A week after the Southeastern Conference saw an upheaval in its national championship hopes, those hopes got a boost again with a little help from Baylor and Stanford, who knocked out undefeated teams Kansas State and Oregon and put the SEC champion right back into the picture.
If Alabama, as expected, beats Auburn, that sets up the winner of the SEC Championship Game as the likely candidate to play Notre Dame for the national championship. That is unless Southern California, who will have to rely on a second-team quarterback, upsets Notre Dame. But the way things have gone the last two weeks, anything is possible.
The conference also lost a coach and two potential bowl teams this past weekend.
Tennessee axed Derek Dooley after the Vols lost to Vanderbilt 41-18 on Saturday night in
Nashville. The loss was just the final straw for UT athletic director Dave Hart, who expressed concern for his former coach.
“Quite honestly he was given a pretty short stick to take into that battle. Given those facts, he did a good job in a lot of areas in putting a solid foundation under our football program,” Hart said. “He grew up in this, as did I, and this is a result based profession. You can’t ignore the results at the end of the day. As I told our football team and our staff, this team was close to having a very good season. I admired the fact that they never came unglued so to speak.”
Dooley, who had three consecutive losing seasons, will not coach Tennessee’s final game against Kentucky. Instead, offensive coordinator Jim Chaney will serve as interim coach.
“His concern was for the players, Derek was not at all bitter, he was not concerned about himself in that regard,” Hart said. “He talked at length about his concern and how difficult that might be for the players and it might take away their focus on the final game of the season and in particularly the seniors. His concern was the players and not himself.”
Dooley released a statement through the University.
“I am sorry we could not generate enough wins to create hope for a brighter future,” Dooley said. “Although progress was not reflected in our record, I am proud of the strides we made to strengthen the foundation for future success in all areas of the program.”
With the loss to Vanderbilt and Arkansas’ loss to Mississippi State, the SEC lost two potential candidates for bowl bids. Missouriand Ole Miss are the conferences’ last two teams with a chance to reach the six wins necessary. It will takeMissouriupsetting Texas A&M and Ole Miss beating Mississippi State for either team to become bowl eligible.
The chances are not good for either happening.
Missouri was heartbreakingly close to getting that sixth win Saturday. The Tigers led Syracuse 27-24 until a 17-yard touchdown pass from Ryan Nassib to Alec Lemon with 20 seconds left gave the Orange the victory.
Now Missouri’s hope for a bowl bid rests on beating Texas A&M.
“It’s frustrating but you can’t do anything about it. You don’t analyze it like that,” said Missouri coach Gary Pinkel. “This is a difficult loss, but we have to wake up and get going. It’s always difficult, but we have to get up and go back and battle. Obviously we’re playing a very good football team that’s on a roll and has had a great year.”
Ole Miss will have to beat Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl game in Oxford next Saturday night to earn a postseason berth. The Rebels looked like a solid bet for a bowl game a month ago with a 5-3 record, but three straight losses have put the Rebels behind the eight-ball.
The latest loss to LSU was again another example of almost, but not quite for the Rebels. They actually led LSU in Tiger Stadium 35-28 in the fourth quarter before Odell Beckham started a Tiger rally with an 89-yard punt return for a touchdown with less than ten minutes to play.
“I’ve been coaching a long time, maybe not at this level, but this here is one of the three most difficult locker rooms to be in this year and this season,” said Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze. “We’ll keep bouncing back and fighting the next week.
“I love being in that locker room, but I hate like heck that they’re hurting and don’t have the sixth or seventh win this season with the opportunities that we’ve had, because of the way they played. Our team has gotten better, and we played one of the top-10 teams in the country at their place toe-to-toe tonight. It’s just unfortunate that we can’t celebrate,” he said.
The rest of the Saturday schedule went pretty much as expected, as SEC teams feasted on lower level teams. But with Arkansas and Tennessee now out of the bowl picture, the conference has only eight bowl-eligible teams and 10 bowl tie-ins to fill. Unless Missouri or Ole Miss can pull upsets this weekend, the league will fail to fill its bowl obligations for the second year in a row.