So, it’s Bowl Season, and of the dozen teams in the SEC, 9 got bids.
Let’s pause for a moment and see if any other conferences did as well, shall we?
Ok, that’s out of the way. (No, I don’t think so, but we could be wrong — we can’t be bothered to check.)
Here’s the bowl picture for the SEC:
- Alabama — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St — LOST
- Arkansas — Capitol One, vs. Wisc — 1/1, 1:00
- Auburn — Cotton, vs. Nebraska — 1/1, 11:30
- Florida — BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State — 1/8, 8pm
- Georgia — Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech — WON
- Kentucky — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson — WON
- LSU — Sugar, vs. ND — 1/3, 8pm
- Ole Miss — no bowl
- MSU — no bowl
- SC — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston, WON
- Tenn — Outback, vs. Penn State — 1/1, 11:00
- Vandy — no bowl
No big surprises here — the schools in the Heathen Home State have lagged for years (modulo Eli’s tenure at Ole Miss), and Vandy is hampered by actual admissions requirements, but the balance is solid.
Only 4 of the 9 have been played; of those, only one team disappointed (and it was ours, dammit). Coming up, though, we have very good expectations about the final five games:
Wisconsin lost to its only ranked opponent in the regular season, while Arkansas emerged as a surprisingly powerful presence in the SEC this year. We give the edge to the Razorbacks.
Auburn’s still very strong, so we’ll pick them to beat Nebraska — playing in a stronger conference, they still have a better record than the Cornhuskers, who beat only one ranked team in four shots during the season (#24, A&M, back in November).
LSU should be a shoe-in over perennially-overrated ND. They played four top-ten teams on the road, as we previously noted, while ND hasn’t beaten anyone of note all year. The Tigers can disappoint, the ND does have a good guy behind the center, but we’re still wearing purple and gold in our hearts on this one (as much as it pains us).
Penn State’s in a bowl? Why? Expect Fulmer (9-3 in the SEC) to whip Joe Pa (8-4, heavy on the creampuffs — is Youngstown State even Div I-A?), leg or no leg. We can’t bring ourselves to root for Rocky Top, so we’ll have to content ourselves with pulling against Penn State.
That leave the Big Show on January 8. Right now, we still pick Urban Meyer’s Gators over Ohio State, but that’s a closer call. Both had 4 ranked opponents in the regular season, but one of Ohio’s was an on-the-way-out Penn State back in September. Florida dropped one of its ranked games, losing to Auburn in a hell of a game back in October. All we’re really sure about here is that it’s likely to be quite a football game.
We figure we may be wrong about one of these picks, so we estimate the final SEC bowl record at 7-2.
(Oh, one more, designed to bait certain readers: in the Orange Bowl — featuring a shatteringly irrelevant pairing of Wake Forest vs. Louisville — we pick “whatever else is on”.)