Simulated Gameday Experience

The Liberty Bowl has fallen off a bit from its 2004 Louisville – Boise State clash-of-the-mid-majors tilt; sure, it reeked of an undercard, but for a bowl who’s typically sitting around second-level status, it counts as glory days. Since then, Conference USA got raided by the Big East and the Mountain West backed out of the picture; the Liberty Bowl capitalized on that by bringing in some essentially random mediocre SEC West team (note: capitalized is only used in the highest irony possible). Under this scenario, it’d make East Carolina and Arkansas squaring off wholly unexciting. (more…)

So this was supposed to be yet another preview article about both teams, their seasons (including their one combined loss) and, well, who’d have a shot to win this. There’s one heck of a stylistic matchup between Florida’s defense and Cincinnati’s offense that’s probably worth blowing 1,000 words on in its own right. Then again, that was also before the coaches decided they were going to up and leave town – since the end of the season, we’ve had both head coaches and both the coordinators in the main matchup bail for either various other head coaching gigs or for personal reasons. For clarity’s sake: Urban Meyer is going on vacation, Brian Kelly is at Notre Dame, Charlie Strong (Florida’s DC) is at Louisville, and Jeff Quinn (Cincinnati’s OC) is at Buffalo. Of the four, Meyer and Quinn will be acting head coaches for their respective sides and Strong will be a DC for one final game before moving on- only Brian Kelly won’t be around for this one. (Incidentally, incoming HC Butch Jones won’t be on the sidelines for either Cincinnati or his former Central Michigan outfit. Apparently there’s a pipeline between CMU and UC, who knew?)

It’s a complete shame that all the coaching activity ended up drastically overshadowing the storylines on the field, since as far as matchups go this is pretty solid. (more…)

Look, I don’t care: this is the Peach Bowl. This is not the Chik-Fil-A Bowl, although they do make one heck of a sandwich. This is one of the comparatively few bowls out there that actually has some kind of history, and if it’s good enough for the Rose Bowl to stubbornly cling to an outdated tradition and be mocked roundly, well, it’s pretty easy for me to do the same.

This year’s incarnation pairs a couple of teams who are strikingly similar; both rely on power running games and excellent defensive play (typified in part by a safety operating up in run support a large percentage of the time). The difference lies in – go figure, knowing the teams – special teams: Virginia Tech has them, while Tennessee hasn’t had them in a while, up to and including this season. (more…)

Last week basically confirmed what we already thought: Alabama and Florida are playing for the SEC Championship. As we move towards that inevitable showdown, the rest of the conference keeps on knocking each other down, as the recently-consistent Tennessee and Auburn outfits both lost on the road. Further down in the conference, Arkansas keeps keepin’ on, and might actually be the most predictable team in the SEC on a weekly basis. (more..)

Go figure – one of the main storylines to come out of this game is yet another officiating controversy in a game involving one of the SEC’s two national title contenders. This time, it was an overturned Patrick Peterson interception of Greg McElroy with LSU down six. To some degree, it doesn’t matter what the call is, other than it happened. Alabama likely would’ve won the game anyway (it may be a fortunate gift that Leigh Tiffin hit a 40-yard FG to create the final score) but really, the SEC doesn’t need this. They don’t need more public questioning of their refs, but since Mike Silve opened that can of worms, no sense in putting them back now. (more…)

Remember that once-a-week thing with SEC Rivals? It’s a power poll, but with a limitation; they don’t want me writing a ton about each team. Well, when it comes to only writing a few sentences at a time I’m completely incapable of that – so hey, let’s repost half the damn thing and say what I wanted to say. (more…)