COTTRELL COLUMN: It's OK to admit you're wrong

Over the years I’ve felt like I watched enough SEC football to have a pretty good handle on things.

I knew the trends, I knew the coaches, I followed the recruiting and had a working knowledge of the rosters.

Heading into this season I was pretty sure I knew exactly how things would go in the nation’s toughest conference.

I was wrong.

Suddenly Vanderbilt’s winning, Tennessee’s falling apart at the seams, LSU is winning on the road with a freshman quarterback coached by Les Miles and that’s just skimming the surface.

With the exception of Arkansas, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and South Carolina, I am either wrong or possibly wrong about everyone in the conference.

Let’s take a look at where things went wrong:

Vanderbilt
Does anyone know what’s happening in Nashville? No? Okay.

With only nine starters back from last year’s oh-so-close team (Vandy should probably copyright that term, by the way) it looked like this would be a terrible year for the Commodores.

But now they have wins over South Carolina and Ole Miss and no one can figure out why.

A bowl bid is still a long shot (they’ll basically have to beat two or three of Mississippi State, Duke, Kentucky and Tennessee) but Bobby Johnson has proven he’s built a competitive program.

And how scary is that for the rest of the conference?

Tennessee
While unless you’ve a Vols fan it’s hard to not enjoy it, Tennessee’s meltdown this season has been puzzling.

Quarterback Jonathan Crompton, who looked good in spot duty as a backup, has looked abysmal, an offensive line that allowed only four sacks all of last year and returned entirely intact has already allowed two and many more pressures and the defense isn’t living up to its end of the bargain, either.

The Volunteers appeared on paper to be a potential darkhorse in the Eastern Division, but at this point the best they can hope for might be an Independence Bowl trip.

LSU
No one thought the Tigers were lacking in talent, but you would’ve thought they’d struggle for a while to replace all those team leaders they lost to the NFL.

I kind of had them pinpointed for two months of treading water followed by a final month of destroying people, but it seemed Saturday that Auburn brought it out of LSU early.

Andrew Hatch getting knocked silly could turn out to be one of the underrated moments of the 2008 college football season.

Auburn
The Tigers had a one-year window to unquestionably take over the SEC West with one of the more experienced teams in the conference coming back and a new, flashy offense to show off.

Four weeks into the season, that window is closed.

Tony Franklin’s offense has yet to take off, and while it probably will before the season’s over it’s already too late. The Tigers find themselves in what amounts to a two-game hole in the division and still must face Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, plus have road trips to Vandy and Ole Miss.

And while their defense has been borderline spectacular, it didn’t have enough Saturday night to stop LSU.

Everyone else
The jury is still out on four teams, but the potential for wrongness is high.

While Florida and Georgia have looked good so far, both have some issues.

The Gator defense has yet to be truly tested, and the offense has had to work much harder for yards and points than it did last season. Might people have figured them out? We’ll see.

Georgia’s offensive line issues are a definite concern. If they don’t find some continuity there and start protecting Matthew Stafford better, they will have some serious problems with the likes of Alabama, Auburn, Florida and LSU.

Kentucky is also an interesting case.

While we’ve seen very little of the Cats since their win over Louisville, it seems they might have enough defense to work their way back to a bowl game.

But the most interesting team right now is Alabama.

The Crimson Tide is so young, but has thus far looked so good. They’re winning games in the trenches, which was expected on the offensive side but not so much on the defensive line. John Parker Wilson has looked good so far and the young stable of skill players have all produced, along with the veterans already there.

But we still don’t know a lot about them.

That will change this week, when the Tide visits Georgia. I don’t see them winning this game, but how they play will tell you everything you need to know the rest of the way.

Tim Cottrell is sports designer of the Opelika-Auburn News. He will write a weekly column on college football during the season. You can also read him on the O-A Sports Blog at oanow.com. He can be reached at 737-2511 or tcottrell@oanow.com.