Hobbs column: The weekend the SEC went off the rails

Published 11:42 pm Sunday, October 6, 2024

It was probably a good weekend for LSU to kick back for a little R&R.

The Southeastern Conference was no place for the faint-hearted Saturday. Lots of unexplained craziness in every nook and cranny around the league.

Not sure how much of it the actual Tigers saw. It always amazes me when you ask college football players how they spent their open date, how few of them watched much college football. It turns out they often have lives away from it.

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So when the Tigers reported for duty Monday, at least some of them were in for quite a shock.

It wasn’t safe to venture out onto a field of play.

You can’t trust anybody. Not even Vanderbilt. Yeah, you turn your back on the chicken-fried SEC for one minute and —Rip Van Winkle-style —you wake up to find the whole hazy landscape littered with smoldering ruins, bandwagons overturned, wheels up in the ditches. There they were, the big dogs (and red elephants, too) staggering around in bewilderment, wondering … How in the world did this happen?

The SEC had three unbeaten top 10 teams that lost Saturday, two of them to unranked stragglers.

Nobody saw it coming, that’s for sure.

Not struggling Arkansas beating Tennessee just as the No. 4 Vols and their high-powered attack were getting into national championship conversations.

Certainly not Vanderbilt— not in a million-zillion years, were the Commodores supposed to beat  No. 1-ranked Alabama.

Missouri was No. 9, but losing at No. 25 Texas A&M wasn’t really an upset, although the 41-10 margin was beyond even Las Vegas’ expectations.

Georgia and Ole Miss  apparently got free passes, maybe because both had their stumbles the previous week. The Dawgs recovered to beat Auburn 31-13 and the Rebels easily handled South Carolina 27-3.

Texas, like LSU, had the day off. That was the prudent move. The Longhorns took over as the No. 1 team in the AP poll while relaxing on the couch.

Otherwise, anarchy reigned. And, if the trend holds, Texas, the league’s last unbeaten, had best be on upset alert this week for the SEC’s first version of the Red River Rivalry against Oklahoma.

Saturday was the day the little guys rose up and fought back — and the upset victims seemed powerless to do anything about it.

Revenge of the Afterthoughts, the Double-Digit Underdogs Revolt. The upstart inmates, even the brainy egg heads from Vanderbilt, were running the video game.

Vanderbilt and Arkansas will pay cash money for their upsets thanks to the SEC’s ridiculous fines that nobody believes for a minute deters a single ecstatic student (and some adults) from rushing the field after witnessing a football.

Will Vandy have to pay extra for its hooligans lugging the goal posts all the way from the stadium to the Cumberland River before disposing of it?

Give them a break.

What would you do if your school came into the expected roll-over game not only 0-6 all-time against No. 1-ranked teams, but the Commodores were 0-for-60 against top five teams.

Make it 1-60 now — and most amazingly of all, it wasn’t a fluke.

Never mind that Alabama took over the poll’s top spot last week by beating Georgia. Or that Vanderbilt lost to Georgia State as recently as three weeks ago.

Alabama had the quarterback, Jalen Milroe, a football specimen who looks and plays like something dreamed up by a gridiron Frankenstein.

To the naked eye, Vanderbilt’s quarterback, Diego Pavia, looks like a walk-on who’s in uniform only because some big booster wanted him there. He got to Vanderbilt from New Mexico Military Institute by way of New Mexico State.

Yet, armed with one perfectly designed play-call after another, his sleight of hand had the Tide totally befuddled.

Alabama even had the bulk of the crowd at Vandy’s own stadium, a 4-1 edge by some estimates.

No matter how many times it appeared that Alabama was done teasing and ready to put the foolishness to rest, Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea was always one move ahead with one more surprise answer.

This is Alabama we’re talking about. And, uh, Vanderbilt.

The SEC will tell you that it’s just more proof that anybody can beat anybody in this league.

And, now, Alabama fans will tell new coach Kalen Deboer that’s it’s obvious he’s no Nick Saban, upon whose watch this would never have happened.

Yet it did on this zany day.

But here’s my question: At one point did LSU fans, giggling while  cheering along Vanderbilt every step of the way — We are all Commodores tonight! — when did they stop living and dying with every unexpected development, and take a deep, pensive breath.

Wait. What? Isn’t Vanderbilt on the Tigers’ schedule this year?

Arkansas, too, for that matter.

That’s supposed to be a good thing.

This year, maybe not so much.

Suddenly, it’s not safe to assume anything with the SEC’s also-rans.