Enthused as Missouri is for Saturday’s conference-life-changing contest against Georgia, the other SEC newcomer is equally stoked, and even had a few extra days to load up the emotion. Because a hurricane postponed Texas A&M’s opener in Louisiana last Friday, the Aggies’ next opponent — Florida at Kyle Field — has become their first.
During his weekly SEC conference call with the media on Wednesday, Missouri coach Gary Pinkel reiterated that junior defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson’s comments about Georgia last week were not OK.
Missouri has extended athletic director Mike Alden’s contact through 2019, the school announced Thursday.
Leave it to the SEC to be in the middle of all the big college football stories on opening weekend – from teams that play to those that don’t. There’s a prime-time matchup Thursday with South Carolina and Steve Spurrier (above) visiting Vanderbilt. And Texas A&M is involved in the season’s first weather postponement because of Hurricane Isaac.
The most famous recruitment of an SEC football player in recent memory turned out to be a Heisman Trophy winner named Cam Newton and a program that turned out to be the national champion at Auburn.
The football coach in black paced back and forth, pointing toward the projector screen at the front of the room. He had a message he wanted to send.
The graying, burly preacher’s son from Alabama wasn’t interested in becoming a trailblazer or a college football pioneer.
The man in cowboy boots is supposed to fix things, at least for a short time. Arkansas' John L. Smith is the latest Southeastern Conference coach with a mess on his hands. Smith's predecessor, Bobby Petrino (above), lost his job after he and his mistress had a motorcycle accident.
You’ve probably heard that the Southeastern Conference is insane, but you can’t possibly know it until you live it. Even those who live it sometimes can’t believe what reality looks and sounds like.
Ever since Georgia’s Herschel Walker stormed onto the college football scene, the Southeastern Conference has attracted a reputation for producing players with game-changing talent. Today, defensive linemen are the rage, and the nation’s top recruit also happens to be from the state.
Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama was part of all that once separated this land and its people. But occasionally change is pushed along by something as simple as the idea that, if blacks and whites can play together, maybe they can live together, too.
Once again, the Southeastern Conference reigns supreme. In the preseason Associated Press poll released Saturday morning, five SEC teams are ranked among the top 10 teams in the nation.
Joe Beasman Hall spent his childhood in a place called Cynthiana, a quiet little town in the north-central part of Kentucky. This was the final years of the depression, right up through World War II, and Hall passed the time the way a lot of Kentucky boys did: With a basketball.
One of Langston Moore’s favorite memories of his playing days at South Carolina also doubles as a testament to the seriousness with which Southerners take their football.
Few SEC schools have received more national attention for their traditions than Ole Miss. Tailgating on The Grove, a 10-acre plot on campus shaded by oak trees, represents the best of those traditions. Other traditions at the school, however, have proved to be controversial.
In the land of Rocky Top and the Pride of the Southland Band, the place where Brigadier General Robert Neyland coached and quarterback Peyton Manning starred, where 102,000 fans cram into Neyland Stadium, a young woman from Clarksville built something that even the good ol’ boys could love.
The first thing they remember is Steve Spurrier’s memory. Even 15 and 20 years later, he can recall downs and distances, situations and words that just stuck in his mind. The journalists who doubted him more than two decades ago? The fellow Southeastern Conference coaches who thought he was a gimmick coach? Yes, he remembers them, too.
The landscape shift of conference realignment didn’t start with Texas A&M. But the fault lines of the Aggies’ move to the Southeastern Conference from the Big 12 stretch across all major conferences, with potentially far-reaching consequences.
Robert Stillwell of Oxford, Ala., grabbed a chair outside the velvet ropes and watched his wife, Johnnie Sue, go to work.
Missouri coach Gary Pinkel confirmed Thursday that he expects senior left guard Travis Ruth and redshirt freshman offensive tackle Taylor Chappell to miss the season because of injury. The news is the latest blow to a line that has suffered a rash of injuries since fall camp opened.
All eyes were on the big quarterback wearing the green No. 1 jersey Thursday, each searching for the slightest tell. James Franklin’s first public performance since he injured his shoulder during spring practice also doubled as Missouri’s first football practice of the fall.
College football coaches have the sport picking up where it left off last season, with a pair of SEC West teams atop the 2012 USA Today preseason poll. The SEC has seven teams in the top 25, the Big 12 six, including Kansas State at No. 21.
Gary Pinkel is honest when he says he and Nick Saban don’t speak much. Both men are driven, and thanks to the grind of coaching college football, they’re also busy, too.
Tennessee, which won the first BCS championship and had double-digit wins in nine of coach Phil Fulmer’s 16-plus seasons, is skidding. The Vols are coming off a 5-7 year, a third losing record in the last four, and the worst conference record (1-7) since the SEC commenced in 1933.
Mark Richt is fairly entrenched at Georgia these days, going on his 12th year as head coach. But in 2000, when he was an up-and-coming offensive coordinator for Florida State, both he and Gary Pinkel — who was the head coach at Toledo at the time — both interviewed for the Missouri job.
