If it doesn’t smell slightly of bourbon, rage, and fried alligator, they’ve done something drastically wrong here. (HT: RCR.)

Get your shiny SEC helmet schedule here. It’s handy for getting a good froth on, and a nice way to visualize the SEC schedule both in terms of its nastiness in-conference, and all those unrecognizable strange helmets out-of-conference indicating a rich marbling of easy 1-AA fat throughout the slate.

Why just in week one: Alabama and Virginia Tech have their Skoal-off in the Georgia Dome again, meaning tasty free chicken sandwiches for your correspondent, and perhaps a misleading win for Virginia Tech early. This will prime the Hokie bandwagon for a hefty pile-on until everyone remembers Brian Stinespring can’t call plays, Tyrod Taylor can’t pass, and that Alabama will improve three thousand times from game one to game six after breaking in a new qb, and will likely look at their worst in game one.

Also see: NC State/South Carolina, where one team may actually play a competent quarterback in this game this year (Russell Wilson,) and the other will have Steven Garcia, who’s just gonna wing it, man; LSU at Washington, which will be both ugly and weird, and Georgia at Oklahoma State, where Mark Richt’s biggest challenge will be hiring goons to fend off T. Boone’s army of strength-sapping turbohookers piped in from Dallas to distract the Bulldogs.

Last time, this not well go so for State Oklahoma:

This will be Joe Cox’s first start, and the second part of a home-and-home that started with the Cowboys’ disastrous 35-14 ‘07 loss in Athens. Oklahoma State entered that game with high expectations, and left to go on to get annihilated by Troy in a thoroughly disappointing campaign. Now, two years later, people as knowledgeable as Bruce Feldman have them as a dark horse national title contender. If history was a farce the first time instead of the second, what will it be this time? Meta-comedy? Youtube clip set to Yakety Sax? LOLfutball in motion?

You know what’s sexy about Vanderbilt? The teams they play, according to this video. We would care about the lackluster narration, the slow pacing, and the choice of a rather obvious theme track, but we apologize: the instant Knowshon Moreno leaves the ground, we lost all rationality and starting tasting the sweet blood of football in our mouths. We’ll wait for you football wearing whatever you like. Just keep sending us the occasional bits of footage set to dramatic music, and we’ll be your sports Penelope forever. When you come back it will be worth all the lonely. [/takes final sips from Nyquil bottle, totters off to pharmacy.] (HT: The Wiz.)

Spring practice is in full swing at Tennessee, and if you’re wondering what the secret ingredient in Kiffycakes is, the answer is simple: more profanity.

We think we hear “BULLSHIT” after every play, and a smattering of “get off the goddamn ground!” Considering Tennessee’s season last year, though, the term “bullshit” stands less as a mindless curse directed punitively at a player, and more as an accurate assessment of overall offensive performance. We’re sure that’s what he was talking about. (That is Orgeron talking, right? “Talking” for him being “yelling enraged at the top of your lungs” for anyone else?)

The video has been taken down, because someone’s pastor might see it!

Crimson and Cream Machine gives another go-round with the SEC speed myth, and gets the same conclusions: Southern players aren’t faster, the SEC scores low on competitive scheduling in comparison to other conferences, and the 40 isn’t all that when measuring team speed. Rephrased: the same conclusions everyone else of any logic generally comes to when looking at the evidence. It’s well-done, thorough, and as concise as it could be given the topic.

CUE SEC THEME MUSIC

Oh god…it’s their theme music…it’s THE SEC!!! RUUUUUUUUNNNN!!!

Unsaid is this: what’s really at the core of any argument about the SEC is why: why the money, the success commercially, the public notoriety, the Q rating of the conference in the national eye, the disproportionately large shadow the conference casts over college football more. The answer is an unromantic one.

We spend more money. This equals “caring more,” which we do in a very substantiated way by hiring coaches at higher salaries, pouring more money into training and developing football players, and in smoothing the way for academically suspect athletes by establishing lavish tutoring programs for them. In the case of Florida, you are literally dealing not just with a varsity team, but with a corporation whose sole operating principle is making the football team a richer and better franchise.

When the shakes set in no junkie is more desperate to tie off and blast into the sweet oblivion of football than an SEC fan, and they’re willing to spend the money to make it happen in large fashion. It’s not the horses, it’s the heated barns, frequent rubdowns, and excellent practice runs that make them shinier and glossier than the competition.

Just repeat this every time this issues comes up: we’re more willing as a region than others to expend interest and time on football, especially in cases like in Alabama, Florida, or LSU, places who go way out on a limb to feed the beast of the fanbase. The SEC’s loud because we’re the ones who went and bought a megaphone to bring to the party, not because our voiceboxes are any different. (Okay, they’re probably scarred by cigarette smoke a bit more than others’. Besides, that, no different.)

[hit play, then read on for maximum effect]

If you’re of orange-and-white extraction and a relative young’un like me, you’ve enjoyed respectable if not notable football success for most of your cognizant life. You are also threatened by change, and you may not know what to make of this young whippersnapper Kiffykins strolling the sacred halls of Neyland. He’s arrogant; he’s got a funny accent; he delivers his addresses like an under-prepared sixth-grader giving a book report, and oooohweeee, has he ever stirred up a hornets’ nest in the papers.

But here’s a fun little test. On one side of an argument are Paul Finebaum and Gregg “Greg” Doyel; on the other, Bruce Feldman and Matt Hinton. Who would you rather have in your corner?

(more…)

Rueben Randle and friend, Ramgod.

Rueben Randle, much-desired wide receiver recruit, received a personal tour of the Louisiana State capitol courtesy of LA Governor Bobby Jindal aide Timmy Teepell. (Remember: politics is one of those disciplines where one not only can, but should keep a nickname that would get your ass mocked to a painful death in any other community.) No word on whether Randle was accompanied by Ramgod, but his presence was likely unnecessary as Ramgod sees all Randle sees and knows all that he thinks. Hint: if you want to know where he’s committing, ask Ramgod, Rivals and Scout types. He knows all.

Our fearless leader files this dispatch from the road:

A quick scene from the airport today. A family of downhomey UGA fans sent off a pair of clearly foreign, Nordic-looking teen boys back to the cold, godless land from whence they came. They stood ahead of me in line at security, clearly emotional. Though they did not share a language, the angst and tears in their eyes made their feelings for each other clear enough.

And as a parting sign of their love, they had decked out both head to toe in the ultimate Georgian’s sign of affection: spanking new Bulldog gear.

It was moving and hokey simultaneously. In fact, I’m still thinking about them as I board, especially because just after I wiped a tear away, I told TSA they were speaking in Arabic and looking suspicious, and they were hauled away for cavity searches.

Hugs and Go Gators,

Orson

Everything’s gonna be fine now. You’ll see.