Are there any chinks in Alabama's armor? (Anybody? Anybody?...)

The consistently awesome Senator Blutarsky -- showing more conscientiousness on his supposed vacation than I do on a normal day -- has left behind some goodies for his readers, today's being a series of polls soliciting opinions on how many wins to expect for each team in the SEC (starting with the West Division). His exercise prompted me to sit down with a copy of this year's SEC schedule and go through it, game by game, to get an idea of where everyone would end up in the standings.

When the smoke cleared, I realized that, among other questionable judgments, I had Alabama ending up at 12-0.

It's obviously not all that far-fetched as conclusions go -- Nick Saban's obviously got them operating at maximum efficiency and then some, to the point that the Tide are basically the consensus #1 across the punditocracy's unofficial preseason rankings. Still, the law of averages dictates that it's going to be extremely difficult for any team, even one as good as the Tide, to rumble through a third straight regular season unscathed. For starters, they're only returning two starters on defense after having handed over a staggering amount of talent in the first three rounds of the NFL draft; there's also that matter of six SEC foes getting a bye the week before they face Bama (about which the always-meek Tide diehards have hardly uttered a word of complaint).

So if the Tide do have to get upended by someone, who's it most likely to be? Take a look at the rundown of the most likely contenders, then cast your vote at the bottom.



PENN STATE (Tuscaloosa, Sept. 11)
Points in favor of an upset: Name-brand team with one of the nation's top returning RBs (Evan Royster) as well as a big, experienced line to put in front of him, which will be a major test for Bama's gutted front seven.
Points against: PSU's situation on defense is almost as shaky as Bama's -- their entire starting LB corps from last year is gone -- and none of their QBs are anywhere near as accomplished as Greg McElroy. Bama has had very little trouble in these marquee early-season games over the past couple seasons.
Prognosis: Not great. Saban is cash money in games like this, and it's hard to picture a Big Ten team coming out victorious at Bryant-Denny.

ARKANSAS (Fayetteville, Sept. 25)
Points in favor of an upset: Maybe the most potent offense Bama will face all year, with all but one offensive starter returning. Ryan Mallett gives Arkansas a chance in every game they play. The game's in Fayetteville.
Points against: Alabama will be coming off an almost certain blowout win at Duke, while Arkansas will be returning home from a date at Georgia. Mallett played like cold stale ass against the Tide last year (12-of-35 for 160 yards, one TD, and a pick in a 35-7 loss); the Arkansas defense, meanwhile, has sucked out loud since Petrino got there.
Prognosis: Poor. Arkansas could be good this year, but "good enough to beat the defending national champs" sits squarely in the I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it file.

FLORIDA (Tuscaloosa, Oct. 2)
Points in favor of an upset: It's Florida, a team that will no doubt be looking for revenge after having gotten cornholed in the SEC title game last December. They've got a terrific offensive line and three of the fastest RBs in the country, all of whom will be poised to strike at the Bama defense right where they're most vulnerable.
Points against: Trading Tebow for a junior making only his fifth career start robs the Gators of any air of invincibility. No more Charlie Strong, either.
Prognosis: Decent, but it's still hard to see Alabama not coming out on top at home; the loss of Tebow, Strong, Riley Cooper, Aaron Hernandez, and Brandon James equals, if not exceeds, any glaring losses on the Bama side.

SOUTH CAROLINA (Columbia, Oct. 9)
Points in favor of an upset: The 'Cocks return more starters than any other team in the conference, including four of five on the O-line and maybe the most promising RB corps they've had in years. As a rule, beware night games in Columbia.
Points against: Carolina winning a meaningful game period, much less against the defending champs, is kind of a surreal picture. It certainly isn't going to happen without a stellar game from the quarterback, but Spurrier has sounded like he's one sideways glance away from strangling Stephen Garcia all summer long. As a rule, positive signs about the Gamecock O-line have been meaningless.
Prognosis: Am I crazy if I say "not that bad"? Carolina will be coming off a bye, and as mediocre as they've been at many points in Spurrier's tenure, they've claimed a top-10 scalp in two of the last three seasons (and come achingly close in many other such opportunities). Given Carolina's M.O., it'd be just like them to knock off Bama to get to 3-2 or 4-1, win a few more games to come within striking distance of the top 10 and get everyone excited, then pull their usual collapse down the stretch.

OLE MISS (Tuscaloosa, Oct. 16)
Points in favor of an upset: Whenever people start pooh-poohing a Houston Nutt team, that's when you should worry. Has one of the few front sevens that will give Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson any kind of challenge all year. Potential for Alabama to be looking ahead to the Tennessee game.
Points against: Landing Jeremiah Masoli looks like basically the only chance they have of putting up any kind of offense this year. Very green secondary will be a big fat bullseye for McElroy. The game's in Tuscaloosa.
Prognosis: Poor. Nutt is always a threat to pull a stunner of an upset, but he's just got too much talent to replace this year.

TENNESSEE (Knoxville, Oct. 23)
Points in favor of an upset: If ever there was a year to overlook the Vols, it's this one. Tauren Poole will be a real threat against the Alabama defensive front. The game's in Knoxville.
Points against: Other than Poole, UT's offense may be so horrendous this year that Alabama's defensive inexperience may not even matter. And even Poole will only be able to do so much behind the ragtag O-line Tennessee will have to field.
Prognosis: Sub-poor. Saban has yet to lose to the Vols as Bama's coach, and that includes his first year in Tuscaloosa, when his guys barely made bowl eligibility and Tennessee won the East; it's not gonna happen this year.



LSU (Baton Rouge, Nov. 6)
Points in favor of an upset: This game has rocketed to the top of the list of games the Tigers get geeked up for each year, as evidenced by achingly close games against demonstrably superior Bama squads in each of the past two seasons. The defense should continue to improve under John Chavis. It's hard to bet against LSU in a night game at home.
Points against: LSU is tied with Vandy for the fewest returning starters in the SEC, and that's not good coming off a year when they were mediocre or worse in nearly every statistical category. The offense, in particular, could be a mess.
Prognosis: Should be good -- and might be, by the time this game is played -- but I don't think it is. LSU got to nine wins last season in spite of being statistically awful; when a team with this much raw athletic talent relies that much on luck to win games, they're wasting a lot of that talent, and I don't see a whole lot to convince me that's going to change substantially in 2010.

MISSISSIPPI STATE (Tuscaloosa, Nov. 13)
Points in favor of an upset: Dan Mullen clearly has this team pointed in the right direction; they were quite competitive against LSU, Florida, and Ole Miss last year. The defense could be pretty good, particularly against the pass.
Points against: The gap in talent between the two teams remains substantial. Mullen is still struggling to implement his system with the players he's got.
Prognosis: Bad. I know, it wasn't that long ago that Alabama was getting punked by State on the regular, but Bama has clearly come a long way since then; MSU still has a long way to go.

AUBURN (Tuscaloosa, Nov. 26)
Points in favor of an upset: With Gus Malzahn masterminding the playbook, Auburn's offense could be even better than last season's, while Bama's will almost certainly be worse -- not good considering how easy Auburn made it look in jumping out to a 14-0 lead in Auburn last year.
Points against: Auburn's defense wasn't anything special itself, particularly against the run. As surprising as Auburn was last year, the thought of Gene Chizik knocking off Nick Saban in T-Town remains surreal.
Prognosis: Honestly? Not that bad. I think Auburn's one of the most underrated teams in the country at the moment. Should Alabama roll into this game 11-0, though, it becomes that much harder for me to picture Auburn knocking them off.

Your turn:

poll by twiigs.com

Feel free to expound on your choice(s) in the comments.

The expectations game, part II: Too high, too low, or just right?

When last I tried to gauge the fan base's expectations of the Georgia Bulldogs going into the 2009 season, the consensus seemed to be that nine wins and a bowl invite, possibly of the January variety, were entirely reasonable goals to shoot for. Now we have our first "official" judgment of Georgia's prospects: Last Friday the coaches collectively ranked Georgia #13 in their preseason poll.

Does thirteenth in the nation sound reasonable for a team destined to win nine games and play in a bowl? It's tough to say, because translating wins and losses into an appropriate poll ranking (or vice versa) is no less a judgment call than anything else. Basically, I think your judgment of the preseason ranking -- whether you see it as too high, too low, or basically accurate -- kind of depends on where you think Richt has the program positioned at the moment. If you're not convinced that Georgia is strong enough to weather the losses of Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno without paying for it to at least some degree in the standings -- consider that #13 is just three spots below where last year's national-title-touted team finished the season -- you might think the preseason ranking is a bit high. If, on the other hand, you think Richt has built the program into one that's strong and consistent enough to where even the "floor" for wins is relatively high, #13 probably seems fair, maybe even a tad low to those of you who with a more optimistic world view than mine.

Personally, I think #13 is about where we ought to be: We're having to replace Stafford and Moreno, which is not a small task by any measure, but at the same time our new guys will be playing behind one of the best and most experienced offensive lines in the country, while on defense, we may have underachieved considerably last year but we bring back nearly everybody of importance, and by all reports they've had their wake-up call and are charging into 2009 committed to making up for last season's disappointments. Flip "offense" and "defense" in that description and what you've got is strikingly similar to how people would've described our squad around this time in 2007 -- a team that was also ranked #13 in the preseason (and, as we all remember, went on to considerably bigger and better things).

So with all that in mind, I've got two questions for y'all to continue the process of analyzing fan expectations for this season. First:

poll by twiigs.com

And second, a question that's similar to the first one, but not quite the same:

poll by twiigs.com

Go ahead and vote, and feel free to explain your responses in further detail in the comments. Next up: which specific games y'all actually expect to win in 2009.

The late-spring not-so-random 25.

The preseason college-football publications from Athlon, The Sporting News, Phil Steele and the like have either been released or are just about to hit newsstands, so it's time for the time-honored (well, two-year-honored) tradition of taking all these folks' top-25 rankings and combining them into a composite top 25 to get an idea of what the "official" preseason polls will look like a couple months from now. (The composite from 2007 is here, last year's is here.)

The full rankings collected in this composite can be viewed with this Google spreadsheet. I've got eight sets of rankings collected, and certainly could've found more, but I didn't want to use anything that was put out before this year's spring games started just because I don't think you can really know all that much about any of those teams before then. As I explained over at Dr. Saturday back in March, these "pre-preseason" top 25s are really just kind of silly attention-getting exercises from pundits just looking for something to write about in a major dead period, and I'd much rather use rankings dished out after we've actually had something (even if it's just practice and a few meaningless exhibition games) to look at. Which is not to say that all of those pundits made dramatic changes from their "pre-preseason" ballots to their more recent revisions, but at least they've got a little more actual evidence or evidence-like substance upon which to base their predictions.

With these eight sets of rankings rolled into one, the composite looks like this:

1. Florida
2. Texas
3. Oklahoma
4. Southern California
5. Virginia Tech
6. Alabama
7. Ohio State
8. Ole Miss
9. Oklahoma State
10. Penn State
11. LSU
12. Oregon
13. Boise State
14. Georgia
15. California
16. Georgia Tech
17. Texas Christian
18. Florida State
19. North Carolina
20. Notre Dame
21. Utah
22. Nebraska
23. Brigham Young
24. Kansas
25. Oregon State

Others receiving votes: Cincinnati, Iowa, Texas Tech, East Carolina, Rutgers, Michigan State, Illinois, West Virginia, Miami, Pittsburgh, UCLA, Houston, Clemson.

Here are the eight sets of rankings included and when they were issued:
SI.com (Andy Staples): April 28
Athlon: May 1-June 4
CBS Sportsline (Dennis Dodd): May 6
ESPN.com (Mark Schlabach): May 15
Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Tony Barnhart): May 15
Lindy's: Second half of May to June 9
The Sporting News (Matt Hayes): May 22-ish
Phil Steele: May 27-June 9

So here's what jumps out at me:

· Not terribly surprisingly, Florida is a unanimous #1 in all of these rankings. But I wouldn't get too big a head about that, Gator fans: USC was a unanimous #1 in 2007, too -- just four short months before they lost at home to Stanford.

· The next three spots are pretty uniform, too -- Texas is #2 in all of the rankings but one, Oklahoma is #3 in all but two, and USC is #4 in all but three of the rankings. The rest of the top 10s mostly feature some combination of Virginia Tech, Alabama, Ohio State, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma State.

· Georgia Tech places higher than Georgia in all but two of the rankings, but in the final tally the Dawgs end up two slots higher than the Yellow Jackets (#14 compared to #16). The reason? Most of the rankings that put Georgia Tech higher have UGA just one or two slots below GT, but the two that have Georgia higher (Athlon and Phil Steele) have the Dawgs way ahead: Athlon has Georgia #14 and Tech #22, while Phil Steele has the Dawgs at #13 and leaves the Jackets out of the top 25 entirely (they're actually at #28 behind South Florida and Southern Miss). Just another reason to worship Steele, I guess.

· Then again, Steele might just be nuts: He's got Notre Dame at #7, the only pollster who has the Irish higher than the low teens (CBS and Lindy's left Notre Dame completely out of their top 25s). He also doesn't have any love for Oregon, who wasn't any lower than #15 anywhere else and made it into three top 10s. Then again, the purpose of Steele's top 25/40 is perhaps a little different from the others -- his is skewed a little bit more toward trying to predict where all the teams will be at the end of the year than how good they are at the very beginning.

· Other controversial teams include a pair of teams with terrific RBs but untested quarterbacks: LSU ranks as high as #6 (Lindy's) and as low as #17 (Athlon and Steele), while California ranges between #9 (Steele again) and #23 (Tony Barnhart). Texas Christian appeared as high as #11 in SI.com's list but was left off of Athlon's entirely.

· If these rankings are to be taken at face value, most of the conference races appear to be pretty cut-and-dried: Florida, USC, Virginia Tech, and Ohio State are mostly ranked well ahead of their nearest conference challengers. And it looks like a pretty blah year for the Big 10, which doesn't have any teams in the final top 25 other than the Buckeyes (and Nittany Lions -- whoopsy). The SEC West race, though, could be really interesting.

· It'll also be a blah yeah for the Big East, which has zero teams in the composite top 25, and for Conference USA, in which only two of 12 teams got any votes at all.

(This composite will be updated periodically as new preseason rankings pop up from credible sources; if you know of any that I haven't included, e-mail me here.)

They see me rollin', they hatin'.

It has recently been brought to my attention that it might be time for a new picture in the ol' blog sidebar, not to mention a new Facebook profile picture. OK, then.

I'm giving you, lucky reader, the chance to choose which picture I use for each of these. Examine the photos below and then vote in the poll at the bottom. Pick your two favorite photos when you vote; the top vote-getter becomes the Facebook photo, runner-up goes in the sidebar. Voting closes Monday morning.

Here we go:


1. Me at New Year's 2007 (currently in the blog sidebar).


2. Me as a Lego minifig (currently my Facebook photo).


3. Me next to a 1:1-scale Volvo XC90 made out of Legos, at Legoland.


4. Douchebag with finger guns (Holly Anderson, Las Vegas, 2009).


5. Douchebag with cigar and martini (Spencer Hall, Las Vegas, 2009).

Now vote!

poll by twiigs.com

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Would you buy a Snuggie, an Awethumb, or a wedding photo from this man?

· Actual conversation my dad and I had a couple days before Christmas, as a commercial for the "Snuggie" was coming on TV:

ME: Ah, yes, the "Snuggie" -- the blanket for the people who are incapable of operating blankets.

DAD: (sheepishly) I ordered one for your mom for Christmas.

ME: Oh. Well, uh, good for her, I guess.

With more than one person pointing out just how much the Snuggie looks like a robe that might be worn for druid rituals, it's probably only a matter of time before someone came up with this: the "Fuggly."



· The "Fuggly," at least is a fictional product. This, however, is completely real, and it's the gayest thing since sliced gay.



That still leaves the question, though:

poll by twiigs.com

· One place you won't be able to buy Awethumb -- or anything else, for that matter, before too long -- is Circuit City, which has filed for Chapter 11 after being crushed under the weight of the economic collapse. As bad as I feel for the thousands of employees who are about to lose their jobs, there's a part of me that's gleeful that Circuit Shitty is being wiped off the map, and here's why: About a decade ago, around the time I was graduating from college, my parents bought me a 27" TV/VCR combo from Circuit City so I'd have a decent TV when I headed off to Lynchburg for my first post-college job. For whatever reason, they went ahead and bought the super-heavy-duty warranty protection that would absolve us for the responsibility of paying for any kind of repairs for three years, no matter whose fault it was -- and I figured this would come in handy shortly after I moved to the L-Boogie, when my cat went tearing ass through the apartment and succeeded in yanking the cable-TV cable out of the back of the television, socket and all. But when we took the TV to Circuit City, their response was, "Oh, the damage was caused by an animal, this warranty doesn't cover that." So congratulations, Circuit City: You fucked with the bull, and you got the horns.

· If I lived in South Carolina, I might not even be able to utter that last sentence if this anti-profanity bill, proposed by State Sen. Robert Ford, were to be passed. To which I respond: Kiss my ass, fuckstick. (Hat tip: Spencer.)



· Let's hope nobody ever takes Sen. Ford on a visit to England, because the mere sight of places like "Butt Hole Road" or "Titty Ho" might be enough to give him an aneurysm. (Actually, that may be a reason to take him there, now that I think about it.) But I'm a little disappointed that the story restricted itself to the British Isles, thus depriving all of us of a little bit of history on places like Pussy, France, or Fucking, Austria. (One thing I think is hilarious in the latter's Wikipedia entry is the sentence "The village is . . . half an hour by car from the town of Petting, in Bavaria." Which means it only takes you 30 minutes to go from Petting to Fucking.)

· The 20 All-Time Greatest Photo Bombs. Scroll through the entire list and see if you're not giggling like a six-year-old halfway through. I'd love to know the story behind this one. Then again, maybe not.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets interactive on that ass.

For the first time in the brief history of the Friday Random Ten+5, you're getting to vote on which is the best of the five. This week is the Five Funniest Unintentional Innuendoes Of The 2007 Football Season, and once you've taken a gander at all of them you'll get to vote on the Unintentional Innuendo Of The Year. I actually kind of felt bad limiting it to 2007, though, because I would've loved to include John Madden's quote about San Diego TE Antonio Gates from a couple years ago ("He just jumps up and attacks balls") or Lee Corso's advice on proper offensive-line technique ("You've got to squat, drop your butt, and explode into the hole"). Ahh, good times.

But anyway, here's the Five:


"His package is going to expand as the season wears on."
-- Unnamed analyst quoted on JOX 100.5's morning show about Auburn coaches opening up the playbook for freshman QB Kodi Burns


"I rode him so hard. I was in his earhole . . . "
-- Phil Fulmer, referring to motivational tactics used on Tennessee placekicker Daniel Lincoln, as quoted by Dave Neal during Lincoln Financial's broadcast of the Alabama-Tennessee game


"If I'm Georgia, I'm gonna ride my hot guy right now."
-- CBS's Gary Danielson on Georgia tailback Knowshon Moreno, shortly before the Georgia-Auburn game


"And it winds up being Vince Hall coming in the face of Peter Lalich."
-- ESPN's Andre Ware during the Virginia-Virginia Tech game


"Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for our national anthem as it is played by the trombones of New Orleans's very own Bonerama."
-- PA announcer at the Louisiana Superdome shortly before kickoff of the Sugar Bowl

Got all that? Picked yourself up off the floor yet? OK, now vote:

Who had the funniest unintentional innuendo of 2007?
	JOX 100.5 analyst ("His package is going to expand")
	Phil Fulmer ("I rode him so hard")
	Gary Danielson ("I'm gonna ride my hot guy")
	Andre Ware ("Vince Hall coming in the face of Peter Lalich")
	Superdome PA guy ("Bonerama")
pollcode.com free polls

And here's the Ten:

1. U2, "Mysterious Ways" (Massive Attack remix)
2. Pet Shop Boys, "To The Shore"
3. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "The Impression That I Get"
4. Pet Shop Boys, "A Red Letter Day" (Basement Jaxx vocal remix)
5. Chicane, "Autumn Tactics"
6. The Beastie Boys, "Bodhisattva Vow"
7. Fatboy Slim, "Right Here Right Now"
8. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, "You & Me & The Bottle Makes 3 Tonight (Baby)"
9. LL Cool J, "Mama Said Knock You Out"
10. The Clash, "This Is Radio Clash"

Throw your own Tens in the comments -- and by all means, if you've heard any funny commentator innuendos over the past 12 months, let me hear about those two. C'mon, we know we're all 10 years old deep down.