SEC is craziest conference: Other notes

By RON HIGGINS
Scripps Howard News Service
Monday, October 22, 2007

The argument is made week in and week out on sports talk radio, in sports bars, in barbershops.

Which is the best college football conference in the nation?

It fluctuates from year to year, and the Southeastern Conference is usually at or near the top.

But not this season.

When you take a look at the five-way tie for first place in the SEC's Eastern Division, created on Saturday by two road wins (Florida over Kentucky, Vanderbilt over South Carolina) at the home stadiums of two top-10 BCS teams, you realize the SEC, at least for this season, is the undisputed king of top-to-bottom league mayhem.

Where else can you find a team like Vanderbilt, with one league win before Saturday over a bad Ole Miss team, going into Columbia and controlling the No. 6 Gamecocks, 17-6?

It says a lot for the Commodores, who looked awful in a 35-7 loss to Auburn two weeks ago and blew a late lead last week in a 20-17 home loss to Georgia.

Go ahead and admit it. When you first saw the final score that Vandy had beaten a Steve Spurrier-coached team, you looked up in the sky to see if giant meteor was headed for Earth. You thought the end was near when Spurrier lost for the first time after 14 straight wins.

Credit Vandy coach Bobby Johnson for finally making the decision to start Mackenzi Adams at quarterback over Chris Nickson. Adams has consistently shown an ability to make quick decisions and get the ball to his playmakers.

Also, Vanderbilt's defense came to play with seven sacks.

Vandy, at 4-3, is now two wins from bowl eligibility, with a non-conference home date against Miami (Ohio) this week.

Assuming Vandy wins that -- it's a dangerous assumption as wacky as college football is these days -- it means that Vandy would need to win one of its last four games: Nov. 3 at Florida, Nov. 10 home vs. Kentucky, Nov.17 at Tennessee or Nov. 24 at home against Wake Forest.

As any Vanderbilt fan can tell you, the Commodores haven't been to a bowl since 1982.

Winning is a mindset, repeat after me. . .

ROLE PLAYING: This is one of many differences between winning a game 41-17 and losing it. Coach A (let's call him Nick Saban) decides to try an onside kick to open the game. Is he crazy or what? And it works. Coach A's team sends a message, gets some points and ignites the home crowd. Later in the game with Coach B (let's call him Phillip Fulmer) losing 17-14, Coach B's offense has a third-and-inches at Coach A's 47-yard line. Instead of trying a quarterback sneak with a QB who is 6-6 and 220 pounds, Coach B OK's a play for a running back (Lennon Creer) who hadn't had a carry all day, and Creer gets stuffed.

So fourth-and-inches near midfield, Coach B bails and punts to Coach A's team, which immediately drives 75 yards for a touchdown and 24-14 lead. My point? When you play to avoid to lose, you usually lose, and lose big.

The most predictable thing of the day in Tuscaloosa was the post-game rubbish coming out of the Vols' locker room. It's like Fulmer and the coordinators are reading from a script they use after getting hammered.

You hear lines like, "No, nothing (the winning team) did surprised us. Yes, the good news is our mistakes are correctable. We'll put this one behind us. Sure, there's a lot of football left to be played."

They'll be saying this stuff next year on recruiting day.

TOUGH DAY AT THE GROVE

There was no second-guessing in Ole Miss' 44-8 loss to Arkansas. No surprise there. An average football team with two extraordinary running backs beat a bad football team hung over from last week's controversial loss to Alabama. The Hogs had to know it was going to be a good day when quarterback Casey Dick throws three touchdown passes.

EXTRA POINTS: Mississippi State wasted travel expenses going to West Virginia and losing, 38-13. The Bulldogs were down 28-0 in a blink. It was the end of a bad day for the Mississippi teams. Ole Miss and Mississippi State trailed by a combined 52-7 at the half, with State getting the TD. ... Give Florida coach Urban Meyer an open date and he works wonders. Though it was a gritty effort in a 45-37 loss to the Gators, Kentucky discovered it's hard to stay emotionally high when you're suddenly a nationally ranked team playing nationally ranked teams on back-to-back weekends.

(Contact Ron Higgins at rhiggins@commercialappeal.com. Read his blogs on the SEC at thememphisedge.com.)