How the SEC Grew into the Fearsome Beast it is Today
by Chris Lowery, Contributing Writer and LSU Alum
It all started on January 8, 2007. The Florida Gators walked into the University of Phoenix Stadium as the No. 2 ranked team against the “Name Your Deifying Big 10 Musberger Adjective” Buckeyes of Ohio State. Florida was the consensus underdog, scraping their way into the game, against a Buckeye team that was 12-0, featured a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback, and had previously beaten the “real” No.2 team, Michigan, in the “real” National Championship game just a month earlier. And, for about 15 seconds or so—as Buckeye speedster Ted Ginn, Jr. returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown—the half-baked gaggle of sports pundits appeared to have successfully hyped the right team.
But then they played the rest of the game.
Florida responded to their putrid chick slap that pisses you off more than it actually hurts with a flurry of one-twos and badass jumping roundhouses as the public watched in horror, fearful for the lives of Buckeye Nation. The Gators eventually closed out the first half with a dominating 34-14 lead. In the second half, with Ohio State blindly limping towards Brutus the Buckeye thinking he was the exit to the stadium, Florida added one more touchdown—just because they could—finishing off the Buckeyes 41-14. Meanwhile, Ohio State finished the game with 83 yards of total offense, their manhood in a mason jar, and an inferiority complex that only the man who orchestrated their public thwacking, Urban Meyer, can hopefully hypnotize back to a sense of entitlement.
What Florida did was expose the “Powerful, Mighty, Awesomely Awesome” Buckeyes for their lack of overall team speed and ability to play violent, intimidating defense, and, in the process, sent an unsettling wake-up call to the rest of the country about what life in the SEC is about.
The following year, Ohio State finished out the regular season 11-1, with a redeeming shot at a national title against another SEC team that finagled their way into the title game, LSU. But like Mark Zuckerberg running into his childhood bully who’s bald, broke and drunkenly blitzed, the Buckeyes sheepishly regressed back to the team that Florida stuffed in a locker the previous year, and wound up cruising to a cool 38-24 defeat in the Superdome.
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Then there was Oklahoma, who fought a little more admirably, but eventually went down to the Tebow-led Gators, 24-14.
Then there was Texas, who got neck-tied by Alabama 37-21.
Then, as the last great hope against the rising tyranny of the SEC, with a blistering snot-rocket resembling offense, Oregon made the last stand against Cam Newton and the Auburn Tigers. But the team who averaged 49.3 points a game during the regular season, struggled to just 19 points against the SEC’s worst defense, four points shorter than the 23 that would have ended the totalitarian rise of the SEC.
The 2011 season marked the successful oppression of the people. With the rest of the country obviously losing late season games for fear of having to face LSU or Alabama, the voters were forced to set-up an all-SEC title game between LSU and Alabama, no doubt submitting to the textbook example of how to build an empire: crush, give hope, crush, give hope, crush, give the most hope they can possibly imagine, and then finally crush into the dark recesses of despondency.
And now, in 2012, a new hope shines through—a hunky hunky “dude” who posts on Reddit, has blonde hair and is the quarterback for USC.
The executives at ESPN— something more loathsome than the culturally parasitic voids of “Jersey Shore” and the counter-cultural contrarian hipsters who discuss the beauty of Marxism while smoking a Marlboro 27—have already jumped on the USC jock and are preparing a year long blitzkrieg of Trojan propaganda, in the hopes that after the Trojans drop two games to Cal State. and Cal Polytech, the voters will still put them against whoever the SEC decides to send this year, all the while pissing off people who actually watch college football regularly—the south.
One problem though… well, maybe two or three or a bunch: there are more holes in the overall USC “white horse” than an acupunctured Spongebob who just got lit up by the coalition for blow-dart shooters. Defense, rushing, big time coaching, just to name a few, are missing from this team, any of which would be exploited by the SEC top four in the first half of a game.
And I highly doubt that USC is a transcendent football savior with unlimited god-like power who can morph their imperfections into perfections, especially with Lane Kiffin and Ed O on the sidelines.
There is no one else out there, and this season will be no different. And the only hope for the countries freedom to win, be happy and pursue their desire to lift that crystal football someday, somewhere is… that the Mayans were right and that crystal footballs abound in the afterlife.
Stay tuned for more of Chris’s coverage of all things SEC this season.
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