Complacency undermines SEC champs

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Urban Meyer saw it last football season.Nick Saban saw it in 2004.Steve Spurrier didn't see it in 1997, because he was too busy trying to find a dependable quarterback.Les Miles swears he doesn't see it this season."It" is complacency, the enemy of teams that have just won national championships, as Meyer's Florida team did it in 2006, Saban's LSU team in 2003, Spurrier's Florida team in 1996 and Miles' LSU team last year.Since LSU is coming off a first -- it had never allowed 50 or more points twice in the same season in the 115-year history of the program until the last three weeks -- naturally Miles is being quizzed on the Tigers' massive collapse in losses to Florida and Georgia.But no, he doesn't think his 5-2 Tigers became fat and happy cats heading into this season."I'd like to say that if I thought if that was it, but I don't think that," Miles said. "We've had great leadership from our upperclassmen. It's a case where maybe some of the young guys, feeling they have to fill some big shoes, are trying to make too many big plays outside the scheme. It doesn't have anything to do with we just won (the BCS championship) and we aren't hungry."Miles is also discounting the thought that LSU would be any better if quarterback Ryan Perrilloux was still with the Tigers. Perrilloux, the SEC championship game offensive MVP last season, transferred to Jacksonville State after Miles kicked him off the team last May after three suspensions."I'm certain that speculation is out there," Miles said. "To what extent that's really had an effect, I can't spend my time there, to be honest with you. I look at the team that I have and coaching the guys that I have that wear LSU on their helmet. I'm not going to spend a lot of time or speculation as to if we had another guy or whoever could be our quarterback."Spurrier, now at South Carolina, said the reason his 12-1 '96 national championship team at Florida dipped to 10-2 the following year was the loss of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Danny Wuerffel and playmaking receivers Reidel Anthony and Ike Hilliard."The two best defensive teams I had was in 1996 and 1997," Spurrier said. "But we really struggled at quarterback."Meyer and Saban don't deny one bit that complacency took their teams down a notch in their seasons after winning a national championship.Florida went from 13-1 in its BCS title year to 9-4 last season, losing back-to-back games for the first time under Meyer.Meyer even tried to do his homework before last season, talking to Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan, whose teams won consecutive national championships in 2006-07. He wanted to know Donovan's secret.In Meyer's case, it didn't work."We were dealing with youth, we were dealing with entitlement, we were dealing with people telling them how good they were, we were dealing with guys wearing national championship hats that they bought at the store," Meyer said. "We dealt with it all, A to Z."Saban said as hard as he tried, he couldn't fight human nature, as his '04 LSU squad finished 9-3 after its 13-1 BCS national title season in '03."We anticipated a lot of the problems," Saban said. "But guys get complacent. They are pleased in what they accomplished, and they should be. Yet it gets much more difficult to focus on the things and remember the things that got them there (to the national championship game)."But once we lost a stretch of two of three road games at Auburn, Georgia and Florida, the team got better and turned it around."Meyer said there is a silver lining to winning a national championship, despite the fallout the following year."The good thing is the bar has been set," Meyer said. "They (his players) got a little taste of it, they witnessed it."(Contact Ron Higgins at rhiggins@commercialappeal.com.)(Ron Higgins writes for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., at XX(at)xxx.com.)