU's QB from what I got to see last year. That being said, the only game he got to start was a huge game for them and he grinded it out.

 

Thank you.

Georgia beat Auburn by 27 last season. I know last season doesn't mean anything to this season, but it's not like either team overhauled their rosters to any great extent. Georgia could very well be a top ten defense in the nation this season...and I'm just not buying into Auburn yet. Maybe after a few games that will change. I think UGA should run the East quite well. Personally, I'm thinking Tennessee will beat Georgia, but only because Georgia will beat Alabama and they have to travel to UT the next week.

I think FSU takes a step back. GT has a good offense and can hang with almost anyone in the nation. Clemson, if they can avoid being Clemson, probably can make a good run.

Ohio State, thanks to a fairly weak lower conference, a fairly weak out of conference, should once again reach the playoffs. Michigan State will be OSU's only contest. The Buckeyes suspended a few players for their opener at Virginia Tech, but I still think they win that one.

TCU could likely have the best QB in the nation. Baylor plays a weak non-conference schedule. I'd like to see Oklahoma and Texas regain some prominence, but for now the conference belongs to Baylor and TCU.

Same here, though I believe talent-wise the PAC-12 is closing in fast on the SEC. I would love to see the two conference have something like the Big 10-ACC basketball challenge, except in football. Have a weekend with Alabama-Oregon, USC-Georgia, Auburn-Stanford, LSU-Arizona, South Carolina-Arizona State...it would be a blast.

 

Utah is a consistently good program; not great, but good. Colorado has been down the last few years. Oregon State has always struck me as one of those teams that will lose games they should win, but they'll also pull an upset on someone who should beat them handily. Washington State, I can understand your apprehension.

The thing is, though, that no conference is brutally strong top-to-bottom. Even the SEC, which we both tout as the best conference, has Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State (most years), and Arkansas. The SEC, though, to me, has a speedier cycle for teams to swing back up and be competitive week in and week out.

Looking at your statement that the SEC would crush the PAC-12...let's look at the match-ups. If we created a weekend of match-ups based on last season's rankings and standings, here's what we would see (who I think would win is marked in BOLD):

Oregon at Alabama
Mississippi State at Arizona
UCLA at Ole Miss
Arizona State at Georgia
Missouri at Utah
Auburn at USC
Stanford at LSU
Arkansas at Washington
Florida at California
Washington State at Tennessee
South Carolina at Oregon State
Colorado at Vanderbilt

That's the SEC going 8-4 as I see it. That's not exactly crushed, but I do like the way you think.