Best of the SEC Blogs: Valentines Day Edition

OK, the SEC blogs were busy on Valentine's day -- maybe it was their significant other's gift to them to be able to freely blog for a day, who knows. The nominees for Best of the SEC Bloggers for today are:

• Lawvol at Gate 21 for this post recalling legendary SEC broadcasters.
• OutsideTheSidelines at Roll Bama Roll for his fisking of Brian Cook's Saban abuse.
• Vince Gagliano at Orange and Blue Hue for this great post examining how Florida State will handle the academic cheating scandal which has beset them.
• Jerry Hinnen at The Joe Cribbs Car Wash for his defense of Brian Cook's position attacking Alabama's Nick Saban for oversigning players.
  

And the winner is:

Jerry Hinnen at the Joe Cribbs Car Wash. Jerry makes a very strong argument against the Alabama argument (Jerry's an Auburn fan, so who can blame him?). Earlier I lauded the reasoning of the Alabama bloggers against Cook, but this is a fine defense of Cook's position, arguably better than Cook's own. Here is a taste:

Brian's obviously not a fan of oversigning, but it's the heartlessness of Saban potentially stripping kids of their scholarships that's his essential point--a point completely lost on the Alabama bloggers who have responded to it. One of them is the Fanhouse's resident Tide supporter and thrower of stones in glass houses Pete Holiday, who blithely asserts that "academic disqualification, medical problems, early entries, team dismissals for rules violations" should solve Alabama's numbers issues (nevermind that draft entries for the year in question are long since past or that assuming six guys have horrific injuries or break rules really does make an ass out of U and me) while completely ignoring the whole, you know, guys getting their scholarship jacked thing. Even after a commenter helpfully reminds Holiday of the potential for cuts, Holiday reverts back to a no-more-than-25-in-a-class mantra, which is certainly true and all, but doesn't change the fact that Alabama has, according to Gayle, "70 non-seniors" on the roster and that 70 + 25 does not, in fact, equal 85. (In that comment Holiday also says "Spring enrollments are the only ones you need cap room for, and I don't think Alabama is anticipating having any of those" ... despite the fact that Gayle said two Tide signees had enrolled in January. Did he even read the article in question?)

Strong stuff. Hinnen goes on to assail OutsideTheSidelines' post at Roll Bama Roll, noting for the record that RBR is an excellent blog (no doubt) and that the scholarships have not been revoked yet. And in a final twist, perhaps not having a chance to read my admonition about making sure your coach is in order before assailing others, adds this:

UPDATE: Cripes. Perhaps before posting I should make sure in the future that nothing developed on the Auburn newswire late the previous evening that might make me look like a giant hypocrite. For the record: if Tubby pushed these guys out rather than having them simply decide to leave--one of them according to Marshall is about to graduate already, so at least he won't need the scholly in the fall--it's just not defensible. Likewise, the attitude of some Auburn fans in the comments that it's a good thing for Tubby to "rid the team of weight that is not performing" is, well, nauseating. I wish Daniels, Shrader, Miller, and Ferguson the best and really, really, really hope this is a decision they genuinely wanted to make, a decision that hopefully won't hurt an education they actually want. I'm not confident that's the case.

Heh. That always tough to recover from, Jerry. Good luck with that.

Runner up: Lawvol at Gate 21. What an excellent post he had today. Here is a taste:

Larry Munson is one of the few remaining patriarchs of the golden age of college sports radio broadcasting. He has been broadcasting Georgia games since 1966. Up until the last season, he had missed only one football game in that time. This past year, due to debilitating arthritis and back problems -which made travel, and at times even walking, extremely difficult for the 85 year old — Munson only broadcast home games from Athens, leaving the road games to younger men. Mississippi State’s salty and sarcastic Jack Cristil has been at it even longer than Munson, having begun his stint behind the microphone in 1953. Up until 2006, Max Falkenstein of Kansas had been broadcasting for an unbelievable 60 consecutive years. Falkenstein had been broadcasting so long that, when dubious clip of him calling the final game of Kansas’ last undefeated basketball season appeared on the internet, that I’m sure some thought it was some probably thought it was authentic … despite the fact the game was played in 1909. This select band of broadcasters served as the eyes for fans all across the country, and in their heyday every school had its own “voice” which was as unmistakable as the mascot and the school colors.

Awesome post, Lawvol.

Worst of the SEC Blogs for Thursday

As you know, I rarely write Kentucky-related posts on here. I am a UK fan, but I do try to cover the SEC fairly honestly. I admit my bias, and unlike many in the mainstream media, I don't pretend to be able to put it aside and be completely dispassionate. Instead, I just try to stay away from the school for which I have a partisan affiliation. But sometimes it is impossible, and this is such a time.

I am very rarely surprised to read anything in the blogsophere. Sometimes you have people lose it. Sometimes, people just spew stream of consciousness crap. But this one really floored me. It starts with an article by Lexington Herald-Leader sportswriter John Clay about a Kentucky fan who goes to school at Vandy, and was sitting in the front row of the student section. His name is Eric Delong, and he was focused on a number of times by the ESPN cameras as he was the only guy in blue sitting in the front part of the Vandy student section. Clay writes this about his plight:

DeLong had arrived three hours early for his front-row seat, stood outside Memorial Gym for 90 minutes before the doors finally opened before tipoff, then sprinted to that prime position near mid-court where he was quickly enveloped by Commodore supporters.

"One of my friends -- well, he's not really a friend, just someone I play basketball with -- tried to physically remove me from my seat," said DeLong. "I didn't like that very much."

Then, somehow, his cell phone number was distributed and, as Vandy started using the Cats as a speed bag, DeLong received upwards of 65 text messages.

"My mom's not going to like that," he said. "The bill goes to her."

OK, I admit I think the fans were classless, but they are kids, so we have to give them a bit of a break here. They should certainly not have run up the charges on his phone by texting him, but I have seen and even participated in worse pranks in college, so I think his mom is just going to have to suck it up and tell her son to be more judicious about who he gives his cell number to. All that is fine, and I think we can say it pretty much falls under the rubric of, "the college experience." What floored me was the response from the blog, "Who ya With." To begin:

I hate this kid and I have never met him. This Douche is all that is wrong with Vandy athletics wrapped up in a gay little blue package. His name is Eric Delong and he was the faggot who wore his Kentucky shirt in the front row of the Vandy student section on Wednesday.

Well, let's see, where to begin? How is this a problem for Vandy athletics? Would you have them enforce a dress code on students, and require that they bow down and cheer for the university they matriculate to whether or not it is their favorite team on the floor? Not only that, isn't the fact that he was being abused by Vandy fans sufficient punishment without having aspersions cast on his sexuality by a Vanderbilt blogger? To continue:

I remember watching the game and thinking, "Oh well he is a Freshman who grew up in KY and still has allegiances." I as many others understand that it may take a little time to become a full blown Dores fan, but this queer is a fucking Junior. By that time your allegiance should be to the University you attend, not some team you grew up cheering for. I demand that this person transfer from the university or at least be shamed by the others living in Southerland House to do so. He does have a Facebook page and WYW would turn their heads to any public shamming you deem necessary.

Remember, this guy is a JUNIOR, and there is no place for him at the University we love.

I have no words for this drivel that I can print. I went to Western Kentucky, but nobody ever suggested I should be thrown out of school because I wore Kentucky clothing. Not only that, half of the student body were Kentucky fans. Comes now Mr. Jesus Quintana with the recommendation that Delong should leave because after three years at Vanderbilt, he is still a Kentucky fan. Then again, maybe it's all just a poor attempt at sarcasm and old farts like me just can't see it. It's possible (hey WYW, I'm offering you a way out here!).

I wonder if Mr. Quintana is so quick to change all his allegiances? He certainly seems to demand that others be. And to think, all this time I thought college campuses were all about free thinking, tolerance and rejection of the doctrinaire. Who knew?

'Bama responds to Brian Cook; Gators undone by Tigers

Yesterday, I noted in my runner-up for the best post of the day two dueling diatribes by Fanhouse authors Brian Cook and Pete Holiday.

OutsideTheSidelines, who blogs for Roll Bama Roll, takes dead aim at Brian Cook's piece. I know it's a shock, and maybe it's just me, but I don't detect a whole lot of love emanating from RBR over Cook's accusations against Nick Saban. But anyway, here is a taste:

In the blogosphere, you tend to get a bit accustomed to running across drivel masqueraded as legitimate commentary, but occasionally something comes up that simply takes the cake. Today I ran across one of those pieces. It seems Brian Cook, a Michigan blogger -- and no I'm not sure how in the hell he feels qualified to discuss Alabama football on that basis -- isn't too big of a fan of our latest recruiting class. In this piece of analytical garbage, if it even deserves that high of acclaim, he labels Saban a "Snake Oil Salesman," essentially states that our class is very overrated due to over-signing, and bemoans the practice of over-signing itself.

OTS goes on to analyze Cook's piece, and I think he really puts the screws to him. I don't know Brian Cook, but I will venture a bit of advice -- when you attack another team's head coach for doing something, make damn sure your coach isn't doing the same thing. Otherwise you will lose, and not just the argument, but credibility as well. Credibility is the coin of the realm in the Blogosphere, and in this blogger's humble opinion, Cook just went on a spending spree. But in the larger sense, since Big 10 and SEC fans aren't exactly on the best of terms these days, perhaps he made up for it in the eyes of Michigan fans.

But lest we be guilty of representing only one side of the argument, His Blognificance Orson Swindle has weighed in on the debate:

Nick Saban can’t count. Or worse yet, he can: Brian is shocked, shocked! in finding out that again, an SEC school has signed more recruits than they can possibly put on scholarship. Even more shocked, shocking! is the fact that it’s Nick Saban, an old hand at juggling massive signing classes: greyshirts, JUCO guys, and the old reliable: forcing people off the team because you want to put another player in his place. It’s not quite as bad as Brian paints it…but it’s cold, opportunistic roster manipulation more often seen at the NFL level. Meaning: bad.

With all due respect to Orson, I don't think his argument is quite as compelling from a reasoning standpoint, but he is correct to condemn "opportunistic roster manipulation," especially forcing people off the team because you want to replace them. If that happens at Alabama, I think it should be roundly condemned by all. We will have to wait and see about that, but either way, you still have the fact that other coaches are doing this also, and why is it bad at 'Bama and not at other schools?

Finally, I think we have to note that Florida suffered a surprising defeat at the hands of a resurgent LSU. After John Brady was rudely dismissed from his head coaching job, the Tigers have been playing much better under Butch Pierre. Geaux Tuscaloosa has the LSU side:

Congratulations to the Tiger basketball team and to Butch Pierre for the biggest win of the season last night. Granted, Florida is not a national power this year, but they're still a good team, likely headed to the NCAA tournament, and we beat them in their own house by a convincing 85-73 score. Only 6 players scored points, but 5 were in double figures, with 3 getting 19 points or more.

From the Gator side, we have Mlmintampa at Alligator Army:

Young teams are supposed to lose three of four. But no team should allow an opponent to shoot 59%, when their average in conference play was 39%. Or allow them to score 23 points more than their season average.

LSU played extremely well, so I don't want to take anything away from them. However, I've seen intramural teams play better defense than the Gators did tonight. There was no focus or effort on the defensive end and Florida was never able to build any momentum. This is now three of four games the Gators have lost where they looked completely lost at several points in the game. Against Arkansas it was understandable. That was a road game against a NBA-sized team. The Tennessee loss was fine too because of the quick road turn around and UF's lack of depth. But there was no excuse tonight.

I have already warned Gator fans about the problems with Florida's defense. Florida is a very good offensive team, but they play defense very poorly. I'm sure Donovan will be working hard on that.

Still, the gators seem poised for another invite to the NCAA tournament if they don't have any really bad losses between here and the SEC tournament, or they do well there. They aren't likely to get a high seed, but they will still get in in my opinion. But they do have work to do.

Kentucky gets "Commodored," and the posts of the day

So I suppose you are expecting me to dodge the whole Kentucky-Vanderbilt debacle. Nah. As much as I hate to talk about it, it is what it is. Heaven knows what happened to Kentucky, but one thing is for sure -- Vanderbilt was excellent. Sennsm at Vanderbilt Tailgate was a bit surprised:

Ok. WTF happened last night? I dont think anybody saw that coming in a million years. I hope we can play with that intensity for the rest of the year. UK couldnt do anything right.

Yeah, that's pretty much right. Geaux Tuscaloosa goes into a bit more detail:

It was ugly. I turned it off and went to bed with just under 10:00 left in the game, after Vandy took out all of its starters. Vandy was winning by about 40 at the time. The game ended 93-52. I'm here to tell you it could have been worse. Kentucky had 11 points at halftime, and was losing by 30. The opening minutes of the second half were no better, as Vandy quickly built its lead to 40, and just cruised that point on.

Ugly is right.

Moving on (can you tell I don't want to think about that anymore?) to the best blog posts of the day, the winner today is Jeffrey Macloud at LSU "Tigerbait". Jeffrey looks at the strength of the SEC using the AP poll. He does a nice job of analysis and references his sources. Here is a taste:

In an effort to binge post, here's another longish entry. This was motivated by a comment made by one of my compatriots on TigerForums. Paraphrasing, he said that he thought the SEC was the strongest it had ever been.

This sounded right to me, but I wondered. So I looked into it. Here's what I found.

Go check it out.

The runner(s) up come from Fanhouse, in a tit-for-tat between Brian Cook and Pete Holiday. First, Brian Cook:

If you wandered over to the various recruiting sites on signing day you probably noticed big banners proclaiming Alabama's return to power via the nation's top recruiting class. This is due in large part to the enormous number of recruits that put pen to letter of intent for Nick Saban: 32, a full seven more than the NCAA's yearly limit of 25. Only Miami managed to stretch the boundaries of the rule further, signing 33.

Brian's point is that the "oversigning" of recruits is essentially unethical, and how the NCAA needs to do something about this abuse.

Of course, Pete Holiday is an Alabama fan and had his own response to Brian's accusations. According to Holiday, and contrary to the impression left by Cook, Saban isn't the only and arguably not the worst "violator" of this policy. In fact, Pete cites Brian's own favorite team's coach, Rich Rodriguez:

It's also not unique to the 2008 recruiting year. Clearly Brian didn't like having his team's coach called out, and he went to bat for Coach Rodriguez, defending him against the "snake oil" comment made by Purdue's Joe Tiller. Now he's saying that over-signing is what a real snake oil salesman would do, so let's take a look at Coach Rodriguez's recruiting numbers at WVU. In the six seasons from 2002-2007, Rodriguez signed fewer than 25 only twice (2004 and 2006), and on two occasions signed 33 (2002 and 2005). He signed 25 and 28 in 2003 and 2007 respectively. So, in 6 years of recruiting, Rodriguez sold snake oil (to use Cook's metaphor) half of the time.

Ouch. I think this round goes to Holiday.

Best blog posts of the day in the SEC

The post of the day was this outstanding analysis by Saurian Sagacity. Mergz blogged about an analysis he has done on 111 D-IA football teams' recruiting efforts, basing his talent estimates on Rivals.com ratings over the last four years.

This is quite an impressive undertaking. Here is a taste:

It does show however those schools that have been most successful over the past 4 years in attracting the big names – the talent every school wanted. Thus in that way it shows where the most desired recruits have chosen to play their college ball in the past 4 years.

It also shows, if the near past is any indication, the limited pool of possible schools from which a mythical national champion will be named as in the past 4 years, the eventual MNC was a name somewhere in this top ten list.

It's amazing and somewhat frustrating to those of us who cheer for schools not in the top ten, or even top 25. The only consolation I could find for the Kentucky Wildcats is that they are about mid-pack, and given our limited football tradition, I don't expect that to change radically in the next decade or so.

I have always wanted to do an analysis like this, and now I must think of something else to write about.

Runner up for today is this post by OutsideTheSidelines at Roll Bama Roll looking at the University of Alabama's domination of it's home-state recruits, and the substantial failure of Auburn to make inroads into said domination. This is an interesting, complex (and quite lengthy) read detailing the failure of the Auburn program to recruit well at home, even among recruits that were Auburn fans growing up. Here is a taste:

The only real success that Auburn had in recruiting this year was with former commitments to previous classes, and they did not even have complete success in that area. Raven Gray was a commitment to the 2006 class, and he has enrolled, admittedly a very big signing. Jermaine Johnson was a good addition, but he was an academic casualty from the 2007 class, and may not qualify this year either. Enrique Davis would have been a huge commitment, but he ended up going to Ole Miss after Auburn changed directions with the offensive coordinator.

I would love to hear an Auburn response to RBR's post, not so much because RBR is indicting Tuberville for recruiting malpractice -- they are 'Bama fans, for heaven's sake, what would you expect? -- but more because their larger point seems to be that Auburn is doomed to second-class status in the state very soon even though they have been dominating Alabama. The big question that I have is about this assertion:

Saban is as at least as good of a coach as Tuberville, and likely better, and at the current rate the talent level that Alabama will have will dwarf that of the Auburn roster in the very near future.

So what say you, Auburn fans? Has Tuberville's lack of recruiting doomed you? Is Bama about to dominate your future? Is Saban a better coach?

We will see, I guess.

Bring on the cupcakes

Schedules, schedules. This is the biggest complaint about football teams every year. Every team's partisans makes the case that it's team is better, regardless of who they play. But as reported by Charles Rich of Fanhouse a while back, the cupcakery is becoming not just a nasty trend, but a strategic plan. What I think we are seeing is coaches and athletic departments noticing that despite Hawai'i's ludicrously weak schedule, anyone who can manage an undefeated or one-loss record has a chance at a BCS bowl and the big bucks that go along with it.

We have already seen this tendency even among the elite of the most topheavy conferences like the Big 10. Ohio State had either the 53rd or 54th toughest schedule in the land, depending on who's numbers you use, while Hawai'i clocked in at either 112th or 132nd. Kansas clocked in at either 74th or 80th. All these teams wound up in BCS bowls (OSU in the BCS championship). What is the lesson here?

True, LSU was a 2-loss team and wound up in the BCS championship, so we can't say that schedule strength isn't a factor -- it clearly is. But the lesson here appears to be that unless you really are the best football team in the land, you'd be better off to schedule like Hawai'i and Kansas than LSU. Having the toughest schedule in the land didn't really help Ole Miss or UCLA.

Quinton McDawg of Georgia Sports Blog suggests that teams aren't holding up their end in scheduling, and proposes a solution:

Many teams have done their part simply because they have a rival they hate. Florida has Florida State. Florida State has Miami. Georgia has Georgia Tech. South Carolina has Clemson. Meanwhile, teams like Texas, LSU, and Penn State can pick and choose when they want to play these games and when they want to sit out a year. (By the way, I'm not picking on those teams because they typically do a decent job of nonconference scheduling, but they don't have a team out of conference that they have to play. They have a choice.) It seems unfair to have one power team with the option to play a big nonconference game while others do so as a matter of course.

I would respectfully suggest to Quinton that this is not by accident, but by design. These days, teams are looking harder for I-AA opponents than they are BCS opponents. Could the NCAA enforce a scheme where all BCS teams were required to schedule at least one BCS out-of-conference opponent? I don't think Duke could handle the load, they'd be getting calls from every team in the nation.

The tendency these days seems to be "schedule easy, go to a bowl." Let's face it, no matter how much derision weak schedules draw from bloggers like Quinton and I, the bottom line is, going to a bowl means the big, sweet dollars and exposure for recruiting. Given the choice between having a few journalists and bloggers laugh at your schedule and a visit to the Orange Bowl, I think most coaches and AD's would say "I'll take the Orange Blowl, keep your praise."

Until there is a true and enforceable penalty for scheduling pastries, this problem is bound to get worse before it gets better.

Rumors of my demise are exaggerated, but understandable

Has this blog died? No.

Unfortunately, I have been in the throes of a very difficult time. I am starting a second business, and it has simply overwhelmed me despite my best intentions.

Those of you who had been reading me up until the Holidays when my posting frequency went all to hell, hang in there. I will be back very soon, hopefully better than ever. I am trying to find a way to better integrate my blogging into my busy day, and I think I may have found a way.

In addition to finding a way to get my blog-stuff together, I have decided to simply dedicate this blog mostly to football. I have tried without much success to integrate basketball coverage also, but the pace of the season is a bit too quick for me to cover the entire SEC with any sort of coherence. I will blog about basketball, but more from a macro perspective over the entire conference than particular teams. Also, I have found that the SEC bloggers with the exception of UK, Vanderbilt and Florida generally don't pay that much attention to basketball, at least from a blogging standpoint. This is a football conference, and even a UK fan like me can see that. Why fight it? When in Rome ...

So for those of you who were wondering what had happened, have faith -- Best of the SEC Blogs will be back stronger than ever very shortly. This is just the kind of thing that seems to always happen to bloggers when real life encroaches, but I am quite dedicated to this effort and will not give it up. So hang with me, I am almost to the point to where I can resume my passion. I'm sorry for the unavoidable interruption, and I expect to be back up to speed beginning this week.

Thanks to all for reading!