Bulldogs4

South Carolina & Purdue are two of the very few games that I have picked correctly. I am mostly sucking on my Fantasy picks (12-14 to date). Tennessee did improve during the season but they have no defense. Bama, Georgia & Ole Miss win UK, LSWHO and Arkansas lose. But what do I know?

Probably will be 0-7. Think Ole Miss wins, GA and Bama win but beyond that I am not sure anybody else wins. Maybe Arkansas?

I am glad we played. Props to Tech for being the better team by far tonight. You just suit up and play the players you have and see what happens. Tonight was ugly. I still predict the end of the current bowl system going forward. With all the players quitting after the regular season. It has become a total joke this year.

It is early but defense is getting gashed. Some of these young guys are going to have to grow up in a hurry.

COVID is just a symptom of the problem and a convenient excuse for teams to weasel out of losing a bowl game …. oops I meant play in a bowl game. The bigger problem is players quitting their team or hitting the transfer portal. Throw in coaching turnover and the current system is completely BROKEN. A ton of money is being lost every time a team decides they are quitting too and not playing a game.

The days of 40+ Bowl games are coming to an end IMO. I predict a 16 team playoff with the first round games being hosted by the higher seeds. Then the final eight games using the seven biggest bowls for their games. Rose, Fiesta, Cotton, Sugar, Orange, Peach, Gator &/or Citrus Bowls being the most likely. Then there will be true old fashioned bowl games for 20 deserving teams that are just outside the playoff. So an additional 10 bowl games. With all these cancelled bowl games somebody is eating a lot of losses. In the future fans are not going buy tickets for a game that may not happen. Add in players quitting their teams, players transferring, coaches leaving or being fired then the only path forward I see is a total revamp of a broken system. With the above scenario, I think you will see less players quit as all the games (even the bowl games). will be important. More fans will attend the playoff games as well as the bowl games a because you should have some great match ups. A win - win all the way around. Plus much money to be made overall too,

Agree , A&M forfeited their game, so yes , SEC is 0-3 so far.

A&M is pathetic. Big p*****s. Just play the game with whatever players want to play and are able to play. If State can play @ Georgia with 44 players then the Aggies can surely find some twelfth men to fill in the gaps. Rutgers is taking their place. Completely asinine. They should have to pay the SEC whatever bowl money they were going to receive and forfeit whatever share was theirs from the overall kitty.

Already some upside down bowl results (which is no surprise). Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, UAB (though I picked them in my fantasy picks) all won as underdogs. Jackson State after all the recruiting buzz from Wednesday certainly laid an egg Saturday. Not a good look for Sanders. A win Saturday would have been a great momentum builder for him and JSU. They have historically struggled outside the SWAC and that was a great chance to dispel some of that old perception.

His football coach at West Lauderdale ran the same offense that Army/Navy run. The old Georgia Southern double wingback triple option offense. As a result, his football talent was understated as they rarely threw the ball. USM actually offered him in baseball first and football second. Had he been at Meridian High, with Coach Weems running the four outs wide open offense at that time, he would have been an All-State QB with offers coming from everywhere. He was two years ahead of Tyler Russell at MHS (and you saw what kind of QB he was). But he had a great career at USM and that 2011 team was an upset (against UAB of all teams) away from being in a New Years Day Bowl. Unfortunately for USM that was their high point in football and the very next season they fell to 0-12 and have never been the same since. Very happy for him and wish him well except for when Auburn plays State. Comes from a very good family.

At the end of the Northern Illinois-Coastal Carolina game, the official cost NIU a chance at winning the game. They had a FD at the 4 yard line with 2 seconds left, he sets the ball and just stands behind the center starts the time and then let’s it run out before he moves out the way. Now there is no way to know if they would have scored. But he just stood there and finally moved after the clock hit 0:00. One of our guys in our fantasy competition had put 34 points on CC so we were all bummed when NIU did not at least get a chance run that last play. Oh well, doing the fantasy picks at least makes the bowl season a bit more fun. I am 2-0 so far but only have 3 points…LOL.

That will be determined in time. He certainly has the ability to recruit. But coaching those recruits is entirely different matter. In fairness to him, COVID has completely complicated things over the last two years. So far though, he seems to have made a good impact at JSU. Going forward over next 2-3 years will tell the tale as far as what his staying power might be. The next five - ten years in CFB are going to be interesting to see how all this shakes out after the dust settles. I think eventually in football there is going to be four major conferences with 16 teams each. Then there will possibly be a 16 team playoff utilizing some of the existing bowls as part of their make up. Instead of March Madness you will have a football madness in November/December leading up to January.

I wonder if Neon Deion has burned his bridge with Free Shoes University forever now? LOL

At the end of the day, recruiting can be a very inexact science. Schools sometimes hit on certain players and then other times they miss because you just never know how guy might develop over 3-4-5 years. Darrell Henderson was easily the best HS RB that I have I have seen over the last ten years. Yet State & Ole Miss did not even give him a look and he goes on to have an All-American career at Memphis and now is playing in the NFL. The guy had all the tools. He was like a modem day David Palmer or Dexter McCluster but better than those guys. Nowadays there seem to be a lot gamesmanship around it too with players and coaches yanking each other’s chain. Hopefully tomorrow is good but we will not really know for sure until about 2026. I remember State had terrible signing classes in 1995-96 and then those guys ended up winning the West in 1998 and 10 games in 1999. Yet the signing classes were next to last in the conference.

I think Corral would excel at Pittsburgh or even New Orleans. The Saints desperately need a QB and I think he could fit that spot very well. Green Bay would be another place that I could see him doing very well. Like Reb said I hope he doesn’t get stuck in a sad place like Detroit or Miami or the NYJets etc. I watch very little NFL these days, I even withdrew from my fantasy league two years ago because I got tired of all the political BS that was going on. That said I still pull for our Mississippi kids to have success in the NFL regardless of which college they played for. D83, I am will be disappointed if Cross and Emerson quit the team before playing in the bowl game. But that is their decision. Leach had an interesting take on it in his press conference. At least he speaks his mind. He did take some criticism because coaches break contracts and jump ship too. But it is a bit of apples and oranges because they are also subject to being fired in the middle of the season i.e. Les Miles(2016), the coach at Texas Tech, Dan Mullen etc. for no apparent reason. You don’t see a player dismissed during the season because the team lost a game.

I agree D83. It is going to be a crap shoot. The silver lining for some of the middle / lower teams is that you could see a little used freshman or back up get to play who ends up shining in the bowl game. I would expect some topsy turvy results. In State’s case , like we have already alluded to, a win in the bowl game will help erase the EB loss and serve as a good lead into next season. As a football fan, I am pulling for Corral to have a good NFL career. Like Dak has done he will have to transform himself somewhat in the NFL but he has got a good gritty type of leadership that will play well in the pros.

Reb, I completely understand what you said and it is the player’s decision. And I am fine with that. I think probably an agent coined that phrase “opt-out” to one of his clients a few years back to soften the sound of the decision. The word “quit” connotes a very negative image in society today so they went about shifting the narrative to make the player look better. I get it and understand the reasons behind it. As you noted the NFL has swallowed it too since they do not penalize a player by dropping them down in the draft order even though they are a quitter.

I think the opt-out is a bunch of a crap and as far as I am concerned they are quitters. Call them what they are. Quitters. Now they have every right to do just that and I don’t have a problem with it but just say “I quit the team” and be done with it. Because if your team has a game to play and you willfully abstain from playing in it then that is the definition of quitting. If they are injured or there other family medical issues at hand, then that is completely different and perfectly understandable.

I don’t have any diet shuga or egg less recipes but the only thing I can think of for a reply is ”Give me Liberty or give me Death” As D83 noted , you have earned bragging rights but like him I like our chances going forward…. On a serious note: the Baylor-Ole Miss has the makings of a good game. I like Ole Miss to win but the Bears are a gritty team.

That is possible but Ole Miss has always out recruited State though the series over the last thirty years is basically even. The recruiting difference from 1-15 seem to be significantly higher relative speaking to the difference between say 20-35 or even 40 or 50. If you are in the latter range, then you can almost throw those teams in a hat and not see a big difference in the on the field results. I do think it is doubtful that Kiffin is at Ole Miss that long.

Moorhead was at Akron for several seasons. So he has history there. I am glad for him. I do think he is a good coach and if he learned from some of his mistakes at State, he can be successful there. I will be pulling for him to do well. I am glad Kiffin is staying at Ole Miss. I hope both he and Leach are here for the next ten years. That would be great for Mississippi as a whole and I think both of our teams can be a factor in the SEC and have some good success in the coming years.

Bama-CVG UGA-Michigan I think UGA stays in. I do agree that some other teams would have had a chance but their resumes are not strong enough. I still maintain that Utah is the hottest team in the nation and nobody really wants to play them right now. Obviously, the two early losses killed their CFP chances. Also, I agree that Ole Miss - Baylor has the makings of a good game in the Sugar.

Jackson is really the best but MS is just plain subpar these days. Starkville & Hattiesburg are generally the best venues stadium wise and location wise. With 25,45 and 82 four lane now, getting to Starkville is not so bad compared to the old days. Oxford, unfortunately is just too far North and is not as easy to get to even with the improvement in highways. But in any case, nothing is quite ideal because there is going to be travel for some teams each year regardless.

Those games in the earlier rounds would still be on campus. With regard to the State Championship games , that very thing just happened last night. Brandon & Madison Central traveled to Hattiesburg to play when Memorial Stadium would have been ideal. But yes, there is an inherent risk with the final game creating travel issues for one or more teams regardless of the location of the games.

That has been discussed here off and on over the years. Because MS has a long distance N-S and a relatively short distance E-W, the North-South configuration seems to have worked the best with respect to geography, travel etc. However with the much improved highway system (lots 4 lane highways now), changing to something like you propose might carry more merit. I know they want to avoid a Corinth traveling to St. Stanislaus or something similar during the earlier rounds of the playoffs.