Greeson: Two rules help Lyness pick so well

There were few sure bets in the Southeastern Conference this football season.

Three of the league teams finished with better than .500 marks within SEC play. After the top three bowl spots, there are no sure destinations for any of the other seven conference teams that have qualified for postseason play.

Auburn beat Ole Miss, which beat Tennessee, which beat Kentucky, which beat Georgia, which beat Auburn -- and all of that craziness was in the last five weeks.

It was a wild season ruled by a simple truth: The only thing that was predictable was its unpredictability.

That rule did not apply to Drew Lyness, though. Lyness, a 22-year-old University of Tennessee at Chattanooga student who was one of the more than 350 players in the "Beat Jay" contest offered online by the Times Free Press, had his finger on the pulse of the SEC.

"I guess you could say I had two rules," said Lyness, who had the best season total of the pool of pickers. "Always pick Alabama and always pick against Vandy (in the SEC). That turned out pretty good."

His approach was better than good and better than mine by four games. Lyness correctly picked 83 of the 96 games involving SEC teams this year. That's just a shade under 87 percent for the season -- right at seven out of every eight games in a year that was difficult to peg which Jekyll or Hyde versions of the Volunteers or Bulldogs or Tigers or Rebels or Gamecocks would appear on any given Saturday.

Lyness mixed a healthy dose of SEC passion ("I'm a big Alabama fan, so that kind of worked out," he admitted) with a little bit of luck and a Sunday-dinner serving of preparation.

He picked his games at timesfreepress.com every Friday morning to make sure he had consumed enough information, preview stories, pregame shows and Internet fodder to fill Neyland Stadium.

"I read the paper, watched a lot of ESPN and 'GameDay.' I'm a big college football fan," said Lyness, who graduated from Red Bank High and works with the football coaching staff there. "I'd take a close look on Thursday night at the key matchups and some of the other things."

But what happens when those matchups and rivalries and especially those other things left you puzzled, Drew?

"I'd pretty much go with my gut," he said.

Score one for the gut. Lyness' system worked well enough to edge a crew of runners-up by a single game. The slim margin was more than enough to earn an SEC sweatshirt from this weekend's title game. Hey, he "Beat Jay," he deserves something, right?

Lyness claimed the contest's weekly $100 gift card prize once this year. There frequently were multiple weekly winners, but Lyness was picked from the qualifiers after a perfect showing in Week 3. It was part of a red-hot start that pushed him through the first month of the season with only one loss.

"I know I got off to a great start," he said. "There was a long time that the only game I missed was UCLA-Tennessee."

Seems right somehow that UT proved to be a headache for an Alabama fan, huh? Much like the Tide, though, Lyness may have been occasionally slowed, but he managed to come through in the end.

Much to the surprise of no one who knows him, Lyness has his mind made up for this weekend's SEC title game. He doesn't even need to wait for Friday.

"I think Alabama will win," Lyness said. "I've got confidence in my Tide."

If Lyness has confidence in them, then you have to like their chances -- especially this year.