Auburn vs. Mizzou: most improbable SEC title game ever
It was the dullest Friday coaches’ briefing in the history of the SEC title game, but that was OK. What awaits Saturday is the most improbable pairing in the 22 years that The Only League That Matters has crowned its champion in a championship game. The game that was supposed to be a rematch of blue bloods Alabama and Georgia features instead a newbie and fixer-upper.
Together, Auburn and Missouri went 2-14 in SEC play in 2012. (The wins, both by Mizzou, were against Tennessee in overtime and Kentucky.) Auburn went 3-9 overall and fired its coach. There was thought that Missouri, which finished 5-7, might be close to firing its coach.
Six SEC teams were ranked among the first 12 in the Associated Press’ preseason Top 25 this year. Two other members received votes. Not one of those eight advanced to the Georgia Dome. A championship game that had mostly been a roundup of the usual suspects — of the first 18 installments, seven paired Alabama and Florida — has gone all March Madness on us.
Not that Auburn and Missouri are mid-majors. The former won the 2010 BCS title; the latter was ranked No. 1 in the penultimate BCS standings of 2007. But nobody expected great things from these packs of Tigers. Auburn was starting over after canning Gene Chizik, who was lost without Gus Malzahn to coordinate his offense. Missouri seemed a program imported more for basketball and academics than football.
But here they are, both 11-1, both division champs in a season that saw Auburn tabbed fifth in the West and Missouri sixth in the East. And if neither coach — Malzahn of Auburn, Gary Pinkel of Missouri — is a laugh riot on the order of jolly old Nick Saban, who cares? Their teams spent the season authoring moments to make us gasp and laugh out loud in the same breath.
In Athens on Oct. 12, Pinkel and his coaches ordered the play that changed the SEC East. Georgia entered the game in Position A to win yet another division title, and even after a terrible start the Bulldogs closed within 28-26 with 12 minutes left, whereupon Mizzou quarterback James Franklin left with a separated shoulder. At that moment, you would have bet every shrub in Sanford Stadium that the home side would win. Except: Backup quarterback Maty Mauk lateraled to wideout Bud Sasser, who threw long for L’Damian Washington, who outfought Shaq Wiggins for the ball.
Five weeks later, Georgia’s secondary would again serve as a catalytic foil. Another rally had this time yielded a Bulldogs lead, and with 36 seconds left Auburn faced fourth-and-18 at its 27. Nick Marshall, once a Bulldog, threw deep, but not deep enough. Except: Josh Harvey-Clemons ran into Tray Matthews, and the safeties’ collision delivered the ball to Ricardo Louis in what would, for 14 days, stand as the greatest moment of deliverance in Auburn annals.
Take away those two plays — the flanker pass and the Prayer at Jordan-Hare — and neither Mizzou nor Auburn would be playing Saturday. Georgia and Alabama would be. The Bulldogs surely would have shaded the Franklin-less Tigers at the end that October day, and Auburn could have conjured up its Kick Six return against Bama and still finished second in the West. Which goes to show … what?
That the “S” in “SEC” doesn’t stand for “staid”? That the great Saban doesn’t control the world and everything in it? That a new head coach (Malzahn) and a newish program (Mizzou) can make a dent in a conference that likes to regard itself as armor-plated?
Eighteen months ago, Pinkel stood in a ballroom at the JW Marriott — the occasion was a welcome-to-the-SEC party that Missouri and Texas A&M threw in Atlanta for themselves — and paid lip service to the league his team was joining. "It's like the NFL," he said of the SEC, but he also directed a glance toward his interviewer that carried the clear message: "You know, this won't exactly be my first rodeo."
Eighteen months later, Pinkel and Missouri can become SEC champions. “It means a lot to me that we’re being respected,” he said Friday. Then this: “We’ve got to earn what we deserve. We’ve got to earn the respect. Our fans get it. The SEC fans are the best college football fans around the country. Mizzou fans have responded well.”
The Mizzou team likewise held up its end. So has Auburn, which a year ago didn’t appear within 109 light years of imperial Alabama, but made it here via the darnedest 109 yards ever negotiated. This isn’t the championship game anyone saw coming, but here it is. And all we know for certain is that the Tigers will win.
About the Author
Mark Bradley is a sports columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has been with the AJC since 1984.
