TEXAS A&M to SEC... All they wanna know is.... Who's comin' with them?!
This is kind of a follow-up to my post about College Football Conference Realignment, but this time it's real and it just might happen in the next few months! Some sources even report some major changes possibly before the end of August! Here's the link to the original conference realignment post.... http://raisedsoutherncatholic.blogspot.com/2011/07/southern-catholic-tackles-college.html
QUICK POST: After listening to a popular SEC radio show on the way home today I discovered that instead of my pipe dreams of all kinds of heavy hitters and video game-esque customized conferences, the experts foresee a different scenario happening to the SEC. Here's just a little of what I think about.
SEC WEST:
Texas A&M: aka "Home of the 12th Man" is pretty much a lock for joining the SEC West. Now, looking back Texas A&M has always been kind of the Auburn of the state of Texas, kinda looking up toward the Longhorns for guidance. I've never really heard anything bad out of them, but then again, never really heard anything good. I couldn't tell you the last time they won a conference championship or National Championship. But I'm pretty sure it was a while ago.
Another idea that comes to my head is that if A&M joins, all 3 of the teams Bear Bryant head coached will be in the same conference (if I missed one, I'm sorry, I normally wouldn't be so careless with Bear facts, but these are the main ones).
This doesn't excuse them from being sanctuary to Dennis Franchione after departing the Tide just as he was getting them back on track, thus igniting "The Shula Years".... There's a special place in Hell for you Coach Fran....right next to all those bobble heads.
OKLAHOMA, OKY STATE & MIZZOU: These teams were also mentioned in the possible move to the SEC. It is my personal opinion that a team in the Southeastern Conference should at least be in the Southeast. The only one I could possibly see being anywhere geographically possible is MIZZOU & we already have VANDY. So why do we need another cellar dweller?
It seems that the sudden urge to drop kick the Big 12 stems from Texas' TV deal with ESPN or something along these lines. Whatever it is, it just doesn't seem like these OU, OSU and MIZZOU should be able to join the SEC just because Mack Brown & Co. are a little on the stingy side.
SEC EAST: Here's the tricky part, please feel free to chime in on this portion of this post. The SEC East would inevitably have to take on a few extra teams, directly proportionate to the number of teams the West took. So who would it be?
Will they go with my picks of Georgia Tech (personal favorite) & Virginia Tech from my previous post (see link in first paragraph)? Would you go with these or in a totally different direction?
Would they go with what everyone is pretty much saying and kind of hoping they will go with: Clemson and Florida State? That wouldn't be a bad deal. We'd have Clemson aka "Auburn with a lake" in the SEC East. And Florida State is kind of a like a weird maroon version of LSU if you think about it.
I didn't have a lot of time to post. But, since it seems like it's more real than just something to talk about until September 3rd I wanted to see what everyone else thought about this.
So if you've got an opinion, comment, different angle or just think this will never happen and is all a big rumor mill to get us through to kickoff, just let me know!! I'm on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Southern-Catholic/212886652095591 OR, you can just comment on here
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
COLLEGE FOOTBALL COUNTDOWN: CAM NEWTON vs. TIM TEBOW
@TheSouthCath
Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed my twist on College Football Conference Realignment. I'm sure you all quit reading after I moved Texas to the SEC. That was kinda like Dale Jr. going to Hendrick Motorsports a few years ago. It just ain't right.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how the reign of Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy & Sam Bradford or what I called the "Era of Quarterbacks" is now over. Tim Tebow obviously being the best and most well known of these three. I thought that was it for super human quarterbacks for a while until the great grinning Cam Newton came on the scene last year and angered but amazed everyone within a 2,000 mile radius of western Georgia or where ever Auburn is.
This has me wondering which was better and more memorable. Is Tim Tebow more legendary than Cam Newton because he managed two National Championships and actually went head to head with Sam Bradford (who I would consider 3rd on the list).
Is Cam Newton's fly by night, James Dean-esque college football career more spectacular because of what he had to work with?
For me to evaluate this issue I'll need to have the first of many "Out of Bama Experiences"... At first I thought I this would be painful to do since I blame referees for everything from a dropped pass to a traffic jam on I-59 after a Bama game.
Now if this were a legitimate journalistic outlet you'd see a lot more facts here. But since those aren't any fun, I'll cut down on the facts and pile on the opinions of most SEC fans. Also, comments on this post are welcome because I'm sure I'll miss something. And I'd also like to hear other sides of the story.
I'll start with the teams each of these real life super heroes had the pleasure of playing for as well as achievements earned there. And while they both played for Florida, lets just toss Cam's time as a Gator out the window and only talk about his stellar career as an Auburn Tiger Eagle thingy.
THE TEAMS:
TIM TEBOW: Tebow played for the Florida Gators during a time of prosperity. Under Urban Meyer he'd get the chance to go steam roll some of the best defensive linemen and defensive backs the SEC and nation had to offer ( just watch the last half of the 2008-09 NC game if you don't believe me ).
He was given the nickname "Superman" and it was even said that Superman wore Tim Tebow Pajamas.
Part of two National Championships, Tebow was considered by many as the greatest college football player of all time. Where would we be right now without the "Tebow pass" into the back of the endzone? It was the least complicated of all his strategy but was one of the most celebrated plays on his highlight reels. How else would wimpy kids playing pickup football be able to act like a legendary QB without being able to just toss a football sideways like a girl while yelling "TEBOW!"??
But besides Tebow, Florida was loaded with explosive players on both sides of the ball. A one legged, blind QB could have won 8 or 9 games by just dumping it off to these beasts of the backfield and to the sticky fingered wide receivers & tight ends.
The fact that he was backup during the 2006 National Championship season proved what kind of depth Florida had. These Gators weren't just about Tebow, but it sure didn't hurt having him. Right Shula?
Possibly one of the most memorable moments in his career was "The Tebow Speech" which came after a crushing defeat in The Swamp at the hands of Ole Miss (probably the last SEC game Ole Miss won, seriously). The speech featured Tim, teary eyed (shocker) and promising to his team, coaches, fans and the world that this team would go all the way and he'd work real hard and feed some children or something.
It's a shame that the last memorable moment of his college career was a close up of a tear stained Bible verse in the Georgia dome, but I digress.
CAM NEWTON: Here we have a real specimen. Mr. Confetti Snow Angel himself: Cam Newton! Now let me get it out of the way, that even though I'm a Bama fan I enjoyed watching some Cam Newton. I once compared it to watching the election results when Obama got elected, I didn't really want him to win, but it was amazing and historic when he did.
Cam Newton played for a team that for the most part was one snap away from being Kentucky's towel boy. If the grinnin' Scamperin' sCameron hadn't chosen to transfer to Auburn the poor Auburn Family might be basking in the glory of the Emerald Nuts Bowl as we speak.
The depth chart on the defensive side of the ball was deep and rich with experience for Tigers last year. This is didn't stop many teams from putting up monster numbers on them only to have their leads brushed away and all hopes of a win destroyed. Was it because of a mass amount of talent gracing every position on either side of the ball? I don't think so. The only factor in Auburn's National Championship run last year, as everyone else has already figured out, was Cam Newton.
Cam Newton's raw talent contributed to the Tiger's season so much that it even gave the fans and coaches a shot in the arm, and it was only 57 years too late. The way that coaches, players, fans, pundits all road the coat tails of this JUCO transfer to glory was something the world hasn't seen since the Jackson Five and may never see again at this magnitude.
Much like being an intern for Bill Clinton makes you vicariously famous by association, being anywhere near the Auburn program in 2010 made you automatically a master of whatever sect of the football team you specialized in.
Perhaps the biggest example of this comes from Auburn Head Coach Gene Chizik. Chizik has cashed in bigger than anyone off of Cam's ability to tote it and throw it. From a book deal, to a book tour, one would think Paul "Bear" Bryant has came back in a Buzz Lightyear Halloween costume.
Much like an entrepreneur who considers himself a great business after winning the lottery a year into opening his first business. By piggyback riding that #2 jersey, Gene Chizik has convinced us all he's worlds better at coaching than he truly is.
In my opinion its the team that Cam Newton had to carry on his shoulders for 14 games that almost makes him a notch more legendary than the great Tim Tebow.
It's funny that the last game of his college career had to be won by a field goal, rather than a grinning, diving somersault into the end zone.
OFF THE FIELD & OTHER STIGMA:
TIM TEBOW: While bad stigmas and off the field woes are few and far between for a player that only had one unsportsmanlike penalty in his entire career, there are a few stigmas that go with Tebow that we just can't overlook.
Tebow was admired as a golden boy, superman and invincible. I think it's for this reason that so many of us wanted to see him lose, stumble or even get put out of a game.
We all got to see this during the Florida v. Kentucky game in 2009. During this game we got to see one of the most epic "YOU GOT KNOCKED THE @#$% OUT!" moments in modern history. While it's never good to see a fellow human being go down like this, we couldn't look away. My only regret is that I wasn't watching live. I was eating at a Mexican restaurant and got a phone call from a coworker saying: "DUDE! ARE YOU WATCHING THIS?!?" "TEBOW JUST GOT KNOCKED THE &$@# OUT!"... Of course, I went straight home and flipped on ESPN for the all night Tebow Nugget-Knocking Festival. And I'm sure I wasn't alone.
Honestly, I'm having a little trouble trying to find other negative things about Tebow, other than his beating of Alabama in 2008. The truth is, probably his only fault is he has little fault. And this makes people not like him. I'm not sure why this is, I guess you'd call it human nature. I think a lot of damage was done by sports pundits & talking heads who pegged him as a super man who could do no wrong. We all just got tired of hearing about how great this kid was so we just started digging for things to dislike.
BUT, even though this list of Tim Tebow stigmas is very short... It can't end without mentioning his last real game of college football, and I'm not talking about the bowl game Cincinnati, because that game was pointless & wasn't worth the TV time slot it occupied.
No, boys and girls, I'm speaking of course of the 2009 SEC Championship game against The Alabama Crimson Tide. In this game the Gators and Tebow came in expecting to be on a bus to Pasadena as soon as the clock hit double "0's."
Instead they were met with a defense that was like a brick wall. Tebow's golden passes were plucked from the air like a fat kid eating monkey bread on Thanksgiving.
And perhaps this game wouldn't have been so detrimental to his stigma and legacy had it not been for one close-up television shot of him crying his eyes out on the sideline. This sparked thousands of chain text messages, social media postings and even a demotivational poster that portrayed a box of tissues with a caption that read "Because somewhere, Tim Tebow is crying."
CAM NEWTON: Unlike Tebow, Cam Newton has had his fair share of off the field troubles.
The most obvious would be his pay for play scandal and the infamous laptop out the window deal while he was still at Florida. But, I feel like these scandals have been beat to death and do not need repeated and rehashed here on my little blog. So, I'm just going to write about what bothers me about Cam Newton and probably most of you.
"All he does is GRIN GRIN GRIN no matter what!".... Cam Newton's smile is like a ninja turtle on school picture day. The biggest smile in college football quickly gets under the calmest man's skin when mixed with confetti snow angels, crowd surfing and being able to practically escape any defense's advances with little difficulty. It was once said that Cam Newton's grin could be seen from the space shuttle.. I'm not sure how true that is, but you get the point.
Another thing is that I swear I saw him through a pass and catch it himself. This kid was so good, it hurt to watch but was even more harmful to turn away because you might miss something. And much like Tebow, a lot of people's issues with Newton came from TV announcers talking about him 24/7.... When Auburn was playing they didn't talk about Auburn and Chizik and how good the staff and supporting cast were, they talked about "CAAAAM NEWTON!" It did not matter what he was doing, they were in love. I don't think it got much worse than his CAMeo on the sideline during the 2010 SEC Championship game where he introduced a sideline reporter to "Cammy-Cam Juice." The reporter of course drank the sharpie labeled Gatorade mixture while the human jack-o-lantern pranced away grinning like a mad man laughing in disbelief that the "Cammy-Cam Juice" got drank on national TV. To this day I don't think anyone knows what was it in.
Finally, the last thing about Cam Newton I can complain about is that he's gone. I know it sounds crazy, but like I mentioned earlier, this is an "out of Bama experience." I'm still anti-Auburn & I still fantasize about the NCAA dropping the hammer. But, I had more fun while watching and keeping track of Cam Newton's year at Auburn than I've had with any one player in a long time. Not one of my Bama fan brethren can tell me they didn't stop and watch a news clip with the big #2 on it or read every newspaper article just wondering what they were going to say or what he was going to do next.
Without Cam Newton we wouldn't have phrases to make fun of like "All In!", "Haters Gone Hate!" or the great "Where the good Lord be blessin, the devil be messin!"
And who can forget all those awesome Cam Newton jokes that were totally acceptable to say anywhere including church! While most of them were just Chuck Norris jokes with the name changed, but a few were worth their weight in gold.
Also, without Cammy-Cam I wouldn't have been inspired to write this song, to the tune of "The Beverly Hillbillies" theme song:
Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed my twist on College Football Conference Realignment. I'm sure you all quit reading after I moved Texas to the SEC. That was kinda like Dale Jr. going to Hendrick Motorsports a few years ago. It just ain't right.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how the reign of Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy & Sam Bradford or what I called the "Era of Quarterbacks" is now over. Tim Tebow obviously being the best and most well known of these three. I thought that was it for super human quarterbacks for a while until the great grinning Cam Newton came on the scene last year and angered but amazed everyone within a 2,000 mile radius of western Georgia or where ever Auburn is.
This has me wondering which was better and more memorable. Is Tim Tebow more legendary than Cam Newton because he managed two National Championships and actually went head to head with Sam Bradford (who I would consider 3rd on the list).
Is Cam Newton's fly by night, James Dean-esque college football career more spectacular because of what he had to work with?
For me to evaluate this issue I'll need to have the first of many "Out of Bama Experiences"... At first I thought I this would be painful to do since I blame referees for everything from a dropped pass to a traffic jam on I-59 after a Bama game.
Now if this were a legitimate journalistic outlet you'd see a lot more facts here. But since those aren't any fun, I'll cut down on the facts and pile on the opinions of most SEC fans. Also, comments on this post are welcome because I'm sure I'll miss something. And I'd also like to hear other sides of the story.
I'll start with the teams each of these real life super heroes had the pleasure of playing for as well as achievements earned there. And while they both played for Florida, lets just toss Cam's time as a Gator out the window and only talk about his stellar career as an Auburn Tiger Eagle thingy.
THE TEAMS:
TIM TEBOW: Tebow played for the Florida Gators during a time of prosperity. Under Urban Meyer he'd get the chance to go steam roll some of the best defensive linemen and defensive backs the SEC and nation had to offer ( just watch the last half of the 2008-09 NC game if you don't believe me ).
He was given the nickname "Superman" and it was even said that Superman wore Tim Tebow Pajamas.
Part of two National Championships, Tebow was considered by many as the greatest college football player of all time. Where would we be right now without the "Tebow pass" into the back of the endzone? It was the least complicated of all his strategy but was one of the most celebrated plays on his highlight reels. How else would wimpy kids playing pickup football be able to act like a legendary QB without being able to just toss a football sideways like a girl while yelling "TEBOW!"??
But besides Tebow, Florida was loaded with explosive players on both sides of the ball. A one legged, blind QB could have won 8 or 9 games by just dumping it off to these beasts of the backfield and to the sticky fingered wide receivers & tight ends.
The fact that he was backup during the 2006 National Championship season proved what kind of depth Florida had. These Gators weren't just about Tebow, but it sure didn't hurt having him. Right Shula?
Possibly one of the most memorable moments in his career was "The Tebow Speech" which came after a crushing defeat in The Swamp at the hands of Ole Miss (probably the last SEC game Ole Miss won, seriously). The speech featured Tim, teary eyed (shocker) and promising to his team, coaches, fans and the world that this team would go all the way and he'd work real hard and feed some children or something.
It's a shame that the last memorable moment of his college career was a close up of a tear stained Bible verse in the Georgia dome, but I digress.
CAM NEWTON: Here we have a real specimen. Mr. Confetti Snow Angel himself: Cam Newton! Now let me get it out of the way, that even though I'm a Bama fan I enjoyed watching some Cam Newton. I once compared it to watching the election results when Obama got elected, I didn't really want him to win, but it was amazing and historic when he did.
Cam Newton played for a team that for the most part was one snap away from being Kentucky's towel boy. If the grinnin' Scamperin' sCameron hadn't chosen to transfer to Auburn the poor Auburn Family might be basking in the glory of the Emerald Nuts Bowl as we speak.
The depth chart on the defensive side of the ball was deep and rich with experience for Tigers last year. This is didn't stop many teams from putting up monster numbers on them only to have their leads brushed away and all hopes of a win destroyed. Was it because of a mass amount of talent gracing every position on either side of the ball? I don't think so. The only factor in Auburn's National Championship run last year, as everyone else has already figured out, was Cam Newton.
Cam Newton's raw talent contributed to the Tiger's season so much that it even gave the fans and coaches a shot in the arm, and it was only 57 years too late. The way that coaches, players, fans, pundits all road the coat tails of this JUCO transfer to glory was something the world hasn't seen since the Jackson Five and may never see again at this magnitude.
Much like being an intern for Bill Clinton makes you vicariously famous by association, being anywhere near the Auburn program in 2010 made you automatically a master of whatever sect of the football team you specialized in.
Perhaps the biggest example of this comes from Auburn Head Coach Gene Chizik. Chizik has cashed in bigger than anyone off of Cam's ability to tote it and throw it. From a book deal, to a book tour, one would think Paul "Bear" Bryant has came back in a Buzz Lightyear Halloween costume.
Much like an entrepreneur who considers himself a great business after winning the lottery a year into opening his first business. By piggyback riding that #2 jersey, Gene Chizik has convinced us all he's worlds better at coaching than he truly is.
In my opinion its the team that Cam Newton had to carry on his shoulders for 14 games that almost makes him a notch more legendary than the great Tim Tebow.
It's funny that the last game of his college career had to be won by a field goal, rather than a grinning, diving somersault into the end zone.
OFF THE FIELD & OTHER STIGMA:
TIM TEBOW: While bad stigmas and off the field woes are few and far between for a player that only had one unsportsmanlike penalty in his entire career, there are a few stigmas that go with Tebow that we just can't overlook.
Tebow was admired as a golden boy, superman and invincible. I think it's for this reason that so many of us wanted to see him lose, stumble or even get put out of a game.
We all got to see this during the Florida v. Kentucky game in 2009. During this game we got to see one of the most epic "YOU GOT KNOCKED THE @#$% OUT!" moments in modern history. While it's never good to see a fellow human being go down like this, we couldn't look away. My only regret is that I wasn't watching live. I was eating at a Mexican restaurant and got a phone call from a coworker saying: "DUDE! ARE YOU WATCHING THIS?!?" "TEBOW JUST GOT KNOCKED THE &$@# OUT!"... Of course, I went straight home and flipped on ESPN for the all night Tebow Nugget-Knocking Festival. And I'm sure I wasn't alone.
Honestly, I'm having a little trouble trying to find other negative things about Tebow, other than his beating of Alabama in 2008. The truth is, probably his only fault is he has little fault. And this makes people not like him. I'm not sure why this is, I guess you'd call it human nature. I think a lot of damage was done by sports pundits & talking heads who pegged him as a super man who could do no wrong. We all just got tired of hearing about how great this kid was so we just started digging for things to dislike.
BUT, even though this list of Tim Tebow stigmas is very short... It can't end without mentioning his last real game of college football, and I'm not talking about the bowl game Cincinnati, because that game was pointless & wasn't worth the TV time slot it occupied.
No, boys and girls, I'm speaking of course of the 2009 SEC Championship game against The Alabama Crimson Tide. In this game the Gators and Tebow came in expecting to be on a bus to Pasadena as soon as the clock hit double "0's."
Instead they were met with a defense that was like a brick wall. Tebow's golden passes were plucked from the air like a fat kid eating monkey bread on Thanksgiving.
And perhaps this game wouldn't have been so detrimental to his stigma and legacy had it not been for one close-up television shot of him crying his eyes out on the sideline. This sparked thousands of chain text messages, social media postings and even a demotivational poster that portrayed a box of tissues with a caption that read "Because somewhere, Tim Tebow is crying."
CAM NEWTON: Unlike Tebow, Cam Newton has had his fair share of off the field troubles.
The most obvious would be his pay for play scandal and the infamous laptop out the window deal while he was still at Florida. But, I feel like these scandals have been beat to death and do not need repeated and rehashed here on my little blog. So, I'm just going to write about what bothers me about Cam Newton and probably most of you.
"All he does is GRIN GRIN GRIN no matter what!".... Cam Newton's smile is like a ninja turtle on school picture day. The biggest smile in college football quickly gets under the calmest man's skin when mixed with confetti snow angels, crowd surfing and being able to practically escape any defense's advances with little difficulty. It was once said that Cam Newton's grin could be seen from the space shuttle.. I'm not sure how true that is, but you get the point.
Another thing is that I swear I saw him through a pass and catch it himself. This kid was so good, it hurt to watch but was even more harmful to turn away because you might miss something. And much like Tebow, a lot of people's issues with Newton came from TV announcers talking about him 24/7.... When Auburn was playing they didn't talk about Auburn and Chizik and how good the staff and supporting cast were, they talked about "CAAAAM NEWTON!" It did not matter what he was doing, they were in love. I don't think it got much worse than his CAMeo on the sideline during the 2010 SEC Championship game where he introduced a sideline reporter to "Cammy-Cam Juice." The reporter of course drank the sharpie labeled Gatorade mixture while the human jack-o-lantern pranced away grinning like a mad man laughing in disbelief that the "Cammy-Cam Juice" got drank on national TV. To this day I don't think anyone knows what was it in.
Finally, the last thing about Cam Newton I can complain about is that he's gone. I know it sounds crazy, but like I mentioned earlier, this is an "out of Bama experience." I'm still anti-Auburn & I still fantasize about the NCAA dropping the hammer. But, I had more fun while watching and keeping track of Cam Newton's year at Auburn than I've had with any one player in a long time. Not one of my Bama fan brethren can tell me they didn't stop and watch a news clip with the big #2 on it or read every newspaper article just wondering what they were going to say or what he was going to do next.
Without Cam Newton we wouldn't have phrases to make fun of like "All In!", "Haters Gone Hate!" or the great "Where the good Lord be blessin, the devil be messin!"
And who can forget all those awesome Cam Newton jokes that were totally acceptable to say anywhere including church! While most of them were just Chuck Norris jokes with the name changed, but a few were worth their weight in gold.
Also, without Cammy-Cam I wouldn't have been inspired to write this song, to the tune of "The Beverly Hillbillies" theme song:
Come and listen to my story bout a man named Cam
Gettin' paid to play, barners didn't give a damn
They's-a winnin' every game, even cheated passed the Tiiiiiide
They didn't care that in 6 months their program would get fried!
Pretty good, huh? That's what I thought.
Anyway, that's been my sad attempt to decide which QB was more legendary/better. I don't think an answer is out there, but I want to hear what others think.
Post your comments and let me see what I've missed and where I was wrong or just completely screwed up.
@TheSouthCath
@TheSouthCath
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