EAST LANSING | NOV 8, 2014
Gonna jiggy jiggy jam ziggy flim flam miggy Home Depot bleep blorp yeah we're comin' to your cit-ayyyy-ahhhhhh
WE'RE LIVE ON THE CAMPUS OF MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY. It's the Spartans and the Buckeyes playing in the Big Ten's game of the year.
Yeah Chris, since 2012 Gameday has been to four Big Ten showdowns and three of them have featured these two teams playing each other. It's a testament to how far the Big Ten has fallen when only two teams ever play in games we care about.
Yo. It's like the 1970s, except instead of Ohio State and Michigan, it's Ohio State and Michigan State. But there are plenty of meaningful games today in the SEC West, boy.
That's right, Lee - in the SEC tonight there's Alabama visiting the Bayou, and UT Martin descends on Starkville at 3:30 today over on the SEC Network in one of those quirks where hilarious 1990s comedies show up on the SEC schedules.
Don't forget about Texas A&M coming off of that gritty five-point win over UL-Monroe visiting Auburn. And Ole Miss will learn a lot about itself today when it tries to bounce back from last week's heartbreaker to play Presbyterian, which I assume is one of the better programs from a sturdy church league. November in the SEC!
Guys I'm excited to see Pitt play Duke, with that Duke offense going up against that Pitt defense. And also that Pitt offense going against the Duke defense.
They played last week, Des. Duke won in overtime.
Well then I'm really looking forward to seeing those highlights.
Good comment. Now hear me out: What happens if LSU beat Alabama, and Alabama beats Auburn, and Auburn beats Texas A&M. Yo. The SEC West is wild. And none of those teams lost to Virginia Tech or Oregon. [looks over shoulder]
Well let's switch gears now from the SEC West and head to the SEC East where today we have a couple of classic showdowns: Georgia visits Kentucky and Florida tries to chomp on Vanderbilt.
Yeah Chris you talk the emergence of Kentucky in the SEC, now building a program with Mark Stoops by recruiting SEC-caliber players and becoming a team to watch in the SEC East. The Wildcats only need to beat Georgia or win at Tennessee or Louisville to get Belk-eligible.
Hey, do you guys know how they remove the cotton part out of cotton candy? Because I had some and it's delicious but it just melts in your mouth. If you try that with regular cotton it doesn't do that. It's like eating a sock.
Allow us to check in quickly with Sam Ponder for our weekly segment where we attempt to make Nick Saban appear to seem almost human. Let's cut to a quaint, secluded hotel ballroom hallway.
[cut to secluded ballroom hallway]
Coach Saban, how do you feel your team has prepared the past two weeks for LSU?
Well Sam I think we've done a pretty good job of shoring up some of those things we need to be better at, especially against a team like LSU.
Coach, Alabama hasn't beaten a real ranked team since LSU last season. Since then, the Crimson Tide has lost to Auburn, Oklahoma and Ole Miss. Sure, you beat Texas A&M 59-0, but the only reason the Aggies were ranked was, well, you know. (winks directly at ESPN camera)
snort growl snarf WHAT DID THOU SAY, MORTAL?
[startled] Um, uh, Coach Saban I meant how many SEC teams other than Alabama do you think will make the playoff?
Oh, I don't know about that Sam - there's plenty of football left to play and we're just concerning ourselves with LSU tonight.
Thanks, Coach. Back to you guys in East Lansing.
[cut back to Gameday set]
Thanks, Erin. Er, I mean Sam. You have to admire the work Saban has done since that setback against Ole Miss. It's just a battle in the SEC West every week and Alabama always gets everyone's best game.
Kirk, I agree. You know, Nick Saban used to coach here at Michigan State. He went 34-24-1 over five seasons, winning no bowl games or conference titles. You know, these Spartans are pretty good nowadays. Better than they were then, eh?
And tonight they're facing an Ohio State team aiming to break its own record for consecutive wins in Big Ten regular season games, which is currently at 20. Plenty of SEC-type players on both of these te-
Excuse me Chris, but I have to interject here. How hard could beating 20 Big Ten teams in a row possibly be?
Nick Saban's longest Big Ten winning streak was [looks down at paper] three games.
Hey you guys ever heard that song What Does the Fox Say? It's pretty good but I have a hard time believing that foxes beep and ding and pow like they do in the song. That can't be what they really say.
Oh, I've heard that song. I think's it's actually called What Does the Foxy.
See, that makes the words make more sense then.
Back to Alabama and the SEC for a minute, and here's a story that sounds like satire, but Alabama boosters recently paid off Nick Saban's entire mortgage. Three million dollars, and they even pay the property taxes for him yearly!
Yeah Chris, you have to admire Alabama fans - and fans in the SEC in general - for both their passion as well as their discipline to only give millionaires millions of dollars they don't need while vigilantly avoiding the temptation to secretly pay for players' cars or bills.
Or their fathers' dilapidated churches.
Hey, we're in East Lansing, so we should talk about the Buckeyes and the Spartans. Plenty of stars and storylines in this game, from Joey Bosa on Ohio State to Connor Cook on Michigan State.
Yeah Chris, Bosa is one of those SEC-type defensive linemen and tonight you'll see him between Michael Bennett and Adolphus Washington who remind a lot of people of Glenn Dorsey and Ricky Jean-François. Michigan State is solid on both lines with a lot of SEC-type athletes all around Cook.
Seems like whenever a non-SEC team has a big, fast player we automatically call him an "SEC-type" player. That probably annoys some people, especially Samoans.
Guys I'm excited to see Braxton Miller and Carlos Hyde go up against this stingy Spartan offense.
Desmond, quick, behind you! A squirrel!
[leaps out of chair and runs off the set to chase squirrel]
I'm looking forward to seeing that Buckeye defense that gave up all those points to Cincinnati and Virginia Tech on the road in a hostile environment. To be a championship team you need a championship defense, like one that's capable of holding teams like UAB to 34 points.
That Buckeye defense has had some suspect moments this season against sub-SEC competition, and heroically, we've been all over those moments.
Yeah Chris everyone's talking about how the Buckeyes lost to Virginia Tech with a freshman quarterback in J.T. Barrett making his first home start like that's some sort of excuse in the era of freshman quarterbacks winning the Heisman.
The winner of this game should be in line to return to the Big Ten championship game, and if they can win that there's a cha-
Excuse me Chris, the winner of this game is going to lose to the fourth SEC West team that gets left out of the playoff in the Capital One Bowl. The loser of this game will lose to the SEC East champion in the Outback Bowl by 35 points.
Hard to argue, Paul. None of those SEC teams lost to Virginia Tech or Oregon.
S-E-C. Mississippi State showed the heart of a champion last week against Arkansas. You know how hard it is to beat an SEC team trying to end a 17-game conference losing streak?
Plenty to get to here in East Lansing - when we return we'll check in with the SEC's game of the day in Baton Rouge and we'll talk some more about the case for a two or three-loss SEC team in the playoff over the Big Ten champion.
[Gameday bumper music] Yeah we're comin'...to your cit-tay-ahhhhh....
[returns to the set, panting] Guys, I couldn't find the squirrel and I think I lost my wallet.
