The Dead Zone
Long, hot, southern summer nights are directly in front of us…but on the other side of the dead zone is the chaos we yearn for. Buckle up.
By: The Waco Kid
The NFL Draft has come and gone, spring games are in the rearview mirror, starters have shaken off the rust and young guns have gotten a slight taste of the brightest stage college football has to offer. And now fans of college football are in their yearly mourning period. A time where emptiness must be filled with hockey and basketball playoffs and right around the corner awaits the inevitable bane of our very existence…baseball season.
Don’t get me wrong, when conference championships and the College World Series make their appearance, spectators everywhere will tune in to watch their favorite collegiate teams compete on a national stage for a chance to become the best in the country. But the truth is, there are few and far between who will religiously sit through nine innings every other day…it just ain’t football. This is time of the year is what I refer to as “the dead zone.” Yes, most likely the nation will see another championship fall into the singular power conference’s lap by way of softball and/or baseball. But for the tailgating, working-class, die-hard fans in the south, if it ain’t football, it just means less.
This off-season has been filled with surprising announcements from programs all over the Southeastern Conference, and the void left by anticipation of fall kickoff has been temporarily satiated by news of the transfer portal and hirings and firings all throughout the country. Some of the biggest names have joined the conference in the form of coaching vacancies, while on the field, playmakers from both sides of the ball have left, not for better competition, but in pursuit of a payday the average American won’t see for years let alone as an 18-year-old.
The highest profile addition during the 2023 coaching carousel was Hugh Freeze making his way back to the SEC by way of Auburn. The Bryan Harsin experiment is over on the Plains and ended as abruptly as it began. Freeze spent the last few years coaching Liberty University to some impressive winning seasons after being dishonorably discharged from his post at Ole Miss for forgetting the Jason Bourne rule: always have a burner. The interesting part here is that AU decided to turn a blind eye to the colorful past behavior of Coach Huey while coaching the Rebs. Either the Tigers are extremely desperate or they see a path for a Pastor Freeze redemption tour. The guy has repeatedly built programs into powerhouses regardless of the tactics used. This year will show us if this was purely a publicity stunt and a way to push Harsin out or if the newest head coach of this historic program is still the real deal.
“This is Jason Bourne. Listen to me very carefully, Hugh. Always. Use. A burner.” *Click*, jump off a bridge.
As far as the players go, I have lost count of how many have entered the transfer portal. It might as well be a billion. Right now, Colorado sits comfortably atop the throne of driving out the most players (they’ve also taken the most in with 46) but that does not mean the SEC hasn’t suffered their own losses to fickle players and tampering. Let’s start low on the totem pole. Auburn’s on-again-off-again starter, QB TJ Finley, transferred out after losing the starting job and now will play at Texas State, a program that also pickpocketed Arkansas quarterback Malik Hornsby. The Razorbacks also lost WR Ketron Jackson to Baylor and maybe, most importantly, DB Jalen Catalon to those SEC wannabes down in Austin. Kentucky lost one running back, Kavoisey Smoke, to Deion Sanders’ Buffs. Georgia was hit hard with the loss of key WR AD Mitchell to Texas, TE Arik Gilbert to Matt Rhule’s Nebraska, and big DL Bear Alexander to cash money. Mississippi State suffered some blows with the loss of WR RaRa Thomas to Georgia and RB Dillon Johnson to Washington. South Carolina lost key playmakers MarShawn Lloyd to the other USC and TE Austin Stogner to OU. For Texas A&M, the real question is who didn’t they lose? The answer: Conner Weigman. Alabama doesn’t matter because they will still roll, and finally, Vanderbilt lost sometimes-starting QB Mike Wright to Mississippi State.
It wasn’t all bad news down in the Bible Belt. There were plenty of play-making additions as well. Ole Miss nabbed starting OSU quarterback Spencer Sanders and former big-time recruit Walker Howard from LSU, among others. Georgia continued to stack their receiver room with the likes of Mizzou WR Dominic Lovett, the previously mentioned RaRa Thomas and brought home DB Smoke Bouie from Texas A&M. And though Alabama is stacked everywhere, there are enough questions at QB that Nick Saban brought in former Notre Dame starter Tyler Buchner to bolster the room. Finally, the most intriguing off-season additions entered Florida in the form of Wisconsin starting QB Graham Mertz and literally a stable of linemen on both the offensive and defensive line. All of these moves made for great slow-season news but ultimately do not live up to what looms when summer comes to a close.
Can Graham Mertz shake off the Wisconsin blues and elevate Billy Napier’s program to new heights?
See while most animals hibernate during the winter, the beasts of the southeast have no other option but to lay low and keep cool during the long, hot summer nights. Make no mistake at the end of every long night the sun will rise again, but for now, we rest and wait for that shining glimmer of hope to break through the night in the form of thunderous roars and the echoing stampedes of the masses finally making their way back home. Whether that home is Death Valley, Kyle Field, Jordan-Hare, Neyland, The Grove, or Sanford the faithful will always find their way back after the long night.
And then, finally, chaos - a relationship between true fans and their teams that embodies the passion and dedication that can only be felt by those who have known the emptiness of those brutal August evenings. Those lying awake at night, slowly counting down the reemergence of cascading waterfalls of beer, the rolling smoke of bbq pits, and the echo of 100,000 strong who show up to make sure the opposition knows they have just entered a war zone. The same thousands who go wild with every touchdown, big play, and earth-shattering hit that happens during those 60 minutes we so yearn to reunite with.
I mean what’s life without a little chaotic excitement? For us, we love the chaos that is SEC football.
Come quickly, fall.
