Mark your calendars

When the SEC composite schedule came out a few weeks ago, I quickly pored over it looking for good games.

I actually stopped four weeks into the season.

If you are a fan of SEC football, and considering the location of this media establishment I’d imagine most of its readers are, you’ll almost never have a day of football as good as what you’ll get on Sept. 20.

You have three absolutely epic matchups and several more good (or at the very least, intriguing) games before we even have a good idea of where this season will go.

Georgia, sure to be the nation’s top-ranked team at the time, will make its first real trip out of the South to face an up-and-coming Arizona State team in Tempe, Ariz., who will most likely be, at worst, in the Top 15.

Florida will hit the road for the first time in the young season to face an uber-talented but at this point quarterback-lacking Tennessee squad.

In one of the weird conference scheduling quirks, LSU will make its biannual early trip to Jordan-Hare Stadium to face Auburn, whose spread offense should have had the opportunity to get rolling by that time.

Just those three have you excited, right?

Well there’s not a bad undercard, either.

Alabama will hit the road for the first big home game of Bobby Petrino’s sure-to-be-short tenure at Arkansas (who will be coming off a massive beatdown at the hands of Texas the week before), Mississippi State goes to Atlanta to face Georgia Tech and two teams on the rise will square off when Ole Miss hosts Vanderbilt.

I’m excited just thinking about it.

That’s not to say these will be the first good games to come out of the SEC on the season, but I can’t remember a concentration of such good games from one conference (outside of maybe the final week of the season with all the rivalry clashes) in one week in my time following college football.

The biggest question might be how the heck they’ll get all these games on TV.

I’m not a huge fan of the way college football is presented on TV (more on that tomorrow), but all six of those games deserve to be televised (at least regionally) but at least one, and maybe two of them, won’t be.

Regardless of that, however, we’re going to get a decent idea of who in the SEC is for real and who isn’t fairly quickly.

If you can remember a day of games (excluding rivalry week) from one conference that tops that one, by all means tell me about it in the comments.

*And if you’re looking for other games on that day (or weekend) the cupboard ain’t dry. You’ve got Wake Forest going for its third straight win over Florida State (yeah, it feels weird to type it, too), Miami going to face Texas A&M, Colorado hosting West Virginia on a Thursday night, Kansas State traveling to Louisville on a Wednesday and Notre Dame trying to recapture the glory for the fourth or fifth time in the last decade going to Michigan State.

It’s sure to be a great weekend to be a couch potato.

Football?

It has occurred to me that with the 2008 college football season now less than 100 days away, and me being the unofficial O-A News college football columnist, now might be a good time to start weighing in with thoughts on the upcoming season. I’ll have some random tidbits over the next few days, and once a few more preseason mags come out (read: When Phil Steele’s mag comes out) and I have a good chance to get a feel for what’s coming I’ll start previewing the conferences.

The first installment will be available first thing in the morning.

Saturday in the park

Here we are, in Paterson Field in Montgomery for Game 2 of the AHSAA Class 6A state championship series between Opelika and Hoover.

The Bulldogs are one win away from their first state championship.

The first pitch will be tossed in about 20 minutes. Opelika’s going with Zach Blatt, who, rumor has it, is suffering from a sore elbow. That’s why Chase Dawson started in Game 1 on Friday. Dawson threw a gem. No doubt.

The lefty went nine innings, throwing over 130 pitches. He was tough. Very tough.

The Bulldogs have 42 wins on the season, but 43 is the magic number. Hoover, however, isn’t going to go quietly. That’s a fact.

Today’s game should be as good as the one on Friday. Sit back and relax and enjoy the game.

You can follow along online at http://www.oanow.com as prep writer Tom Peavy gives an inning-by-inning account of today’s game. I’ll be blogging as well.

Happy belated Mother’s Day and all that jazz

What a great weekend.

Does it get any better than Mother’s Day? Really. OK, you don’t have to answer.

But I’m serious. I want to give a big shout-out to all the moms out there holding down the fort while us husbands do our thing. Without you, we’re lost. No doubt.

I especially want to recognize my wife—the Busy Girl—for all she does for me and our two girls. Without her, not only do I not have any clean clothes, I wouldn’t know how to survive.

Other than taking my wife out to eat at Outback for her special day (can you say cheese fries ... mmmmmm), Mother’s Day was pretty uneventful. We did nothing. And when I say nothing, other than breathing and the occasional blinking, I mean nothing.

It was the perfect day. And she enjoyed it, too. I think.

Oh, you want to read about sports? OK.

*** The Opelika High baseball team is riding high after sweeping Prattville in the semifinal series of the Class 6A playoffs. The Bulldogs will now take on Hoover in the best-of-three series beginning Friday at 10 a.m. in Montgomery. The first game will be Friday. The second game is Saturday at 10 a.m. and the if-needed game is slated for 1 p.m. Saturday. All games will be at Patterson Field.

What are Opelika’s chances? I’d say pretty darn good. The Bulldogs are 41-2. That’s impressive, I don’t care who you are.

Opelika’s got a deep pitching staff and can hit up and down the lineup. And it doesn’t hurt to have 13 seniors, all of who contribute, on the roster. There’s nothing like leadership to go along with talent.

My guess, Opelika sweeps Hoover. No disrespect to the Bucs, but this Opelika team is a team of destiny. And it’s hard to get in the way of that.

*** Collin Mickle pretty much summed up what’s going on with AU head baseball coach Tom Slater in today’s story.

Auburn AD Jay Jacobs said he’s going to wait until the end of the season before he makes any decisions on Slater’s future at Auburn. I think that’s fair. Let the season play out, then make the call.

Either way, it’s not an easy call. Regardless of what the popular opinon is.

But, and everyone who’s ever worked in this profession knows, a coach is only as good as his record. And in the “what have you done for me lately?“ world of college athletics, if that record (the bottom line) isn’t good, then it’s only a matter of time before you’re shown the door.

Fair? Hey, it has nothing to do with fair. College sports is a business. Period.

*** Three cheers for the triple play.

In case you haven’t heard, Cleveland Indians second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera turned the 14th unassisted triple play in major league history on Monday night against Toronto.

I’m all about the triple play. It’s kind of like Moe’s Triple Lindy, but without the guacamole. Tasty.

Wild, wacky SEC

This ain’t your older brother’s SEC.

After dominating the baseball world throughout the 90s and the early part of this decade, the conference seems to be a bit on the down side this year.

While that may not exactly be great come Regional time, it’s made for a highly entertaining conference race this season.

With one week to go, only one team (Georgia, who has clinched the regular season crown) has clinched a spot in Hoover for the SEC Tourney and only one team (Mississippi State) is assured of not being there headed to the final weekend.

That being said, as AU beat writer Collin Mickle pointed out, Auburn and, by extension, Tennessee need virtual miracles to make the field.

Here are the conference standings at this moment:

East:
Georgia 19-7-1
Vanderbilt 15-11
Kentucky 14-13
Florida 14-13
South Carolina 13-14
Tennessee 11-16

West:
LSU 15-11-1
Alabama 14-13
Ole Miss 14-13
Arkansas 13-13
Auburn 11-16
Mississippi St. 7-20

And here are the overall standings (I could be wrong on some of these tiebreakers and if so, please let me know):

1. Georgia 19-7-1
2. Vanderbilt 15-11
3. LSU 15-11-1
4. Kentucky 14-13
5. Alabama 14-13
6. Florida 14-13
7. Ole Miss 14-13
8. Arkansas 13-13
9. South Carolina 13-14
10. Auburn 11-16
11. Tennessee 11-16
12. Mississippi St. 7-20

And here are this weekend’s series, which begin Thursday:

Alabama at Georgia
Arkansas at Mississippi St.
LSU at Auburn
Vanderbilt at Florida
Ole Miss at Kentucky
Tennessee at South Carolina

When it comes to Auburn, they’ll have to sweep the hottest team in the SEC (LSU, who has swept three straight conference series and won 12 in a row overall) and hope for Arkansas to get swept by the worst team in the conference (which could be mildly possible, given that it’ll be Ron Polk’s final home series at Mississippi State), and for Kentucky and South Carolina to get swept at home.

Of the five teams immediately ahead of Auburn, they only have the tiebreaker over two of them (Kentucky and Arkansas, but the Arkansas one doesn’t matter since the Hogs will only play 29 games).

As for how everyone else will do, there’s really no telling. Collin and I have had virtually the same discussion at every meeting since about the fifth week of conference play, in that every time we think somebody’s moving to the forefront or falling back to the pack, the next week changes everything.

But looking at things, I’d say it’s highly probable that either Alabama or Florida could get knocked out of the tournament altogether, but Alabama has been playing good baseball of late and should give Georgia a good series, even if it comes out on the losing end. It’s much more likely that you’ll see Kentucky knock Ole Miss out, opening the door for South Carolina. If you had to ask me for my best guess for how the standings might look this time Saturday night, I might say this:

1. Georgia 21-8-1
2. Vanderbilt 17-12
3. Kentucky 17-13
4. LSU 16-13-1*
5. South Carolina 16-14
6. Arkansas 15-14
7. Alabama 15-15
8. Florida 15-15

*I think Auburn will play some inspired baseball in their series with LSU this weekend at Plainsman Park, given everything that’s at stake. I could see them getting 2-of-3 from LSU, but I’m just not sure they’ll have enough to get the series sweep. And even then, as you can see, it’s highly likely that that won’t be enough.

All in all, it should be a wild weekend. I’ll do my best to post here with all the happenings and keep the newspaper’s pages filled with all the information you need.