After slow start, can SEC football repair its reputation? Not anytime soon.
Random notes:
▪ What has happened to SEC football? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Florida lost to Utah. LSU lost to Florida State. South Carolina lost to North Carolina. Texas A&M lost to Miami. Alabama lost to Texas. Heading into Week 3, the SEC is 1-4 against Top 25 opponents and 2-6 against Power Five teams.
There’s no simple explanation. Mistake-prone Florida lost at Utah. North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye is really good. Florida State is really good. Yet again, Texas A&M is overrated. Alabama obviously did not look like recent-vintage Alabama. (Hey, Texas joins the SEC next year.)
One angle that appears to be playing out. The prediction that NIL and the transfer portal would only make the rich that much richer is a myth. Better players are being spread around to different teams. Parity exists. There may not be a great team this year, but there are plenty of really good teams. The SEC has some of those, but so do a lot of other conferences.
▪ The SEC won’t be able to repair its reputation any time soon, but there are a couple of opportunities Saturday. Missouri plays host to No. 16 Kansas State at noon on the SEC Network. Arkansas welcomes a 2-0 BYU to Fayetteville at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN2.
▪ UK defensive coordinator Brad White says the Cats need to force opponents into more third-and-longs. He’s right. Through two games, foes have faced third-and-5 or shorter a total of 17 times, with six stops. They’ve faced third-and-6 or longer 13 times, with eight stops.
▪ Though Pete Sousa apologized, UK running back Ray Davis had no problem with the ESPN broadcaster’s comments during the UK-EKU game about Davis and foster care. Sousa contrasted Davis’ time in foster care with his time in the transfer portal.
“Eleven years ago, as a foster kid, really nobody wanted him,” Sousa said. “And now here he is, found some love, found football. And he has had an amazing journey.”
Davis told basically the same thing to Darrell Bird of the Cats’ Pause, “I want to be an advocate for kids in the system, foster kids, because I once was like them. I experienced all the hardship that you go through being in that system, waiting for someone to adopt you or for someone not to want you because of how old you are or the background that you come from.”
▪ I keep expecting the Cincinnati Reds to fade, they keep hanging in. With 16 games remaining after Tuesday’s 6-5 win over Detroit in 10 innings, David Bell’s club was just one game out of the third NL wild card spot.
▪ Congrats to former UK deputy director of athletics DeWayne Peevy, who had his contract extended through 2027 as DePaul’s athletic director.
▪ To me, the key statement regarding HISA’s report on the breakdowns at Churchill Downs last spring came from Dr. Susan Stover, chair of HISA’s racetrack safety committee: “We recognize that the training surface is an important risk factor, but we also recognize that these are injuries that are a result of fatigue, meaning they develop over time and ultimately can become a catastrophic injury.”
▪ The Bengals’ performance in their 24-3 loss at Cleveland last Sunday was an outlier. The Bengals are better than that. Joe Burrow is certainly better than that. On the other side, the Browns’ defense might just be that good.
▪ After Aaron Rodgers’ season-ending injury Monday night, the NFL Players Association wants all league stadiums to have grass fields. That’s not happening. You and I both know why.
▪ After two games, Akron ranks 124th nationally in total offense and 131st in rushing offense. One of those games was against an FCS team in Morgan State. Akron plays at Kentucky on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. on ESPNU.
▪ This Saturday’s college football slate is rather dull. But next Saturday, Sept. 23, Week 4, we get UCLA-Utah, Oregon State-Washington State, Oklahoma-Cincinnati, Florida State-Clemson, Ole Miss-Alabama, Colorado-Oregon, Iowa-Penn State and Ohio State-Notre Dame. Not bad.
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