Gainesville WeatherSportscene with Steve Russell
SEC Media Days Means College Football Close
As I write this I am leaving for the annual trek to Birmingham, Alabama for the three day extravaganza known as SEC Media Days.
Why is this important? Well, it really isn’t, but if you love college football, when SEC Media Days is here, the college football season can’t be too far away and that is always a good thing.
What’s fun about SEC Media Days is that about 800 or so media boys and gals will be on hand to learn basically nothing. Very rarely does any breaking news come out of this three day session but having the coaches all in one place where they are forced to talk to the media sometimes makes for interesting…or boring…conversation.
But who cares? What’s important is that we’re talking college football, and this year in the SEC, there are lots of questions to chew on.
- Take away Florida and Alabama, who will be in my view overwhelming favorites to win their respective divisions, who would you rank as the third best team in the league?
- Is this the year Steve Spurrier finally breaks through and wins more than seven or eight games? Maybe the Gamecocks winning a national title in baseball will give him some momentum…but then again, he has Stephen Garcia at quarterback so anything is possible.
- Will Auburn be this year’s Ole Miss? Last year, Ole Miss was ranked in the top ten and did not meet that expectation…Auburn is not ranked that high but many believe the Tigers can be very good this year. Still, a lot will ride on how well new quarterback Cam Newton does for them on offense.
- Is the SEC down? Well, if you go by star power, I think it is. Yes, the Heisman Trophy winner plays for Alabama, but outside of guys like A.J. Green and Julio Jones there are not big name guys on offense and can anyone name all the starting quarterbacks this year in the SEC???
Didn’t think so.
With all that said, don’t sell the SEC short this year. This league is always good and this year it should be as competitive as ever. Can Alabama repeat as natiional champs? Can Florida be a major national contender? Will Mark Richt and Les Miles feel the heat more if their teams don’t win as many games as their fans think they should? Who is Robbie Caldwell?
Don’t you love it? College football is almost here and the boring month of July, at least from a sports perspective, will finally go away.
See ya…off to Birmingham…to talk a lot of college football.
Posted: Tuesday, Jul 20, 2010, 08:33 AM
