Gators best SEC Least has to offer
Published 7:45 am Friday, November 18, 2016
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Good thing Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey stepped in to intervene in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. Good thing he kind of locked LSU and Florida in a room and got them to quit holding their breaths, pointing fingers and pouting long enough to force-feed them a “compromise” solution to get their blasted football game played somewhere, sometime, somehow.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If not — and it wasn’t Sankey’s finest hour either — the league’s worst fears indeed would have been realized, the SEC standings would have been a sham, at least on one side.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Politically Correct Disclaimer: these football tragedies, of course, pale in comparison to the 30-mph winds and partly cloudy skies that Gainesville endured while waiting on Hurricane Matthew to hit South Carolina.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So LSU and Florida will play Saturday, even if not where they should be playing, not when they could have played and certainly not at the time (noon) that anybody sane would ever want to play.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it had to be done.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If not, if they’d thrown up their hands and given up on rescheduling, the doomsday theorists would have been right on the money and the terrorists win.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The sanctity of the money-pit SEC championship game would have been compromised.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mainly, the folks in Tennessee would have been ransacking the countryside like they’d been offended by a presidential election.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Florida (7-2, 5-2 SEC) on Saturday would be playing Presbyterian (2-8, but record not really applicable) having already clinched the SEC East title and mainly trying to get enough bodies healthy for next week’s game against Florida State, a cross-state rival the Gators don’t much care for.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU would be trying to give away tickets for a yawner game against South Alabama, the home game that Athletic Director Joe “Line in the Sand” Alleva insisted would wreck the school and state budgets, maybe even your retirement nest egg, if the Tigers had to cancel it to go play Florida in Gainesville on that date.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The big bugaboo, predicted long in advance, would have been Florida’s incomplete 5-2 conference record, which would be no big shakes in SEC West, but good enough win on a technicality in the East.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Tennessee, as so many predicted, is now 3-3 and expected to get to 5-3 with stupidly winnable games left against Missouri and Vanderbilt.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Vols beat Florida, thus own tiebreakers over the Gators. But for said tiebreaker to kick in there has to be an actual tie at the top. So Tennessee needs Florida to get a third loss, and it would be hard to do if they didn’t play the game. Short version: 5-2 (.714) trumps 5-3 (.625).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Suspicious minds in the LSU kingdom used this possible scenario as Exhibit A for conspiracy theories that the Gators were dodging the game more than the hurricane.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But Florida, in truth, is playing the clinch the SEC East title in Baton Rouge.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">How much incentive that is remains to be seen.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You get a trophy for it, but technically Florida has already earned a trophy — at worst, the league does in fact give both teams that tie for a division title a trophy.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s kind of hollow trophy if it doesn’t get you a trip to Atlanta for the SEC championship game.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That seems to be about all the SEC East can hope for these days.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Some treat it to trophy-case status, others like a participation ribbon. It’s a matter of personal preference (generally depending on how much spare room is in the trophy case).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Little known fact: Gerry DiNardo won two of those babies while at LSU, but don’t ask anybody where they are. Probably in somebody’s attic.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So, really, the Gators are playing to make it to Atlanta … to play (and get massacred by) Alabama.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">How much incentive that is remains to be seen.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Two teams from the East have already had a go at the Tide, and the combined carnage was 83-16.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In fact, if Sankey has a problem right now, it’s getting some sort of parity, or a close facsimile, between East and West.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">True, nobody in the West has had much luck with the Tide lately either.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But overall in the division crossover games this year, the West is 9-2. Kentucky beat Mississippi State on a last-play field goal and Georgia verily shocked Auburn last week.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s not a one-year aberration.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Last year the West went 12-2.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Florida in Baton Rouge probably has the best chance to get a third win for the East this year, what with Missouri (against Arkansas) and Vanderbilt (against Ole Miss) the only other hopes.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Surely, the Gators would have been better off playing it at home, as scheduled.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But the SEC has done everything possible to even the field, most notably insisting the game start at noon, generally recognized as an indecent hour for Tiger Stadium’s usual deplorables.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Worse, it’s Senior Day for the Tigers.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There no pregame buzz-kill in all of sports quite as effective like Senior Day.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But at least the game is getting played.</span>
