Wiedmer: SEC looks almost perfect

Western Kentucky coach Dave Elson spoke the obvious on Saturday when he said of the Hilltoppers' 63-7 loss to Tennessee: "We learned today that we can't play with the SEC."

But other than Oklahoma State, who can?

The best league in football played 12 games this weekend. It won 11, Georgia being the lone Dawg in the bunch with its painful 24-10 loss at Okie State.

Otherwise, the SEC bested its 11 other opponents by a cumulative score of 459-104, or an average score of 42-9.

And before you say that's pretty much what it should have done against the likes of Western Kentucky, Charleston Southern (Florida, 62-3), Missouri State (Arkansas, 48-10) and Western Carolina (Vanderbilt, 45-0), consider that Alabama, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss and South Carolina all won away from home against respected FBS programs.

Because the No. 5 Crimson Tide bested No. 7 Virginia Tech 34-24 inside the officially neutral (wink, wink!) Georgia Dome, Bama arguably turned in the SEC's most impressive win.

"They've got the defense, their quarterback played well for them, their running backs played well, they've got some great receivers, they've got it," said Hokies coach Frank Beamer. "We played one of the great teams in the country."

Depending on how you view imperfection, the Tide was so good it overcame surrendering a kickoff return for a TD, two field goals in the red zone, and a missed field goal just before intermission.

Even Bama boss Nick Saban said afterward, "It's hard to win with so many mistakes and so many errors."

But win they did, dominating Virginia Tech through most of the second half, particularly the fourth quarter, when Bama turned a one-point deficit into a comfortable win, causing Saban to observe, "We actually played better than the score. We made a lot of mistakes, but we responded better to adversity than we ever have."

LSU responded well enough to its four-hour plane ride to Seattle -- the school's longest-ever road trip -- for a 31-23 victory over Washington. The Bayou Bengals performance was good enough to make most believe it will have a say in who wins the SEC West, even if the Tigers may not have quite enough defense to shut down Alabama or Ole Miss.

As for Ole Miss, its road domination of Memphis was more points than performance, given that the nation's No. 8 Rebels outgained the Tigers by only 349 yards to 284 overall.

Afterward, former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and current Memphis coach Tommy West called Ole Miss, "A really good team," but you got the feeling that if this was to be a typical Rebs effort, Bama shouldn't have any trouble becoming the best of the West.

The East is a different matter, however. While no one is going to mistake Miami of Ohio or Western Carolina for Virginia Tech or Oklahoma State, both Kentucky and Vanderbilt pitching shutouts -- it was UK's first defensive zero in 13 seasons -- could signal an even more difficult East.

Then again, Vandy plays its entire schedule without an off week and UK plays its final 11 without a break after taking this coming weekend off. So the least deep teams in the division have worst schedules. Hmmmmmm.

Then there's Tennessee, which has the perfect schedule, playing the first six weeks, earning an off week between Georgia and Alabama, then playing the final six weeks. Is everyone certain that former SEC commish Roy Kramer isn't doing the schedule from his retirment villa?

But all talk about the league ultimately returns to defending national champ Florida, which may have actually cost its fans a lot of money by failing to cover its 73-point spread against Charleston Southern.

Beyond that, if the Gators were really expected to win by 73, only won by 59 and played a team that really wasn't supposed to be much better than Western Kentucky, could Tennessee not expect to win 63-62 in the Swamp on Sept. 19?

Perhaps, but not according to Charleston Southern coach Jay Mills.

"(Florida) will be argued by the end of the season as one of the best teams of the decade," said Mills. "Maybe even more than that."

But only if they can outscore the Vols 13 days from today.