Monday News and Notes: SEC Previews

Hi, folks. The following is the news for today. It's the summer doldrums, so there's not a lot going on. Expect my Arkansas preview some time this week.

Gamecocks' annual breakthrough hopes begin (and end) up front - Dr. Saturday - NCAAF  - Yahoo! Sports. Dr. Saturday, never much of a Gamecocks partisan, provides an incisive, if somewhat familiar, explanation for Carolina's inability to break through. His answer? It's not the skills positions, it's the offensive line.

SEC forecast: Tide-Gator chalk still carries the day - Dr. Saturday - NCAAF  - Yahoo! Sports. Dr. Saturday picks Carolina to finish third in the East behind Florida and Georgia. For the most part his predictions are pretty safe and, well, predictable. Still has some good analysis, though.

Ranking the SEC, from Bama to Vandy (and Georgia No. 4) | Jeff Schultz. AJC writer Jeff Schultz picks Carolina to finish fifth overall in the conference. I'd probably be happy with that (that would likely mean eight or nine wins), but I can't buy most of his reasoning. You have to raise at an eyebrow at the line about us not being able to recruit skills position players. The problem has been that we ONLY have top skills position players. Moreover, Schultz's whiff is a bit of a credibility problem--the problem we have is very common for mid-tier teams, as there really are plenty of good high-school skills position players. However, there aren't as many top-flight trench players, and the good ones almost all go to the top programs. Schultz should know that.