The Monday morning meltdown (Sec mean tweets edition)
GEORGE SOMERVILLE – THE TOUCHDOWN SEC CORRESPONDENT
As we know, in SEC football, It Just Means More! And that goes for both the glory and the failure!
The good and the bad in college football are exaggerated to the max on Sundays and Mondays after each week’s slate of games. In SEC football, no one is safe from the fallout of defeat or the over-celebration of victory.
This week, SEC football is dominated by the “Greatest game of all time!” – that’s Alabama v Georgia if you have been living in a cave. Which would make you think that defeated head coaches elsewhere are saved from the Monday Morning Meltdown. Well think again, a defeated team is still a defeated team and fans in week 5 have thrown their toys out of the pram.
The biggest shock of the week was #5 Ole Miss capitulating to Kentucky, which has led to some pretty loud criticism of Lane Kiffin and OC Charlie Weis Jr. The other coach who remains under pressure is Hugh Freeze who saw his Tigers lead the Sooners into the fourth quarter on Saturday. How did that game end up? Well, Auburn did what Auburn do and the Sooners won out. With Auburn now looking down the barrel of a losing season, Freeze is under the kosh!
So, onto the madness of the meltdown. Read on MacDuff…..
The Ole *iss Rebels
As we have said often on these pages, you are only one defeat away from a crisis in SEC football. Until Saturday, Lane Kiffin and his Ole Miss Rebels remained one of the most fancied teams in all of College football. That was despite yet entering SEC play, which happened on Saturday with the visit of Kentucky to Oxford.
And all of that preseason expectation was washed away with a defeat to the Wildcats by 20-17. While the loss was bad enough, the offensive performance in particular had Rebels’ fans shaking their heads and fists in disbelief.
You would think that for a school with limited historical success, a superstar head coach like Lane Kiffin would be spared some criticism, especially this early in the season. And you would be wrong my friends – this is the SEC!
Kiffin got it in the neck post game, principally about two things. Firstly, the criticism of OC Charlie Weis Jr and his play calling grows louder. With Kiffin being the offensive genius he clearly is, some fans want Kiffin to get more involved. Secondly, Kiffin has been very critical of other teams players faking injuries in the recent past. On Saturday, it was very clear that Matt Jones was told to fall to the floor and feign injury to stop the game. The fall was so comical that it appears in numerous memes. Where the instruction came from is unclear but, fans including Ole Miss fans, weren’t happy about the incident.
In fact the criticism was so fierce that Kiffin even got the blame for changing the colours of the end zone! Sheesh!
Ole Miss now travels to South Carolina on Saturday ahead of a road visit to Tiger Stadium in Louisiana on October 12. While these games were must win games for the Rebels they now take on a whole different dynamic for Lane Kiffin and his Rebels. They MUST win wo keep they playoff hopes alive.
The Big Freeze
Auburn is now 2-3 for the season and 0-2 in conference play. The Tigers face Georgia in Athens on Saturday and Missouri in CoMo in a weeks time before heading to Lexington, Kentucky to complete three road games in a row. Honestly, an Auburn team under Hugh Freeze with a 2-6 season at that point is unthinkable but I’m afraid possible.
So it’s no surprise that the pressure remains on Freeze and his staff. Not only that, it is growing. Last Monday, I wrote about some of the controversial comments that Freeze said in relation to his QB’s which provoked an angry response from Bo Wallace, one of his former signal callers. Quickly following on, Freeze made the comment about beating Arkansas 9 times out of 9. Sam Pittman is well liked in the SEC so Freeze’s odd slight on Pittman again did not go down well. Today, post Oklahoma game, Freeze’s language is defensive and sounds like a man who believes he is being unfairly ostracised. We know Freeze has full confidence in his ability but, sadly, this is not playing out on the field and results are poor.
Where does Auburn go from here? That my friends is the million dollar question.
GEORGE SOMERVILLE
COLLEGE FOOTBALL WRITER
GEORGE IS A LONG STANDING FANATIC OF LIFE AND FOOTBALL IN THE DEEP SOUTH AND WRITES HIS WEEKLY COLUMN CALLED “IT’S ONLY SEC” FOR THE TOUCHDOWN. HE IS ALSO CO-HOST AND ONE THIRD OF THE COLLEGE CHAPS PODCAST, THE UK’S FIRST PODCAST DEDICATED TO THE COLLEGE GAME.