Goodman: The most desperate team in a conference of Soup Kitchen All-Stars
This is an opinion column.
The SEC mind cannot comprehend the latest trend in college football.
The math does not compute. The words don’t make sense. The fragile egos crack under the weight of the humbling truth.
The best conference in college football might no longer be as good as everyone thought. What happened to the mystique of the SEC? Is it time to officially abdicate the throne to the Big Ten?
Ole Miss takes on Miami on Thursday night in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff, and then it’s the Indiana vs. Oregon rematch on Friday night. Remember when everyone assumed the SEC was going to dominate the new 12-team playoff every season and turn the semifinals into a Southern square dance?
Yeah, about that … let me get this straight. Ole Miss is the SEC’s last team standing. That means the head coach of the SEC’s best team this season quit before the playoffs because even Lane Kiffin didn’t think his Rebels had a chance.
Everyone in the Deep South is pulling for Ole Miss, but it’s really more out of pity than regional pride.
It’s like Nick Saban retired and the SEC turned into the Soup Kitchen All-Stars.
If the league just means more, which it certainly does, then why is Auburn trying to turn into the South Florida Bulls?
How did Vanderbilt become New Mexico State and then almost make the College Football Playoff?
Why can’t Texas win with the greatest quarterback recruit in the history of ESPN?
Georgia won the SEC last season and its quarterback transferred to Miami. Make it make sense.
And then there’s this, of course.
How does woebegone Indiana football take a bunch of two- and three-star transfers and then transform into a team capable of dismantling Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl?
Woebegone, now there’s a good word.
Beset with woe, the woebegone faces of Alabama football wobbled and winced on back from Out West only to find a wealth of wretched souls wafting and floating through campus like wraiths after a war.
Tough stuff.
We’ve reached the midpoint of the transfer window, and the SEC is a five-alarm fire of what the heck is even going on?
When your players leave, is that a good thing or a bad thing? No one knows. It’s almost like the recruiting rankings don’t even matter anymore.
Oh, no. Anything but that!
Perhaps nowhere does the SEC’s existential crisis feel more desperate than at Auburn. The big strategy on the Plains these days is to be the league’s next Vanderbilt.
Feeling salty about your team? Let that thought marinate in Dale’s for a couple hours.
About three years ago, Vandy did something smart that no one thought much of at the time. Coach Clark Lea turned on the game film of New Mexico State 31, Auburn 10, and had a crazy idea. It went something like this:
What if I just relocated the team that KO’d SEC golfing legend Hugh Freeze, and put it in the SEC?
Here’s how that went down, and the sequence of events arguably rewired the entire brain of college football.
Vanderbilt lost to Auburn 31-15 on Nov. 4, 2023. Two weeks later, and after a 38-point victory against Arkansas, Auburn then lost every last bit of its dignity against New Mexico State. The final score was 31-10, but it wasn’t even really that close. Quarterback Diego Pavia threw for three touchdowns. The Aggies rushed for over 200 yards on Pat Dye Field. The team’s tight end, a former high school quarterback named Eli Stowers, had nine receptions.
Vanderbilt didn’t win a single conference game in 2023, and the team’s only victories were against Hawaii and Alabama A&M. It was time to do something drastic. What did coach Clark Lea have to lose other than his job?
Vanderbilt not only brought Pavia, Stowers and all their buddies to Vanderbilt, but Lea even hired New Mexico State’s head coach and all of his assistants, too.
It was a Hail Mary, but it worked. In 2024, Vanderbilt upset both Auburn and Alabama in the same season for the first time since 1955.
Auburn is now copying what Vanderbilt copied from New Mexico State, and the strangest thing of all is that I kind of like it.
New Auburn quarterback Byrum Brown is the Tigers’ version of Vanderbilt’s Pavia. He had a lot of stats last year at USF, which they tell me is good. Will he win the Heisman next season? Maybe. Will Auburn lose 10 games? That’s also possible.
Personally, this time of year, I’m just going to take my happy pills so my SEC mind can remain sunny and bright no matter the weather. Look at this way. In this league, yesterday’s Woebegone Soup Kitchen All-Stars can be tomorrow’s Indiana.
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