SEC Football Previews: Saying Hello And Shooting For 7

Dynasties end. This much, we know. Most end right around the time we begin to ask, “Are we seeing the makings of a dynasty at _____?” Limitations of one kind or another tend to get in the way: a coach’s physical limitations (ask Urban Meyer about the toll 25-hour work days take on the body), a coach’s ability to avoid the temptation of another job (often with the letters “NFL” involved), an 18-year-old’s inability to say no to a booster (and his inability to keep people from finding out about it), a 21-year-old’s inability to avoid occasional idiocy and trouble-making, a group of 18-year-olds’ collective ability to replicate the quality of the previous group, et cetera.

Occasionally, though, the fun can indeed last a while. Southern Cal finished in the top four of the AP poll seven years in a row from 2002 through 2008 (though they technically didn’t in 2004, I guess). Florida State famously finished in the top five every year from 1987 through 2000. Miami won four national titles from 1983 through 1991, including a three-in-five stretch. But in modern college football, it is incredibly difficult to maintain a truly elite level every single year.

Things change pretty quickly, don’t they?

Dec. 4, 2009: Florida is nearing dynasty status. Winners of two of the last three national titles (2006, 2008), the Gators are undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the BCS rankings. They have suffered some offensive glitches under a new offensive coordinator, but they have still been barely challenged, winning seven games by 24 points or more and posting just one single-score win. Only a second straight win over Alabama in the SEC title game stands between them and a shot at another national title. They have won 37 of their last 43 games.

That’s from last summer’s LSU preview, written before Miles’ masterpiece of an LSU season. Every word I wrote last year was reinforced with steel in a 2011 season that saw not one mundane second. What LSU did well, they did magnificently. When they failed (just once), they did so in spectacular fashion. Somehow, Les Miles created an entire team in his image: weird and wonderful, capable of awing and confusing you at the same time. And like so many things Bayou-related, the final chapter took a really, really negative turn.

Through 13 games in 2011, LSU had prepared one of the most impressive resumes in college football’s history. They had beaten Oregon in Dallas. They had whipped West Virginia in Morgantown. They had emasculated Florida and Auburn, winners of three of the previous five national titles, by a combined score of 86-21. They won at Alabama, for crying out loud. They absorbed a solid uppercut from Arkansas (14-0 after 20 minutes) and won, 41-17, then took Georgia’s best shot in the SEC title game (10-0 after 24 minutes) and won, 42-10. They were faster than you, more physical than you, more well-conditioned than you and packed with far more personality and attitude. This truly was Les Miles’ most Milesian team, right down to its limitations. But forced by decimal points to face Alabama a second time, they found out that said limitations were eventually fatal.

For a couple of years, I almost eye-rolled my way to a headache at every “Mark Richt on the hot seat” story that came along. Richt accomplished so much in his first eight years in Athens -- six 10-win seasons (Georgia had enjoyed only two in the previous 17 years before Richt took over), two SEC titles, three Sugar Bowl bids (two wins) -- that he should have earned more than enough goodwill to survive what were basically two down years (13-12 in 2009-10), I said repeatedly. But over time, I’ve come to accept that three things, fair or (mostly) unfair, have served as a bit of an anchor for Richt, one he somewhat overcame in 2011, but one that is hovering in the background, waiting to drop in during the next disappointment (and there’s always another disappointment):

1. Disappointment lingers. In 2008, Georgia went 10-3. As mentioned above, it was their sixth 10-win season in eight years, a remarkable achievement. But while they shouldn’t have been ranked No. 1 in the preseason that year, they were. And it made a 10-3 year look incredibly disappointing. Two of the Dawgs’ three losses came to incredible Alabama and Florida teams that went a combined 23-1 in the regular season, but since the polls predicted them to be incredible themselves, instead of just really good (which was what the numbers suggested they would be), this was problematic, to put it kindly. So when Richt had what seems to me to be his first truly disappointing season the next year (8-5 in 2009, with losses to iffy Tennessee and Kentucky teams and another blowout loss to Florida), it was seen as a second straight tumble. And it is probably fair to say that portions of the fanbase are still frustrated about 2008.

They make things interesting, don’t they?

Arkansas didn’t just lose Bobby Petrino; they were forced to fire him when he crashed his motorcycle and lied about a 25-year-old blonde passenger (on April Fools Day, no less).

This week marks the first week of school at the University of Missouri. It also marks the 15th anniversary of my move to Columbia. I came from out of state, but I have long since gotten to know this university’s, and this state’s, eccentricities. Missouri is at once midwestern and southern, rural and urban (and also really, really rural), optimistic and scarred, proud and insecure. “I don’t give a damn about what you say about me… but please say something nice.” As with just about anywhere else, I imagine, it is a fascinating, often frustrating, place to live.

This offseason, then, has been a really, really interesting time to be a part of (and an observer of) the Missouri fan base. Never has the fan base been so thrilled, so proud to be a part of something bigger, than it has since the announcement of its impending move to the SEC. All of their longtime complaints, fair or unfair, about life in the Big 12 -- lack of equality, respect, etc. -- were seemingly alleviated in one swift move, and fans have responded by buying tickets in record numbers and snatching up as many “MIZ-SEC” shirts as they, or their credit cards, can handle.

College football’s upper tier is typically rather resistant to out-of-nowhere national title runs. When you think about it, the last two decades have produced almost none of them.

Only four times in 20 years has a team truly surprised people by not only ending up in the title race, but winning it. In 2002, Ohio State began the season ranked 13th, having gone just 21-15 in the previous three seasons. In 1997, Michigan was ranked 14th in the preseason, having encountered four straight four-loss seasons, then claimed a split of the national title with Nebraska. In 2000, Oklahoma began the season ranked 19th, coming off its first winning season in six years, then went 13-0 and won the title.

When you figure out South Carolina, let me know. Because I can’t. The Gamecocks are going to start the season ranked ninth in both the AP and USA Today polls. It is the first time they have ever been ranked in the top 10 (and only the eighth time they’ve been ranked at all) in the preseason, but honestly, you could talk me into placing them at No. 5 or No. 25. I just don’t know what to think.

Plus: South Carolina won 11 games for the first time in school history in 2011, and a healthy portion of last year’s two-deep returns.

In the world of the Internet and The Long Tail, there is nothing wrong with targeting a niche market. O.A.R. plays really large music venues. So does Allison Krauss. Guided by Voices. Jim Jarmusch movies have a loyal following. So do those of Ed Burns, for that matter. You punch your weight, you don’t aim for epic mainstream success, you do what makes you happy, and you find yourself successful.

Occasionally, of course, you can grow into something larger than your original scope. Bob Dylan isn’t really known as a New York folk musician anymore, after all. And for that matter, the Boise State football program no longer beats you with trickeration; now they do it by out-executing you and mauling you in the trenches. But for every “moving up in weight class” success story, there are a thousand failures. A band tries to go mainstream and perhaps finds short-term success but turns off its hardcore fans in the process. A film director takes on a major project for a big pay day but turns off old fans and critics alike.

Weekly winners and losers. Mindless, endless, point-counterpoint discussions. People yelling at you on every channel.

With each progressive year, political debate devolves more and more into sports debate. Go [my team], boo [your team]. If we do (creative recruiting techniques, voter suppression), it’s not only justifiable but necessary; if you do it, it’s cheating, and it’s an outrage. If my preferred [party/coach] is in charge, then anything that goes wrong is because of the mess the last guy left. If yours is in office, then you are responsible for everything from Day 1. My side is honorable and real, and your side is despicable and beneath me.

Last week, I went on a podcast with my good friend Greg Tepper from Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. It was a rapid-fire exchange about every FBS school in Texas. Here’s an exchange we had about Texas A&M:

Numbers are funny. They tell you the story behind the scoreboard and give you a much more accurate read of quality than win-loss record. But they can’t prevent an awkward, pointy ball from bouncing in odd ways.

So much of what we think of as the SEC stems from Ole Miss. The brown liquor. The dramatically detailed tailgate traditions (and the gussied-up girls at the tailgate). The bouts of spectacular defensive football.

(The presence of William Faulkner is just a bonus. A confusing, stream-of-consciousness bonus.)

For all the hell Kentucky catches for caring only about basketball, it might be easy to forget that 70,902 were in attendance in Lexington when the Wildcats beat No. 1 LSU to move to No. 8 in the country on October 13, 2007. (Yes, that probably included a healthy percentage of LSU fans, but UK’s average attendance was 68,824 that season.) That really wasn’t very long ago. But in just a small handful of seasons, the regression was complete. In 2007, Kentucky ranked 30th in F/+, 10 spots ahead of Alabama. In 2011, they ranked 89th, 11 spots behind Louisiana-Lafayette. When you aren’t a historical power in college football, you typically can’t afford much of a slip. You can win games and develop a reasonably healthy program, but a couple of injuries, a couple of poor recruiting classes, or an only average coaching hire can take you pretty far down the hill.

Use whatever adjective or descriptor you choose to describe SEC football at this point. If you’re a fan of an SEC school, you are probably going to go with something akin to “greatest conference in the land,” or “deepest conference in the land,” or “SIX (national titles) IN A ROW!” If you are a fan of a school from a different conference, however, maybe you’re more likely to go with “top-heavy” or “Come on, it’s not like the SEC is THAT much better than all of the other conferences.” Whichever side of that line you fall on, one thing is inarguable: even in the SEC, either the greatest or most top-heavy conference in the country, somebody has to lose. No matter how many different programs have achieved some level of recent greatness -- Alabama, LSU, Florida, Auburn, Georgia, Arkansas, conference newcomer Missouri, and even Ole Miss have found themselves ranked in the AP top five at some point in the last five years; that’s over half the conference, and it doesn’t even include 2010 SEC East champion South Carolina -- for every conference game there is a winner and a loser. Historically, the most likely losers have been Vanderbilt and the basketball-first Wildcats of the University of Kentucky.

That is from a Vanderbilt history piece I wrote last week at Rock M Nation. It is intentionally broad, intentionally over-generalized … but really, it isn’t that far from the truth, is it? James Franklin did not turn his first squad of Commodores into a particularly strong team in 2011 -- in terms of F/+ rankings, they were 59th on offense, 28th on defense and 73rd on special teams -- but he made them physical, mean, sound, opportunistic and, most importantly, competitive. Salty, even. They beat the teams they were supposed to beat (6-1 versus teams that finished with a losing record) and were generally competitive against the teams that were supposed to beat them (five-point loss to Georgia, three-point loss to Arkansas, five-point loss to Florida). Things occasionally got out of hand (Alabama and South Carolina 55, Vandy 3), but that’s going to happen when you inherit a team that went 2-10 and ranked 97th in F/+ in 2010. The job Franklin did in simply making Vandy competitive through a “cultural resurgence” in his first year was magnificent. And then he went and signed one of Vandy’s best-ever recruiting classes.

So that begs an obvious question: how far can Franklin (or anybody) take Vanderbilt? Pretend for a moment that James Franklin is indeed the second coming of Jim Harbaugh. Consider that he leaves for an NFL job (like Harbaugh) having taken the Vanderbilt program to a historical peak (like Harbaugh, who led Stanford to its first top-five finish since 1940 in 2010). What does that mean exactly? For all of its recent struggles (the Cardinal had gone 1-11 and ranked 105th in F/+ the year before Harbaugh took over), Stanford has had at least some level of historical success -- 11 Rose Bowls, 13 ranked finishes pre-Harbaugh (now 15), John Elway, et cetera. Harbaugh raised the bar for Stanford, but he didn’t take it to a new atmosphere. The bar at Vandy, though, has been historically set at Duke levels instead of Stanford levels: two bowls in 36 years (four all-time) pre-Franklin, one ranked finish, no conference titles since the Southern Conference in 1923, and just four eight-win seasons in the entire existence of the Southeastern Conference.