SEC Football Fans Will Tune Into Baylor And Oregon Games

Oct 26, 2013; Lawrence, KS, USA; Baylor Bears quarterback Bryce Petty (14) celebrates after scoring a touchdown against the Kansas Jayhawks in the first half at Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports

Bob from Birmingham has heard whispering of some world outside of SEC football. Rumors of offensive juggernauts exploiting ill-prepared defenses and scoring seemingly at will. Conferences with 12 teams that don’t actually have 12 teams and conferences with 12 teams that do actually have 12 teams. Sounds like a bunch of malarkey.

Yet, on Thursday night as he swaddles himself within the arms of his favorite Lazy Boy and cuddles up with a fifth of Wild Turkey and a tin of Copenhagen, he’ll be exposed to an entirely different dynamic than the one he grew up with in the SEC. He’ll flip and spin and twirl between the Baylor Bears taking on the Oklahoma Sooners on Fox Sports 1 and the Oregon Ducks against the Stanford Cardinals on ESPN.

Hell, he may even think about setting up two TVs, although, if he’s wise, he may refrain, lest he hopes to trigger some offense averse reaction.

Yet, whether he sips it from a straw or takes it down in big gulps, tonight, Bob from Birmingham will learn that there IS, in fact, football outside of SEC football. Whether or not he recognizes it as football on par with what’s being played in whiskey-basted stadiums across the Southeastern Conference, I do not know.

I’d guess not, because for most of the Bob from Birminghams across the South, the SEC champion would be the likely favorite in the NFC East, but, the mere fact that he’ll even be exposed to the world outside of SEC football is a win in and of itself for the people playing catch up in the Pac-12 and the Big-whatever.

I myself am the byproduct of SEC hubris. I write an SEC column, went to an SEC school and have drank from the SEC amulet my entire adult life. However, as a younger, less responsible, adolescent, I grew up in Big Ten country watching team’s run lead after lead after lead.

As a Chicago Catholic, I spent a portion of every Saturday watching the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Carlisle Holiday run the veer long after the veer should have been lovingly retired to some museum in Nebraska.

My entire life, I’ve grown up watching football games where teams just beat the ever-loving you-know-what out of each other like it was some sort of weird S&M version of football. So watching SEC defenses just grind opposing offenses into a Rick Clausen-flavored sausage week-after-week was right up my alley.

However, I’m also an X’s and O’s guy. A revered play-caller for the Morris Chiefs JV squad from 2008-2010 (we scored roughly 60% of our points on an illegal trick play that I convinced refs was legal), I’ve always been intrigued by the spread, despite being surrounded by a bunch of bulldozer companies masquerading as football teams my entire life.

So, I’ve kept an eye on the Oregons and the Baylors of the world. And now, with both teams sitting undefeated–very much a part of the national championship discussion–we’re about to see the nation’s two premier offenses on display in games that will ultimately shape the rest of the “Who Should Play Alabama” discussion.

And that’s where Bob from Birmingham comes in. Bob may not actually give a damn about the Oregon Ducks or the Baylor Bears, or the Stanford Cardinals or the Oklahoma Sooner for that matter, but he does care who his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide play in the national championship–and let’s face it, in Bob’s (and mine) mind, that’s a foregone conclusion.

So he’ll watch begrudgingly on Thursday night and curse how soft the two teams are. But, deep down, he’ll wonder.

Having seen the Tide give up 42 points to the SEC’s version of Oregon and Baylor (Texas A&M) earlier this season, he’ll have deep-seeded doubts about whether or not he can stop either. And he’s not wrong for wondering.

What Baylor has done offensively, regardless of the schedule they’ve played, is absolutely miraculous, and Oregon isn’t far behind. The Bears are averaging 718.4 yards of total offense and 63.9 points per game, while the Ducks average 632.1 yards of total offense and 55.6 points per game.

However, what might be most impressive about these two teams is how opportunistic their defenses have become. The high-flying offenses have created enough excitement on their respective campuses to draw in recruits on the opposite side of the ball, and now both teams sport Top 10 scoring defenses in college football.

The teams that folks in the SEC have been singling out for being too soft to compete with a dominant SEC defense are bringing their own defenses to the party. Yet, make no mistake about it, Baylor and Oregon’s offense are what make them dangerous.

Art Briles and Mark Helfrich have developed an offensive mentality that’s equal parts cerebral and brute force. Watching either of their offenses is like watching Steven Hawking get up out of his wheelchair and smash an acoustic guitar over your head like he’s Jeff Jarrett.

Tonight, that’s what we’ll all get a taste of. Baylor faces their first real test and Oregon faces likely their biggest test. Bob from Birmingham will be glued to his television set, finally exposed to the world that exists beyond the geographical boundaries of SEC football.