SEC FLAVOR
The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll released Tuesday contained seven SEC teams:1. ALABAMA2. Clemson3. GEORGIA4. Ohio State5. Wisconsin6. Oklahoma7. AUBURN8. Notre Dame9. Washington10. Stanford11. LSU12. Virginia Tech13. Penn State14. West Virginia15. Michigan State16. TCU17. Southern California18. MISSISSIPPI STATE19. Central Florida20. Boise State21. Michigan22. Miami23. Oregon24. SOUTH CAROLINA25. FLORIDA
Just two years ago, Southeastern Conference football often was portrayed as Alabama and the 13 dwarfs.
That does not accurately describe what transpired during the opening weekend of the 2018 season.
Although Nick Saban's Crimson Tide looked sharp in a 51-14 trouncing of Louisville, there were plenty of other impressive showings as SEC teams won 13 of 14 opportunities, with Tennessee's loss to West Virginia the lone exception. Auburn and LSU both knocked off top-10 teams, with Auburn defeating Pac-12 Conference favorite Washington 21-16 in Atlanta and with LSU dismantling reigning ACC Coastal Division champion Miami 33-17 in Arlington, Texas.
"I think the league is very strong this year, and I thought that before watching any games," Saban said Monday in his weekly news conference. "You never know where you are until you actually go out and play, because some teams have more depth than others and can sustain injuries or have better luck with injuries. It's a long season, but there are a lot of good teams in our league.
"Everyone in our division has a chance to have a really good team, and I think that showed."
LSU actually led 33-3 at one point, but the Tigers did suffer a setback when sophomore outside linebacker K'Lavon Chaisson was lost for the season with a torn ACL. Auburn banished any talk of a Mercedes-Benz Stadium jinx after losing its final two games of last season there.
"It just felt different this time, for whatever reason," Auburn quarterback Jarrett Stidham said in a news conference afterward. "The chemistry with this team is unreal, in my opinion. We're all so close, and at the end of the day we want to win for each other and for the coaches.
"I really like where this football team is at, and I really like where we're going."
The SEC West went 7-0 during its first weekend of action, with all seven teams covering their respective point spreads. There were the expected routs from Arkansas, Mississippi State and Texas A&M, each of which opened against Football Championship Subdivision programs, but Ole Miss added to the neutral-site success with a 47-27 drubbing of Texas Tech in Houston.
Texas Tech was favored entering that contest, but Matt Luke's Rebels showed some bite defensively in addition to their dazzling offense that may contain the nation's top crop of receivers.
"One of the things we did way better than at any time last year was our communication," Luke said Monday in his weekly news conference. "There was a lot of communication from the back end to the front end. I thought that was a big improvement. A lot of that is having the continuity and being in the second year of the system, but the communication and everyone being on the same page was much better."
Ole Miss is banned from the postseason again this year due to sanctions that stem from the Hugh Freeze era, so the SEC West will not send all seven members to bowl games as it did during the 2014 and 2015 seasons. Arkansas is having to rebuild under new coach Chad Morris after a 4-8 season a year ago, and Saturday's 55-20 massacre of Eastern Illinois likely didn't serve as much of a gauge.
Texas A&M also didn't have much of a measuring stick with last Thursday's 59-7 rout of Northwestern State, but the Aggies will learn a lot about themselves this Saturday night with a visit from No. 2 Clemson.
"I think it's great - I really do," Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher said this week of the challenge. "It's an opportunity for your kids, and it's an opportunity to find out what it's like. Clemson has been as good as anybody in college football in the last few years, but we've got to worry about ourselves.
"All we can control is us and how we prepare. You want to play these games, but you have to prepare to play these games."
The SEC West rose to prominence almost instantly after Saban arrived at Alabama, with the Tide winning three national championships in a four-year stretch from 2009 to 2012, the exception being Auburn's title in 2010. Auburn won a West in 2010 that wound up producing five of the final top 15 teams in the country that year, and Alabama topped LSU in the BCS championship game of the 2011 season.
There was no such competition in 2016, when Alabama won seven of its eight league contests by double digits before throttling Florida 54-16 in the SEC title game. Auburn, with an 8-4 record and a No. 17 ranking, was viewed as a distant second-best team that season before losing to Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.
Although Alabama won its fifth national championship in nine seasons a year ago, the SEC had a very different feel as Georgia defeated Auburn in the first league championship game without the Crimson Tide since Auburn beat Missouri in 2013. The league had three of the nation's top six teams with Auburn, Alabama and Georgia at the end of last year's regular season, and the Associated Press poll released Tuesday includes a robust total of seven SEC members: Alabama (No. 1), Georgia (No. 3), Auburn (No. 7), LSU (No. 11), Mississippi State (No. 18), Florida (No. 24)and South Carolina (No. 25).
Georgia visits South Carolina this Saturday in a spotlight game for the SEC East, with a tantalizing Auburn-LSU matchup looming next week.
"There are some really good teams on the other side, too," Saban said. "There are a lot of good teams in this league and a lot of good quarterbacks."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.