Don't Bet On It!: Week Ten College Football Forecasts Around the SEC

My SEC Power Poll and BlogPoll ballots have been cast scrapped, so now I will begin forecasting next weekend’s games, starting by going around the SEC. Yeah, Saturday stunk, but, as was pointed out in one of the comment threads, tomorrow is another day, so let’s give it a whirl, shall we?

I was 4-0 in last week’s conference forecasts, which upped my SEC prognosticating ledger for the season to 43-9. That level of success simply cannot be sustained, so, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll jump off the bandwagon right here. For Pete’s sake, whatever you do, . . . Don’t Bet On It!

Here are this week’s Southeastern Conference contests, all of which will be played on Saturday, November 6:

Wow, believe it or not, I’m still not there yet. Like Rhett, I still can’t bring myself to give a damn, as I continue to be half-dejected and half-numb following the most gut-wrenching Georgia loss since the 2008 Alabama game.

In 1992, Esquire published a profile of John Mellencamp entitled "Jack and Diane Are Dead," which meant, of course, that the singer’s former John Cougar persona no longer was relevant to the populist Midwestern troubadour he had become. Well, in that sense---and, I wish to stress (quite happily, in fact), not in the literal sense---it is fair to say that Buck and Lindsay are dead. To show how that (again, only figuratively) is true, I offer the following words, which were uttered by Shug Jordan to Dan Magill:

We had some mighty good football teams at Georgia in those days. One of the best was in 1950, and it is not remembered as one of the best because it went 6-2-3, but it easily could have been undefeated. We had a hell of a defense, allowed only 5.5 points per game, but we lost our quarterback to an injury in the first game in beating Maryland, 27-7, and Maryland was probably the best team we played. After losing [quarterback Billy] Grant, we never could generate a consistent offense, and we averaged only 14.3 points per game.

Why, you may be asking, was Shug Jordan, the longtime Auburn coach and one of the namesakes of Jordan-Hare Stadium, referring to the Georgia Bulldogs as "we"? You may be forgiven for not knowing that Coach Jordan was a former assistant coach under Wally Butts in Athens, because it was, after all, 1950. Well, in 1980, 1950 was exactly as far in the past as 1980 is for us today. As much as I love the history of the University of Georgia in virtually all its facets, the fact is that Buck Belue’s touchdown pass to Lindsay Scott is of historical interest only, having no bearing whatsoever on where we are as a program right now.

Consequently, I remain today where I have been since Saturday. There’s simply no way the Bulldogs should have lost last Saturday’s game, and, until I come to grips with the fact that they did, I just don’t care what one set of teams is or is not going to do against another set of teams next Saturday.

Will I succeed in overcoming my funk and abandoning this theme before the end of the week? Don’t Bet On It!

Go ‘Dawgs!