What’s good (and maybe not so good) about each of the 14 members of college football’s reigning power conference, in rough order of their expected finish.
Almost every fan has a primary team, of course. But we also all end up playing favorites when we flip through the channels, or end up watching a lot of another team when our own is on a down year. (Many non-Big Ten fans take a side in the perennial Michigan-Ohio State war, for example.) Below, an evaluation of each SEC team's potential for spontaneous, secondary fandom, in rough order of their expected finish.
The Alabama Crimson Tide
Pros:
– AJ McCarron, he of the beauty queen girlfriend and nation-leading passing efficiency, will be gunning for his third straight national championship as quarterback. That's potentially pretty epic.
– Nick Saban (68-13 as Alabama head coach) has just enough Bond smarts and Bond villain smarm to pull off both roles.
– Protecting the blind side is future NFL first-round pick and Great Football Name™ Cyrus Kouandjio.
– T.J. Yeldon, the first freshman in school history to rush for 1,000 yards, will only be better this time around, even with three new starting O-linemen.
– Junior defensive back Ha Ha Clinton-Dix. (That's all.)
– ROLL TIDE. ROLL TIDE? ROLL TIDE!
Cons:
– Saban doesn't command the abject fear (Bear Bryant) or familiar-feeling folksiness (Gene Stallings) of other great Crimson Tide coaching legends.
– Alabama players head to the NFL with such frequency and rapidity that there's little time to appreciate their individual greatness.
– Ignorantly yelling ROLL TIDE! in the wrong part of the state could be an unwise (last) move. Roll with caution, always.
Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images
The Georgia Bulldogs
Pros:
– Senior QB Aaron Murray could be the one (dare to dream!) to finally bring the Bulldogs to the upper echelons of college football. There's an Alabama-sized problem in his way, but the school's all-time career TD passer (95) is far from finished. (He also very well may break the SEC record for career passing yards in the process.)
– Uga IX.
– Very favorable schedule tops out with South Carolina and LSU at home. Georgia could be a fun wagon to jump on this year.
Cons:
– Georgia seems determined to break hearts, like a peach withering on the...stalk...of the...peach plant? I grew up in Queens.
– Bulldogs fans probably knew all about that really cool, under-the-radar band before you did.
Pierre Ducharme / Reuters
The Texas A&M Aggies
Pros:
– Johnny Football is dead. Long live Johnny Football.
– Texas A&M is not Alabama.
– In all seriousness, Johnny Manziel is everything you should love about college, not just college football.
– Saying "Yeah, I go to school at College Station" just sounds really bad-ass.
– Q: What the hell's an Aggie? (A: It does not matter.)
Cons:
– Arguing about Manziel and whether he's embarrassing the game and ruining his NFL chances is being on a hamster wheel from hell that never stops.
– The Johnny Football Phenomenon could come to an abrupt conclusion without a home win against Alabama on Sept. 14.
Dave Martin, File / AP