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Tuesday, November 1, 2005
SEC goes from All-Mighty to overrated
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Sorry to burst those bubbles the size of Steve Spurrier’s ego, but when it comes to The All-Mighty SEC in college football, there is the myth, and then there is the reality. Here’s the myth: That there still is such a thing as The All-Mighty SEC in college football. As for the reality, this is the most overrated and overhyped conference, division or league in sports.
You do have the All-Mighty ACC in college football right now. Courtesy of solid teams from Virginia Tech, Miami, Florida State and Boston College at the top and the competitive likes of Georgia Tech, Clemson, Maryland and Virginia in the middle, the ACC is what the SEC used to be, and that is a conference whose strengths aren’t exaggerated.
“Well, you know what? I think what you’re saying is obvious,” said Bill Curry, an expert on this subject. Not only is he an ESPN analyst for the sport, but he was a head coach in the ACC (Georgia Tech) and in the SEC (Kentucky and Alabama). “The SEC is going to win a bunch, but it’s not going to dominate Michigan and Texas and Notre Dame, not like it used to. It’s a conference [the SEC] that has lost its luster, and I don’t see how anybody could even begin to argue that point.”
I mean, Tennessee? Long before the Volunteers exposed themselves as frauds earlier this season, it was clear that they hadn’t a quarterback. Nobody ever will confuse Erik Ainge or Rick Clausen with anybody good. Still, courtesy of the myth, the Volunteers were ranked No. 3 by preseason polls. Now they aren’t even the best team around the Smokies. In case you haven’t noticed, historically putrid Vanderbilt has more victories (four to three) than the Volunteers. Plus, Tennessee is a Saturday trip to Notre Dame away from sliding two games below .500.
Elsewhere, after all of that whining around the SEC over the prospects of having another Auburn this season (an undefeated team without a shot at a national championship), consider two things: First, Georgia showed that it is D.J. Shockley and a bunch of talented but complementary players. Without the injured Shockley, the Bulldogs collapsed against an inferior Florida team with significant flaws, especially on offense. Second, Alabama hasn’t lost, but Alabama joins Florida and Tennessee among the many SEC teams that can’t score. Alabama averages fewer points per game than such powers as Navy, Tulsa and Louisiana Tech.
Speaking of powers that aren’t, you have South Carolina. Even so, the Gamecocks just won at Tennessee for the first time ever. The great Spurrier aside, they shouldn’t win at Tennessee. (And how good is LSU, since the Tigers choked in Death Valley to a Tennessee bunch that choked to South Carolina?) South Carolina is among the slew of athletically challenged SEC teams in most seasons.
Which brings me to more of the myth: That the reason why the traditional SEC powers have so many patsies on their schedule (LSU played North Texas last week and has Appalachian State this week for homecoming) is because the conference schedule is so brutal. There are 12 SEC teams, and the only thing brutal about half of them (South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Kentucky and Vanderbilt) is the way that they’ve played in recent years.
So when did The All-Mighty SEC in college football vanish?
“I think it began to happen when all of that cheating became public, and after it was proven and was documented and people started to go on probation and losing scholarships,” Curry said. “Not only did that hurt the teams that were doing the cheating and got put on probation, but it hurt everybody. At that point, a lot of good football players were lost by the SEC to other conferences. That’s because parents started to say, ‘Well, gee, I don’t want you to go somewhere that has that kind of a reputation.’ “
Earlier this decade, Curry predicted such an exodus from the conference during an SEC media day. Former commissioner Roy Kramer was so furious that he demanded that Curry justify his remarks to Kramer’s security chief. “I told [Kramer] that I’d be glad to, so I started documenting things right and left, and the guy never called me back again,” Curry said.
Guess the guy knew Curry would become omniscient.
Permalink | Comments (345) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Hawks will be better, but how much?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Hawks are going to be better. That’s the good news. The bad news: They couldn’t possibly be worse. And now more bad news: Being better is a long way from winning.
The Hawks were 13-69 last season. Says Mike Woodson, their coach: “My goal is to make the playoffs.”
He believes a .500 record would do it. A .500 record would be 41-41. The Hawks would have to improve by 28 games to get to .500. And how hard is that?
In 1969 the Milwaukee Bucks drafted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar … and improved by 29 games. In 1992 the Orlando Magic drafted Shaquille O’Neal … and improved by 20 games. In 1984 the Chicago Bulls drafted Michael Jordan … and improved by 11 games.
The Hawks have added Joe Johnson, who’s a good player, and Marvin Williams, who’ll be a good player. They have more talent than at any time since the Blaylock-Smith-Mutombo-Laettner nucleus was broken up at the shank of the 20th century. But we must temper our expectations with the realization that the only NBA teams that get exponentially better overnight tend to do so by adding a future Hall of Famer — or at least an MVP-to-be, as happened last season when Steve Nash joined Phoenix and the Suns improved by 33 games — and nobody among these Hawks yet fits such a lofty profile.
“It’s all about making the playoffs,” Woodson says. “As a coach, I’m not into saying, ‘Let’s try to win 20 games.’ Anything’s possible.”
And then Woodson says: “Is anybody picking us to make the playoffs?”
He knows the answer: Nobody is. The best estimates have the Hawks nudging upward from dead last in the NBA to 24th-best among the 30 teams. And that’s not nothing. That’s improvement.
The Hawks got worse — dumping Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Antoine Walker and even Rasheed Wallace, in uniform for only one game — on purpose. They shed salary so they could have money to spend on a difference-making free agent. The Hawks are paying Johnson $70 million to make a difference. The Hawks believe he’s an established player who’s about to become an All-Star.
They believed Williams was the most talented player in the June draft, and he might well have been. But Williams, who didn’t start a game in his season at North Carolina, was the Hawks’ seventh-leading scorer in preseason, and already it’s being said that he’s too deferential. (The same was said during his brief time in Chapel Hill.) The Hawks didn’t burn their highest draft choice in 30 years on someone who’s content to be a role player. They need Williams to be a star.
“We do have some offensive weapons,” Woodson says, and that commodity has been in short supply. At issue is whether these Hawks will complement one another or simply replicate each other’s skills. Their five best players — Johnson, Williams, Al Harrington, Josh Childress and Josh Smith — are between 6 feet 7 and 6-9. The Hawks believe having interchangeable parts is the wave of tomorrow, but surely there will be moments when they’d like to have a better point guard than Tyronn Lue or a stronger center than Zaza Pachulia.
Already the season of promise has been touched by darkness. No one can say how the loss of Jason Collier will affect this impressionable team. “He was part of our family,” Woodson says. “It’s going to be tough.”
The young Hawks can honor Collier’s memory by conducting themselves with the professionalism he showed. There’s the potential for growth here that hasn’t existed since this franchise moved into Philips Arena in 1999, but growth seldom takes a direct course. The young Hawks will wobble before they walk, and the prospect of running still seems a good ways off.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Mark Bradley
The Tuesday Countdown: Braves, Dogs, Birds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: So one year after winning their first World Series in 86 years, the Red Sox barely reached the post-season, lost in the first round of the playoffs and had their general manager leave town on Halloween night. So who wants to be the first to set an over/under on the Sox’ next title?
9: I know. I know. One year before the Braves. Speaking of which…
8: I took some abuse from the masses in the Land of the Devoted But Uninformed after daring to suggest in a recent column that losing pitching coach Leo Mazzone wasn’t anything to panic over. But just the other day, our David O’Brien drew this reaction from pitcher John Smoltz on Mazzone’s exit: “I’ve been with him longer than anybody, and he’s helped me a lot. But people on the inside understand. Maybe not from the outside; people on the outside think there is a huge void to fill. It’s not a huge void.â€?
7: No apologies necessary. Maybe a beer.
6: I personally don’t care whether DeAngelo Hall wears Nike or Reebok. Getting faked out of either pair seems like the bigger concern.
5: Not that it matters. But I still can’t figure out how Georgia falls from 4 to 11 in the rankings when it was a four-point underdog to Florida without D.J. Shockley — and lost by four points. Are they being ranked with Joe Tereshinski or with Shockley? The Dogs suddenly find themselves behind LSU (6-1), UCLA (8-0), Notre Dame (5-2) and Penn State (8-1).
4: In this week’s Tuesday Countdown Celebrity News, things are getting nasty in the Kim Basinger-Alec Baldwin split. Baldwin says Kimmy has a “pathological need� to turn their daughter against him. Kimmy says jerk-face has “severe emotional problems.� Clearly, both are telling the truth. But I’ve gotta side with who looks better in stilettos.
3: Roger McDowell, Mazzone’s replacement, was famous in his pitching days for practical jokes, including using gum to stick a book of burning matches to a teammate’s shoe. That certainly would’ve made mound visits interesting this season.
2: An online betting service has posted odds on what baseball player from a playoff team supposedly secretly tested positive for steroids. Gary Sheffield is listed as the favorite among 12 players at 2-1. No Braves were listed, which means either that they’re clean or everybody has stopped paying attention to them in October.
1: Thrashers. Hawks. Bird flu?
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
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