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Matt Barrie and Paul Finebaum got together for their weekly Sunday sit down and discussed the state of the SEC following an intriguing weekend. The pair recapped the games from Saturday and provided their reactions to a handful of major storylines.
“I don’t know if the SEC is in the top 2-3 of conferences in college football right now,” Barrie said.
The SEC saw Vanderbilt and Arkansas fall in upset fashion as well as powerhouse programs such as Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee struggle.
“This is a serious trend line,” Finebaum said. “The Georgia thing is a bit perplexing, and Nick Saban really has to worry about his locker room.”
Finebaum added that the entire conference can thank Missouri for redeeming the SEC somewhat this weekend, although he said Eliah Drinkwitz was bailed out by a 61-yard field goal after some poor clock management.
On Tennessee, Barrie was stunned by how the Vols performed on Saturday.
“I have never seen an 11th-ranked team in the country make more bone-headed plays,” Barrie said. “They got out-physicaled, they got out-smarted by Florida. That is not the 11th-best team in the country.”
Finebaum agreed, and stated that Tennessee fans have plenty of reason to be concerned with the current state of the program. On the flip side, Finebaum applauded Billy Napier for picking up a major win.
“His outlook and his stock changed overnight,” Finebaum said. “That was as big of a win as I have seen in a long time.”
In evaluating the SEC East, Barrie said that the division is shaping up to be Georgia and then everybody else, just how people thought it might be in the preseason. As for the West, Barrie claims that you could make an argument that LSU is the best team in the West at this point.
“The good thing about the West is that the conferences losses have not happened yet,” Finebaum said. “It is a confusing league, and the critics can have at it. The SEC has been at the epicenter of college football for so long, and you can’t mask anything anymore because it has been three weeks of this now.”
Current Missouri student entering my third year of covering Tiger football and basketball. Contributor to The Transfer Portal CFB and overall college athletics enthusiast.
