Here are the ‘Way too Early’ look at Week 1 storylines in the SEC
It’s officially game week. College football will be played in SEC stadiums and across the country in a matter of days. Not months. Not weeks.
Days from now, we’ll finally have actual football to talk about, analyze and inevitably overreact to, and by God, that is a beautiful thing.
Here are the biggest storylines to watch heading into Week 1.
LSU TRO LOL
The story that no one saw coming this close to the season has been at the forefront of the news cycle for the last week.
Former players from the 2022 class being able to go from NFL training camps to college teams feels like a fever dream, but nonetheless it’s a current issue around the sport.
NFL teams will continue making roster cuts as they whittle down to 53-man rosters for the upcoming season. That means that several potential additions will be made to college football rosters across the country.
This has been made out to be an LSU specific problem, but with 30 NFL teams cutting around 40 players each, there will be potentially 1,000 players looking for a new home. The final week leading up to the season for most FBS teams could be a flurry of activity and late additions before their first game gets underway.
Ole Miss Heisman campaign
Heisman campaigns are largely fruitless until the month of November, but media and PR teams for college football programs have gotten ahead of the curve this year.
That’s especially true at Ole Miss, which is already rolling out its “H6I5MAN” campaign for running back Kewan Lacy and quarterback Trinidad Chambliss.
The campaign has already launched with ads in Times Square in Manhattan. This week, it heads west with a takeover of The Sphere in Las Vegas on Sunday.
New coaches
How will the new coaches in the SEC fare this season?
This was a historic offseason hiring cycle that saw 38 jobs open at the FBS level. That included six new hires in the SEC. All but one of those hires will be taking over their first Power Four Conference job this fall, and two of the six will be in their first head coaching job.
The list of new coaches in the SEC this year are as follows:
- Alex Golesh, Auburn
- Will Stein, Kentucky
- Pete Golding, Ole Miss
- Ryan Silverfield, Arkansas
- Lane Kiffin, LSU
- Jon Sumrall, Florida
Conference bragging rights
The last three seasons have ended pretty poorly for the SEC. The Big Ten has won three straight national titles, and it’s led to the SEC getting ribbed at a national level.
We’ll have to wait until late January before this year’s national champion is crowned, and whether that narrative is either changed or continues. In the meantime, the non-conference slate over the first several weeks of the season will spark the debate over which conference is best.
As far as Week 1 goes, there are three games that will be vessels for that argument. Auburn plays Baylor from the Big 12 in Atlanta. LSU will host ACC perennial power Clemson in Baton Rouge, and Ole travels to Nashville to take on Louisville, who has become one of the trendy picks as a College Football Playoff dark horse out of the ACC.
