George Hayduke

The problem is, the two teams who finished in the top 5 last year may be the only ones who finish above .500. UGA probably will as well, but they've had a lot of losses (including a huge one in Aaron Murray) and that defense was already weak at best last year. I could easily see this playing out: SC: 11-1 Mizz: 10-2 UGA: 8-4 Tenn: 6-6 UF: 5-7 Vandy: 5-7 UK: 3-9 There's some optimistic booking there and doesn't include one or more of the teams getting upset. 4 out of 7 teams being .500 or worse is pretty pitiful for an SEC conference. As for Florida, Muschamp is going to have to prove he's good enough to turn this team around. I'm not sold at all that the recruiting classes have developed properly - for the first time in a couple of decades they looked slow and bad last year - and Muschamp is incapable of/unwilling to adjust his system to fit the players on the field. Tennessee has quite a lot of young talent at the skill positions and though they're unproven, I think we'll get quality contributions out of guys like Jalen Hurd and Josh Malone. That said, the defensive line is brand new and the offensive line has 1 guy who's started a game (Marcus Jackson) in college. We've got a bright future if Butch and staff are better than I think they are on the field, but this year we'll do well to win 6 games. Last year's Tennessee team was considerably better than this year's - QB and CB were the only positions of question last year and both lines were very, very good going into the year. We did beat SC, but we also lost to 4-8 Florida (thanks Butch) and Vandy and nearly lost to South Alabama. I also tend to think calling the SEC east pitiful is overstating a bit. Ranking based on expected W-L records is of course misleading b/c all conferences are not created equal and teams within those conferences play each other more often. On most preseason rankings I've seen where statistical adjustments are made for SoS, four SEC east teams are ranked in the top 30 (SCar, UGA, Mizz, UF) and both Tenn and Vandy are ranked above the 50th percentile (that is, at least average). Only UK is a bottom-feeder. I think Mizz will be a tough team but a bit weaker than last year. UGAs offense is definitely good, but they have some serious holes in their defensive secondary that I think will be exploited by many teams. Also UF has a legit top ten defense but their offense looks to be atrocious. I predict the east will fall out something like this: SC: 10-2 UGA: 9-3 Mizz: 9-3 UF: 7-5 Tenn: 5-7 Vandy: 5-7 UK: 2-10

Atari, then NES, which in my mind was the pinacle of video game systems. Eventually got a Genesis when I was in high school simply for the sports games and Sonic, but always felt it was inferior to the NES. That was near the end of my video gaming days though and I've never owned a video game console since.

I'll jump on the lurker love train as well. I've been reading the boards here as a guest for probably 8 years or so, but only recently signed up for a profile to make keeping up with posts easier. It's only been in the past few years that I wasn't intimidated by all of the SABR voodoo, but still don't know how much I'd be able to contribute to the conversations without showing my ignorance. And you should be nervous David...I can only imagine there are dozens of people like me who have been reading your posts for years from the shadows of NSBB. Kind of creepy if you think about it. *Slips silently back into a dark corner of the room*