It was an awesome Media Days in Hoover. Thought S was excellent with his comments on taking care of players. He’s a good man. Seems happy with his new granddaughter. He took a hilarious shot at the media at the end talking about the futility of our picking the winners of the SEC East and West saying we’ve missed five years in a row and adding, “We’re evluating you.” Classic. Gus did an excellent job as well. Wow, Bama and AU will be special. AU has an outstanding offense with Nick and company. Hopefully, Nick has his issues in order. AU’s defense will be a lot better this year. There are some really good athletes on that side of the ball. It should come down to AU and Bama. though LSU is loaded albeit with some young talent, and an unproven young quarterback, so there may be some struggles for them at times. ‘Bama’s summer will be interesting at the quarterback spot. But there is massive talent around the signal caller whether it’s Blake Sims or Jacob Coker. Derrick Henry, wow, what a phenom. And T.J. will be back and as good as ever. The line needs to develop, but they should. Opener vs. West Virginia should be an interesting game. AU plays Arkansas at home in their opener. Both good games and good gauges on the team early.

Ole Miss has good talent, State has good talent. Arkansas is coming along. I may be in a minority, but I kind of like Bielema. He’s kind of refreshing in his comments. He’s honest and just says what he thinks. Little Ball Coach-like in that regard. They’ll be better. And A&M is loaded with a lot of young talented players, but again, an unproven quarterback, so we’ll see how that develops. They open at South Carolina on Thursday, August 28th, @ 6 PM ET/5 CT on the SEC Network. Directv and ESPN need to come through on that contract.

In the East, I like Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. Will Muschamp named about every player on his roster Monday in his press conference. It was amazing. He’s got a lot of talent. His offense is going to be very good  under new OC Kurt Roper, who came from Duke where he had pretty prolific offenses. He also coached Eli Manning at Ole Mis. The guy is proven. He’ll do great things with the Gators’ O. And the defense is young, but highly talented, and Will can sure coach’em up. Ball Coach was as entertaining as ever. Just such a refreshing, fun guy. Ball Coach enjoys life. He’s a very serious football coach, but he also has fun with it. He’s going to have an exceptional offense. I believe his quarterback, Dylan Thompson, can get the job done.His defense will need to come through though for them to be really special. There are some question marks on that side of the ball, particularly up front.

I was very impressed with Coach Richt. He seems happy too, like S, because he just had a grandchild. I’ve always liked him. He’s a high character guy. He’s got a very good football team. I trust his quarterback. Hudson Mason, to be a good player this year. Todd Gurley should go off. Defense has a stud coaching them in Jeremy Pruitt, and Tracy Rocker coaching the line and Kevin Shearer, another proven defensive coach, coaching the linebackers, so they will be well coached. Do they have enough on defense right now? Coach Richt has recruited well always, so there should be some pretty good talent there. So I like those three to be competing for the East. Georgia @ SC @ 3:30 PM ET/2:30 CT on CBS Saturday, Sept. 13th at Williams Brice Stadium in Columbia, will be colossally huge. Vandy is going to be pretty competitive as is Missouri, which does return a pretty good quarterback in Maty Mauck, and some other good players. Kentucky is getting better. Stoops is recruiting well. And  while Butch Jones is recruiting well at UT, he’s probably a year away from being highly competitive. But they’ll be competitive this year.

So I’m not going to make an absolute prediction without seeing one game each team plays. I guarantee I will have SEC predictions after week one. I like Alabama and Auburn as the favorites in the West and the Dawgs, SC and Florida in the East. Will have that finalized after game one. Gotta see’em play. I’ve watched a lot of spring games, and know a pretty good bit about each team, but need one game to at least  come up with finalized predictions. KInd of like Alabama and Georgia, if I had to pick. But need some more education from week one.

Should be an amazing season. Good teams nationally look like, of course, FSU, along with Clemson, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Michigan State, Stanford, Oregon and UCLA. I did predict my playoff as ‘Bama, AU, UCLA and FSU. The college football playoff will be tremendous. Adds even more excitement to the best sport on the planet. Will have a lot more as the season approaches.