Wednesdays with Willy: Bobby Bowden, Ole Miss, and a New SEC School

Despite my refocus toward the college football world and only that, I can’t – nor do I want to – cover everything. But

Did Bobby Bowden get a raw deal by having to vacate wins? I am not sure that I can accurately answer this question without knowing all of the facts. The major question that I would like answered is whether or not Bobby knew about the cheating scandal and turned a blind eye to it. If that were the case, than I have no problem whatsoever with the NCAA making him vacate some of his wins. However, I sort of find it hard to believe that he knew anything about it. Looking at my life, if I did something illegal or unethical, would the CEO of my company or even my direct boss know about it? Probably not until I got caught. Bobby, being the CEO of that team (and some would say that university) probably fits in that same mold.

I am also not sure that cheating on some online tests really helped out their football team all that much. I guess it may have boosted some GPAs and made an athlete or two eligible that would not have been, but I don’t know if that ultimately produced more wins for FSU as a team. I also don’t think that you should punish future players for what past players did – such as taking away schollies or banning FSU from post season bowl games. So it’s a fine line that the NCAA has to walk to make the punishment fair to those that had really nothing to do with it but also harsh enough that it will keep FSU (and other schools) from doing the same thing in the future. I think that any coaches or graduate assistants that were involved should be fired and banned from coaching at the college level again – that includes Bobby if he knew. Assuming he didn’t know, I am not against stripping the team itself of the wins to show that this was a team-wide issue, but leaving the wins for Bobby and the rest of the coaching staff.

Does Ole Miss really have a shot at winning the SEC? Or has everyone had too much Rebel Kool-Aid? Of course Ole Miss has a realistic shot of winning the SEC. But so does LSU, Alabama, UF, and Georgia. I think the SEC is rather top heavy this year and I believe the 5 teams I just mentioned will be the class of the conference. I guess the question I would ask to anyone who asks me this question is why wouldn’t Ole Miss have a good shot of winning the SEC? Looking at their season last year, it was definitely a tale of two halves. In the first 6 games of the season they lost games at Wake Forest and against Vanderbilt and South Carolina at home. Each of these games was lost by a touchdown or less. Oh yeah, and they beat the Gators at the Swamp. In the second half of the season they were flat out on fire. After losing to Alabama at Tuscaloosa by 4 points in week 7, they went on to win their last 6 games including one at LSU and one against Texas Tech in the great state of Texas by an average margin of victory of 24.5 points. Isn’t that what you want from a young team with a brand new head coach and new offensive system…improvement throughout the year? This year their schedule gets even easier. Ole Miss’s out of conference games are against Memphis, SE Louisiana, UAB and Northern Arizona. That’s 4 wins – not that those matter for the SEC crown. Not one of their SEC away games (USC, Vandy, Auburn and MSU) is against one of the true powerhouses and they don’t have to play the two big dawgs in the SEC East (UF, UGA). Ole Miss returns 9 starters on offense including Jevan Snead (QB), Cordera Eason (RB), Dexter McCluster (WR), and first team pre-season All-SEC OL John Jerry. They also return 8 starters on defense, including DE and sack specialist Greg Hardy. The only thing they have going against them is that they can’t sneak up on anyone this year. I think the LSU vs. Ole Miss game will determine the winner of the SEC West and who knows what can happen in Atlanta come early December.

What school not in the SEC would make a good addition? Let me preface this that I am only thinking about this on a football related level and not taking into account other sports. With that said, if you are going to put a team into the SEC than you first must take one out because no one wants a conference with an odd number of members (cough…Big Ten…cough). If I had to take out a team it would be Vanderbilt. There are too small and too prestigious of an academic school to be included with us drunken fools. It would be easy for me to say replace them with FSU or Miami or USF, but I really don’t want any of those teams in the SEC. Especially USF…they haven’t been around or good long enough to warrant their inclusion in the premiere conference in the nation. And FSU and Miami are fine the way they are – in fact I liked it better when UF, FSU and Miami were all in different conferences, but that’s just me. So my choice to replace Vandy would be Clemson. There is something about Clemson that I really like. They are in the South, a rival of an SEC school (USC) that really doesn’t have a true rival in the league yet, a decent university with good looking co-eds, and an above-average partying school from everything I have heard. That’s a recipe for success in the SEC. The only thing is that they would need to change their colors as they are way too close to UF’s colors.