Turns out Gators-Bulldogs party matters again

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You never know where the ebb and flow of a Southeastern Conference football season will take you. In the preseason, everyone pointed to this week's Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville as a BCS national championship elimination game. Georgia was a preseason No. 1 in the polls, and Florida got a No. 1 pick in several magazines. Then, on Sept. 27, Ole Miss upset Florida, 31-30, in the early afternoon, and Georgia got hammered by Ala-bammer, 41-30, that night. Suddenly, the preseason hype for the annual Bulldogs-Gators meeting in the World's Largest Cocktail Party in Florida (politically correct title: Atlantic Coast Adult Beverages Tasting Festival) got deflated in a hurry. Well, as of Saturday's games, with Florida obliterating Kentucky, 63-5, and Georgia beating the stripes off the LSU Tigers, 52-38, in Baton Rouge, the Bulldogs-Gators game takes on a new message. Like, it's on! If fifth-ranked Florida (6-1 overall, 4-1 in the SEC's Eastern Division), at the very least gets to the SEC championship game, it needs to send Ole Miss a thank-you letter. Because if anything, the Gators learned in their loss to the Rebels that they needed to expand their offense past quarterback Tim Tebow and receiver/running back Percy Harvin. The Gators have considerably more weapons than Tebow and Harvin, and in the last two games Florida has used all of them. Against LSU and Kentucky, six different Gators score offensive touchdowns, and Florida had nine plays of 20 or more yards, including four touchdowns. The ball was spread among eight ball carriers and 12 receivers. And this was done against two of the nation's better defenses, providing more evidence that the Gators have solved their early-season offensive problems. Ditto for No. 8 Georgia (7-1, 4-1 in the Eastern Division). Until ripping LSU's defense in every possible way, the Bulldogs had never quite put it together offensively in SEC play. The Bulldogs had no such problem against LSU. Quarterback Matthew Stafford and receiver A.J. Green exposed the Tigers' confused secondary, and then running back Knowshon Moreno ran wild through some gorgeous holes knocked open by a supposedly inexperienced Georgia offensive line. It didn't matter that LSU scored 38 points. This was Georgia's most complete and impressive performance of the season. And considering the timing of it, this Saturday's game in Jacksonville, matching the league's two best quarterbacks surrounded by a variety of offensive weapons, should live up to the preseason hype (if the weather is perfect.)SO CLOSE YET SO FARA dark cloud has returned to hover over Vanderbilt, which lost its third straight game on Saturday. The 10-7 loss to Duke dropped Vandy to 5-3, still one game short of bowl eligibility. And as in the past couple of games, the Commodores' offense was awful. Until the fourth quarter, it was awful on third- down conversions, with quarterback Mackenzi Adams sacked three times in such situations. Vandy must win one of its final four games (Florida, at Kentucky, Tennessee and at Wake Forest) to get to its first bowl game since 1982GOING BOWLING?The SEC added a bowl affiliation this season with the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, Ala., giving the league nine. The last few years, the SEC needed those slots and they may fill them all this year. But once you get past Alabama, Florida, Georgia and LSU, there are a bunch of bowls staring at SEC teams with probable 7-5 or 6-6 records. Ole Miss and Auburn (both 4-4) each has to win two of its last four games for bowl eligibility, and Tennessee and Mississippi State (both 3-5) have to win three of four. Vanderbilt and Kentucky (both 5-3) need just one win with four games left, as does LSU (5-2), which has five games left. (Contact Ron Higgins at rhiggins@commercialappeal.com)(Ron Higgins writes for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn.)