Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images
By Chris Marler
Day two of SEC Media Days in Atlanta featured Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, four programs with high expectations, heated rivalries, and plenty to say on and off the stage.
The Texas-Georgia rivalry isn’t slowing down.
Texas and Georgia are the new “rivalry” in the SEC. And while UGA dominated them last season with two wins in two chances, that hasn’t stopped everyone from assuming Texas is still the top dog in the league.
Both teams have been elite in recruiting, so either program landing a five star recruit on a random Tuesday in July isn’t exactly groundbreaking. However, Sark stealing a recruit literally while Kirby Smart is on stage at Media Days is kind of wild. It’s even wilder that the recruit was from Grayson, Georgia, which was roughly 45 minutes from where Kirby was speaking and just 30 minutes from UGA’s campus.
The recruit was LB Tyler Atkinson and he became the second five-star from the state of Georgia that chose the Longhorns over UGA in as many years.
The best thing that can happen to Hugh Freeze is the season starting.
Hugh Freeze looks tired. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone considering how unforgiving and unapologetically time consuming the world of college football coaching has become. The idea that Hugh Freeze golfing or spending time with family in the summer is somehow a sin to Auburn fans, all because of June recruiting rankings, is flat-out absurd.
That being said, it’s hilarious that Freeze felt the need to input all of his scores from the 11 rounds he played in June. It’s even more hilarious that the number of rounds he played that month is the same as the number of wins he’s had in two years as the head coach at Auburn.
Auburn should be good this season. Why? It’s the best roster Auburn’s had in 10-15 years thanks to back-to-back top ten recruiting classes and a top three portal class. It’s also by far the best offensive line they’ve had in 15 years. Freeze has a talented quarterback, a top three WR room in the country, and a defense that is going to be solid albeit underrated. Winning cures all, and he needs the season to start immediately so he can get one.
Josh Heupel is my winner of the entire offseason
Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes, they put on an uncomfortable suit and an orange T lapel to speak in front of a room full of people they’d rather avoid entirely. Heupel made a lot of fans this offseason when he drew a line in the sand over his five-star quarterback attempting to bully him and the program into more money.
That decision was something the sport itself needed to be honest.
However, since then the hype for Tenenssee in 2025 has fallen faster than Nico Iamaleavea’s take home pay after finding out what California state taxes are. Nico was a high-profile recruit with plenty of upside, but the idea that his departure, after a mediocre season, particularly against top-tier competition, suddenly drops Tennessee from a 10-win playoff contender to a seven or eight win team feels like a stretch.
Statistically speaking, Iamaleava was the worst first year starter in Heupel’s offense since Drew Locke at Missouri. That entire debacle feels like it might not only be addition by subtraction for this year’s team. It also has very clearly planted a boulder sized chip on Heupel’s shoulder going forward.
Heupel was great on Tuesday. He spoke confidently and candidly rattled off all the concerns and areas of improvement for this year’s team. And while he did that, most of the room dismissed it as coach speak and empty words, forgetting that Heupel has the third best record of any coach in this conference against Top 25 teams, and is coming off 30 wins in the last three years. That’s the most for the program since 1998-2000.
Arch Manning isn’t Tebow. He’s Beyonce.
Actually, he’s Beyarché. Bad nicknames that will never catch on aside, I have not seen the media be that excited about hearing a player speak since Johnny Manziel in 2013. It was wild.
Day three brings even more storylines, with Alabama, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, and Florida set to take the spotlight.
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