Congratulations to the Florida Gators on winning the SEC Championship. The best team won, although, I think Alabama had a great chance to bring home the trophy if not for the facemask penalty that gave them a new set of downs on their go ahead drive. But if they play 10 times, Florida wins six of them, so I have no problem with how things played out. It was a great game.
Tim Tebow is almost indefensible when you surround him with great athletes which Florida has. He is a fantastic college player, but he will not be an NFL star, not at quarterback at least. NOTE TO ALL RECRUITS: Urban's offense will do nothing but harm your NFL aspirations as QB.
Florida is the cream of the crop and I hope they smack the Big 12 representative in the mouth in the Championship game. I am so sick of the media fawning overing Big 12 teams. I foresee several SEC Championship rematches between these two teams over the near term.
Now to the rest of the league.
The team that did the most with the least: Alabama- Clear winner here. Saban demonstrated that he is one of, if not the best coach in college football. Only 9 scholarship seniors, tied for playing the most true freshmen in the country. Not "star" power. It continues to amaze me how well coached they are. This team is the rising star in the conference if not the country. They will be good for many years when the talent catches up with the coaching. A number 1 recruiting class last year and an almost certain top five class this year should cause fear in many conference teams.
RUNNER UP: Ole Miss. Nutt did a great job and could have had an even better record. They have a legit star QB coupled with Nutt's grittiness and scheming turned in a great performance. Can they recruit enough to continue to move up is the big question.
The team that did the least with the most: Georgia takes this auspicious award in my opinion. Pre-season number 1 and they came no where close to living up to their hype. How long before Richt is in trouble? He continually under performs in my estimation. He is a great guy and I think he has a decent football mind and I don't know what the problem is. Maybe he is not tough enough. Mark, my advice to you, speak with Mike Shula. Being a great guy is worthy of admiration but you don't get paid that paycheck to be a great guy.
RUNNER UP: I am going to call it a tie between auburn and lsu. Both struggled with QB play and that is big. Alabama will struggle a little replacing an adequate but experienced QB, but the play on the Plains and in Red Stick was more than just bad QB play. LSU fans seem to have embraced Miles, but I am still not convinced. He is just baffling to me. I addressed this last year and nothing has dissuaded my opinion. He apparently can recruit (it is easy to do at LSU since they have not natural competition in their own state) so that may mask the inadequacies but pressure from Tuscaloosa will continue irritate the impatiences of modern day lsu fans. The aubs are in trouble in my opinion. The tigers will have to reckon with a recruiting base that drying up on them. It is going to be hard for them to compete when Florida, Bama and Georgia are top of their game. History has shown that their success comes when those teams struggle. I don't see that anytime soon assuming Georgia gets their act together. Firing Tuberville was stupid and the aubs think they are a national power. They are not.
The team with the murkiest future: Happy to give this award to Tennessee. Lane Kiffin is largely unknown to me. It is a huge gamble. It could turn out okay for them and if so, they will be Florida's competition in the East, but I have a feeling Kiffin is over his head in this league. This is not the Pac-10 and he was a bust at Oakland.
Runner Up: I guess I will give this to South Carolina. Not that they have any tradition of success, but Spurrier had made them mildly competitive, but Spurrier's tenure is closer to being over than anything and South Carolina has to compete with Clemson in a very small recruiting pool. Doesn't appear to look good to me.
The rest of the league: Nothing much to say here expect in the East Vandy and Kentucky will probably continue to compete for the bottom of the standing. In the West, Miss. St. is done. The worst place in the conference to recruit to, little to zero tradition and if you have ever been to Starkville you will know why. Arkansas is a wild card. Petrino can coach and they have a pretty good tradition there. Can they keep Petrino long enough? Hard to say, but they could be a good odd year challenger in the days ahead, but they have some work to do and some talent to get.
All that to say, that after watching a great championship game between two powerhouses, I have the feeling that the conference is finally starting to shake out like it should be. I love Alabama's discipline and style of football. Meyer is as good as the QB. Florida's recruiting base in huge and it is easy to recruit to Gainesville. Spurrier awoke a sleeping giant and Meyer carries on the tradition. Florida will be good for a long time, but Tebow's are once in a generation college players. He will get some good QBs (cf. Alex Smith) but if I had to invest in the conference, I would be buying Alabama, shorting auburn, buying some options on Arkansas, be trading Ole Miss on term, and hold my position in Florida.
Good luck gators! Thank you Bama for a great year and putting the conference back to rights and bring on the Big 12.
