Football stuff I know this week

• Well, with Darren McFadden slamming the door on LSU this afternoon, no SEC team is going to the big dance. The SEC certainly has bloodied the holy hell out of itself this season.
• Speaking of, LSU better pull hard for Tennessee tomorrow. If they lose, then Georgia wins the East, and they are playing some nasty, high-power ball right now. Up against the Bulldogs in Atlanta, LSU could easily go from the crystal football inside track to not even winning the conference.
• As poorly as he handled his departure from Alabama, and as sleazy as his newsletter was, and despite the substantial evidence that he’s just really not very good, I still feel a little bad for Dennis Franchione. Who knows? Maybe he’ll turn up at SMU or Baylor.
• The Zooker finished 9-3 at Illinois this season, and they have an outside shot at an at-large BCS berth.  Fantastic, guys; congratulations!
• A persuasive case can be built either way, but I kind of think Tommy Tuberville won’t be taking that A&M job.
• With no SEC or ACC team in the national title hunt, I’ll be a Jayhawk. Kansas is the best Cinderella story this year, and I can muster some enthusiasm for them. I can muster almost as much for Missouri, if they win tomorrow night’s showdown. But then Oklahoma could take the winner out, and then what? I’d jump to West Virginia, simply because I picked them as something of a dark horse to win it all when we made our predictions at work at the start of the season.
• OK, raise your hand if before the season started, you thought Kansas vs. Missouri would be Top 5 vs. Top 5 with national title implications.  Liar.
• Mike Bellotti has done a fine job at Oregon for the most part, but it’s always a warning sign when a single player goes down and the performance of the team worsens so severely (as happened with Dennis Dixon against Arizona last week). I understand the concept of an explosive playmaker and the difference he can make on a football team, but Bellotti was clearly going to him like a rat hitting the bar for more heroin (apparently even knowing of his ACL injury). Urban Meyer’s gotten away with doing the same thing with Tim Tebow so far, but that’s the same sort of time bomb down there too.
• Rebuilding hurts, and even for those of us Alabama fans with reasonable expectations, the year has been disappointing.  It’s tough to win a thriller against Arkansas and pound Tennessee mercilessly, then drop one to UL-Monroe.  But even though it would only result in a record of 7-5, a win over Auburn tomorrow would put ’07 back in the “fine, just fine” category.  Come on, guys.  Y’all get down there and grind out a W.

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