"In the long run," the economist John Maynard Keynes once noted. "We are all dead." The quote is commonly recited for its wry pragmatism and seeming cynical irreverence. That interpretation widely misses the broader point Keynes was trying to make. The entire quote from A Tract on Monetary Reform published in 1923 is this:

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.

To use the common cliché, Keynes was pointing out that sometimes the view of the forest can impair the health of your trees. Every Day Should Be Saturday’s Spencer Hall evokes this point in a post today about the long-term prospects of the Alabama Crimson Tide football program. His SB Nation article The End Of Sabanball: Details, Barbarians, And Precision suggests that the overwhelming success of the Crimson Tide under Nick Saban is likely living on borrowed time. How much is the open question.

The secret of Sabanball, as Hall puts it, is not simply the highest quality recruits, opulent facilities and an almost religious devotion on the part of the Crimson Tide faithful. It is, in fact, how Saban manages to integrate them all to a single purpose that makes Alabama so formidable to face on the football field.

That replication and repetition across a long series of efforts is hard to find in college football period, but if someone wants to counter Sabanball. If you take all other things as equal, that answer is going to have to have everything Alabama has including that rarest thing of all: talent taught to perform with unvarying precision in a short period of time.

So what, he asks, is the anti virus to the Saban Syndrome? He offers a few examples of potent offenses that have seen some success against the Crimson Tide and offers Dana Holgerson’s attack as a likely candidate (an argument he states more straightforwardly here) but, eventually, the answer is just being patient.

Otherwise, failing the hiring or development of someone to counter the threat, you wait for time and tide to erode your opponent while taking your beatings with dignity. Assistants get hired away. Age dulls the ambition. Presidents meddle in otherwise functional athletic departments. Other programs hire great talent to beat the good, and transformative athletes look elsewhere for their Shaolin football training.

Sure things might seem rough right now for the hoi polloi but don’t worry, there are even greater group of unwashed set to show up at the gates soon enough. That's the long run response and, as Keynes notes, it offers little short term relief to the problem.

Continue reading this post »

Husband and wife claim New Zealand coast-to-coast race titles | New Zealand Herald

Richard Ussher won his fifth Speight’s Coast to Coast ‘Longest Day’ race with a time of 11hr: 33min: 24sec. The race from one coast of New Zealand's to the other covers 254kms including 140kms of cycling, 36kms of mountain running and 67kms of kayaking. Ussher's wife, Elina, won the women's division.

Docherty And Naeth Win Ironman 70.3 Panamá, Armstrong Finishes Second | Competitor.com

New Zealand's Bevan Docherty and Canada's Angela Naeth took the victories at Sunday's Ironman 70.3 Panamá triathlon. Lance Armstrong finished second in his first pro race back on the triathlon circuit.

Cupid's Undie Run a soaring success | The Daily Caller

Hundreds turned out in their underwear on Saturday to go on a nearly-naked run for the Children's Tumor Fund in six US cities; New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Denver, Cincinnati and Washington DC. Slightly NSFW pics can be found here (Washington) and here (Seattle) and here (Denver) and here (Atlanta).

Kennedy Kemei wins 26.2 with Donna Finish Breast Cancer Marathon | firstcoastnews.com

Michael Wardian wins Mercedes Marathon with runaway victory | WBRC Fox 6

8,200 runners beat the cold in the inaugural St. Pete half-marathon | TBO.com

Beer Chasers Winter Beer Mile won in 10:06 drinking Coors | Beermile.com

Continue reading this post »

As a fan of Alabama football, I find few things more exhilarating than attending a game in Bryant-Denny Stadium. To be on hand for a key contest with 101,820 of my fellow Crimson Tide fans is an experience that can scarcely be put into words. The wins are electrifyingly ecstatic and the losses are devastatingly brutal. Never is it boring.

This experience is repeated to a greater or lesser degree for anyone who attends a sporting event where they are emotionally invested in the outcome. There is a tribal sense of purpose and a bonding in the shared experience that we cannot quite express to others afterward. "You had to be there" is less a cliche than a testament to the insufficiency of language in certain instances.

Yet for all this you remain a spectator at a performance. The athletic contest unfolds before you but almost completely beyond your ability to affect in any way (except for your lucky shirt, of course). In this respect, marathons are the exact opposite. Last November more than 46,500 people finished the ING New York Marathon. The spectators, in this case, were the participants.

Part of the appeal of the marathon (and other endurance events) is in being the athlete in competition rather than witnessing to the action. In this respect it is rather unique in the pantheon of modern sports; far more people participate in marathons than those who follow it simply as fans.

Continue reading this post »

Somewhere on that carefully crafted mix of songs you've labored over endlessly to create the perfect collection of music for your runs/workouts lies a terrible secret. There's is that one song that is so infectious and upbeat you feel compelled to include it but if ever asked if you like you'd flat deny.

For me, it's Bronski Beat. To this day I find it absolutely impossible to omit "Tell Me Why" from my running music mix. Because each and every time it comes on it provides me a burst of energy no matter how exhausted and worn out I might be.

I'm a child of the 1980s so my embarrassment is tempered somewhat that this song can now be safely considered retro enough to be somewhat hip. But believe you me, if anyone in my high school knew I regularly ran to the songs by an openly gay British synthpop band I would never have lived it down. Hell, even admitting you liked the Cure back then put you pretty much in the "weird" category by default.

Alright, now lets hear about yours.

As a cultural force, few things are more uniquely and powerfully American than football. Today the game easily the nation’s preeminent sport and its wild popularity seems impervious to challenge any time soon. So it is a little astonishing to find a dearth of serious examination of why this is the case and what it might suggest about us as a people.

For the most part, the public’s preoccupation with football tends to be confined to the game and its constituent elements themselves. There are occasional opinion pieces pondering how developments in the sport apply to the culture at large, but these tend to see the game as symptomatic of some specific issue (and almost always negatively).

The deeper philosophical question of what the game actually says about the society itself has tended to go unasked.

That changed in 1993 with the publication of Michael Oriard’s book Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle. Rather than a history or analysis of the game itself, the book marked the one of the first times the game was looked at from an anthropological standpoint. Oriard asked what the game said about us as a culture, and the answers were somewhat surprising.

The role of the media, Oriard argues, is actually the primary factor in the sport’s emergence as a "popular spectacle," not the game itself. Thus the narratives through which the game was experienced emerged before the public became intimately familiar with the sport. Football was only able to unlock its potent cultural significance through its representation in the media.

The question of football's more profound meaning has been the constant theme in Oriard’s academic career. Today he is the Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State. He also pens a regular column on Washington Post’s football blog, The League.

His interest in football didn't come out of nowhere. In the late 1960s, Oriard was a walk-on center at Notre Dame who snapped the ball to Joe Theisman during their time in South Bend. In 1970 he joined the Kansas City Chiefs, where played for four seasons. He finished his football career with the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Continue reading this post »

If you plan on running a major marathon in the United States this year, you should probably prepare yourself for a bit of sticker shock. The registration fees for marathons has been increasing steadily over the past decade so and most of the big races saw a hefty uptick this year.

The priciest race in America remains the New York City Marathon which will set you back $255 if you are a US entrant. That's a 65% increase over the past five years for a race that cost just $60 to enter in 2001. While NYC leads the pack, it is not alone. The rest of the country's premier marathons have been steadily increasing their registration fees as well. Both Boston and Chicago will put you back $150 if you were lucky enough to register before they filled up.

Here's a graph comparing the prices of five major US marathons over the past half decade:

It's not just marquee events are getting more and more expensive. According to FindMyMarathon.com there are no less than 41 marathons in the United States this year with an entry fee over $100. Still, there are bargains are out there to be found. The site reports the median price to enter a marathon in 2012 is $65.

But the fact is, budget minded runners are feeling the pinch in their wallets.

Continue reading this post »

In the past decade or so, massage therapy has become an ubiquitous part of athletic training. As the practice has gained legitimacy as more and more athletes have turned to it to help recovery.

The treatment has become such a part of endurance exercise that a major running event, like the P.F. Chang's Rock n Roll Arizona races that saw more than 25,000 participants take to the streets of Phoenix last month, can cause a big boom in business for local massage therapists.

The most popular theory concerning the effectiveness of massage is linked to the idea that lactic acid and other waste products as the culprit behind muscle soreness. Exercise prompts a build up of these, the logic goes, and massage ameliorates their removal.

The problem is the science backing it up simply hasn't been there.

That may have changed with the recent findings of a study published in the most recent issue of Science Translational Medicine. It found nothing to support the "waste product" theory but, instead, it seems that massages somehow activating genes that promote recovery at the cellular-level.

Continue reading this post »

Good morning runners! Here's hoping you had great runs/races this weekend.

Racing News

Njoroge wins Beppu Oita marathon | Capital FM Kenya

Kenyan runner Harun Njoroge won the Beppu Oita Marathon in Japan on Sunday with a personal best time of 2:09:38.

Tiki Gelana wins Half-Marathon race in Japan | EthioSports

Tiki Gelana of Ethiopia won the 66th annual Kagawa-Marugame Half Marathon race in Japan by nearly two minutes in 1:08:48. In the men’s race, pre-race favourite Matthew Kisorio of Kenya won with a finishing time of one hour flat.

Marathon — Will the Marathon World Record Continue to Fall? | Running Advice and News

Looking at records of the fastest marathon times ever recorded, including both certified world records and world’s best performances, the top four fastest times in history were run in 2011 and eleven of the twenty fastest times ever were run in either 2011 or 2012. Add 2010 to the list of 15 of the fastest times in history are on the list.

Melbourne and Beaches Marathon winners celebrate | Florida Today

Surf City Marathon draws thousands of runners | The Orange County Register

Runner dies near finishing line of Hong Kong marathon race | Monsters and Critics

Continue reading this post »

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation became immersed in controversy this week after making a decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. The organization reversed that decision today but there are lingering questions of how the action will affect the foundation's wildly popular Race for the Cure running events.

The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is an annual series of walks, jogs and runs that raises money for breast cancer research and prevention. In 2010, more than 1.6 million people participated in approximately 130 race events that made up the fundraising series. The Komen St. Louis Race for the Cure that year drew 71,800 participants alone.

While the reversal of the decision to end grants to Planned Parenthood may resolve the immediate controversy surrounding the foundation, the effect on the race series going forward is not at all clear. The dispute has tarnished the foundation's reputation and, by extension, its flagship running series.

Numerous commenters on the foundation's Facebook page said they would canceling their donations and demanding refunds for Race for the Cure events they had registered for. The same claims were very common on twitter throughout the day.

Continue reading this post »

Almost a century ago college football witnessed one of the most compelling clashes in the history of the sport. On Nov. 9, 1912 the Carlisle Indian School Indians face the Army Black Knights on Collum Field at the US Military Academy at West Point.

Lars Anderson’s 2007 book, Carlisle vs. Army, outlines the transformation of the Indian school squad into a national football powerhouse and its great star Jim Thorpe. At the same time the book sketches the development of the Army Black Knights team, focusing on the fortunes of linebacker Dwight David Eisenhower from Kansas.

At the center of the book is Glenn Scobie Warner, best known by the sobriquet "Pop," who is rightfully hailed as one of the game’s earliest innovators.

Warner’s fertile imagination produced mainstays of the game as the three-point stance, the tackle-eligible pass and the double wing formation. He also was notorious for gadget plays that exploited the rules’ many loopholes.

Yet, his philosophical approach wouldn’t be out of line with many teams today. Rather than rely on brawn and power to carry the day he saw the opportunity for speed and deception as a winning strategy. At Carlisle he stumbled on the perfect athletes to carry out his vision.

Warner led Carlisle on the first cross-country road trips and was the first to employ a media relations team to drum up interest. Reading Carlisle vs. Army it becomes clear that Warner also pioneered many of the sport’s less attractive measures; skyrocketing coaches pay, sketchy recruiting practices and, basically, the creation of the first "football factory" school.

All this would suggest Carlisle vs. Army is a feast for the college football fan. Sadly, no. There are a few problems with the style of the book. First, the author’s addiction to needless descriptive adjectives would bring first-year creative writing class teacher to tears. Second, the amount of speculative narration is simply appalling for a book purporting to be any type of historical account.

Page after page you are told exactly what the characters are thinking and their every action is outlined in bizarre imagery. And there is an incessant hammering of the theme that becomes downright irritating after awhile. A single example:

"The matchup (against Army) was so rich in symbolism – the Indians, wards of the state, playing against the young men who would one day rule that state – that it was hard for the Carlisle players to concentrate."

Really? Citation please.

After awhile, the reader begins to really doubt any of these claims can be reasonably attributed to the actually people and events being described. As compelling as I found the story, finishing the book was a real chore.

The 1912 Carlisle Indian School team.
Photo: Cumberland County Historical Society.

Which is a shame. There’s a lot of potential here both in terms of reporting and writing but perhaps Anderson would have been better served by a more stringent editor and making the story a long magazine piece. His instincts about the 1912 contest are certainly dead on. It was a matchup dripping in irony and fateful coincidence that begs to be told.

The game offered a contest between a team of Native Americans versus a squad representing the institution that led their people bloodily into captivity less than a generation prior. One sideline boasted one of the most talented players ever to grace the gridiron but who was shackled by a perplexing lack of motivation. The other side of the field had a young man whose determination allowed him to reach beyond his limited athletic skills.

Thorpe was one of the biggest celebrities in the country at the time due to his dominating performance in the 1912 Olympic Games but went on to obscurity after scandal swallowed his fame. Eisenhower went on to be one of them most important men of the 20th century and the contest became a footnote in the story of his career.

Anderson only briefly touches on the controversies that eventually shuttered the school. In 1914 a detailed congressional investigation uncovered evidence of systematic abuse of the students and extensive financial mismanagement. The football squad was essentially a traveling road show with the intention of bringing in as much money as possible. Those findings and the inability to reform the school led it to be shut down in 1918.

As much as college football has evolved in its almost century-and-a-half existence, the sport’s development has shown a remarkable amount of consistency. And where Carlisle vs. Army succeeds is painting a portrait of a sport from a century ago and demonstrating how close the issues surrounding it are to the modern game. Where it falls short is illustrating where the failures of that era cans serve as lessons for today.

I am not going to lie to you. Ice baths are brutal. They are a staple of training montages in movies because they evoke such a powerful idea of unreasonable suffering for the sake of achieving some goal.

And suffer you will. I would go into more detail of how unpleasant they are to experience but this is a family website (my take on the procedure at my running blog more fully provides my thoughts on the matter.)

Yet the bottom line is, they work. That 20 minutes of agony translates into faster recovery and refreshed legs, particularly after your most grueling workouts. Or so they say. There is some conflicting science into the reasons for the therapy's efficacity and some folks insist it's all nonsense. But many athletes, like myself, find ice bath therapy helpful for practical reasons -- my legs simply hurt less after a hard run when I use it.

To explain what ice baths do and don't do while giving you an idea of what you'll be getting into if you decide to try it, I scoured YouTube for some videos on the subject. You can find the results after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

If you tuned into the 2012 Rose Bowl on Jan. 2 that pitted the Oregon Ducks against the Wisconsin Badgers, you would have been presented with an unusual sight - one team in helmets so shiny they seemed almost as if they were aglow. SB Nation college football maven Spencer Hall likened the UO lids to those of French electronic-rock duo Daft Punk and the analogy wasn't that far off.

The HydraChrome helmets, which reportedly cost $800 apiece, were developed by Nike, Hydro Graphics Inc., and Riddell. The eye-catching headgear swallowed up a huge amount of interest leading up to the game and not a little bit after Oregon's 45-38 victory in Pasadena as well.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with running? Quite a lot, actually.

Continue reading this post »

Good morning runners! As part of our ongoing effort to help you, our loyal readers, stay up to date with information concerning our shared athletic endeavor, we thought it would be handy to provide a daily collection of links to items of particular interest. Thus we are proud to introduce "The Warmup Lap."

We're still working on figuring out the optimum way to go about this so feel free to offer your suggestions on what you'd like to see from this feature in the comments. And if you find any other items out there on the interwebs you think are of note to your fellow runners, please pop the link in a comments as well.

Racing News

Tightest win in ING Miami Marathon history | MiamiHerald.com

Samuel Kipkosgei Malakwen of Kenya lunged forward at the finish of the ING Miami Marathon to beat Teferi Bacha Regasa of Ethiopia by a quarter of a second — the closest finish in the ING Miami Marathon’s 10-year history. Malakwen’s result: 2 hours 16 minutes 54.58 seconds. Regasa’s: 2:16:54.83.

Scott Rantall, Kelly Williamson win at 3M Half Marathon | Austin American-Statesman

Scott Rantall broke the tape on Congress Avenue in 1 hour, 7 minutes and 14 seconds, a pace of 5 minutes and 8 seconds per mile. Venancio Mancilla took second in 1:07:30. In the women's race, Austin's Kelly Williamson passed up Jess Barton of Amonate, Va., to take first in 1:14:42.

What did the Olympic Trials Marathon Tell Us About the Resurgence of American Marathon Running? | Sacramento Running News

The Olympic Trials have come and gone, and on the Men’s side we had what is being touted as a "record breaking" race. Unfortunately, the records that were broken were soft and old. Rather than illustrate a resurgence in U.S. running, it illustrated how far behind the rest of the world the United States really is.

Health News

New Study: Heart Risk ‘Low’ in Distance Races | Runner's World

The New England Journal of Medicine published what Runner's World Peak Performance blog the "the biggest and most informative medical research yet on cardiac arrests and deaths in marathons (and half-marathons)." And the findings? "Marathons and half-marathons are associated with a low overall risk of cardiac arrest and sudden death."

Effects of Footwear and Strike Type on Running Economy | NCBI

Minimally shod runners are modestly but significantly more economical than traditionally shod runners regardless of strike type, after controlling for shoe mass and stride frequency. The likely cause of this difference is more elastic energy storage and release in the lower extremity during minimal shoe running.

Continue reading this post »

On this very day 29 years ago, Paul W. Bryant passed away at the age of 69. It is with particular sadness we note this anniversary so soon after the death of Penn State’s own legendary head coach Joe Paterno. In the sphere of college football there have been but a handful of men who can boast accomplishments on par with these two and it’s doubtful any can surpass them.

Yesterday, Paterno’s funeral was held in State College and there will be a memorial service today on the Penn State campus. These events have already been compared to those that transpired in January 1982 to mark the passing of Bryant. That should be expected.

There are striking similarities between the two legendary coaches that exceeds the simple parallel of longevity. Bryant and Paterno’s histories are bound together by a multitude of fateful connections and epic football games. Commenting on the congruity has been a staple of sports columnists the past several days.

As Alabama’s head coach, Bryant faced Paterno on the opposite sideline five times – four times as Penn State’s head coach and once as a Nittany Lions assistant. All of the games proved to be memorable, several of them classics and at least two of significant historical significance.

Despite these connections and similarities, it is a great mistake to conflate the legacies of these two coaches. That’s an easy mistake to make due to the immense shadows they both cast over a sport that, in many significant ways, they defined for almost everyone else that followed them.

There may also be clues in the long difficult struggle to cope with the loss endured by Alabama a quarter century ago that can help Penn State navigate the painful journey ahead.

Continue reading this post »

National Signing Day, according to acclaimed football writer Bruce Feldman, has pretty much become a secular holiday in those parts of the country dominated by devotion to college football. It boasts a Christmas-like anticipation in waiting for athletes to finally declaring the teams they will play for that is matched by the Halloween-esque delight in the misfortune on the part of ones foes who are passed over. It’s fun but not necessarily for all.

Recruiting and its excesses have been a hallmark of the sport from its earliest days. The use of ringers, subsidies and outright payment of athletes to compete in the amateur sport were as much cause for scandal in the 1890s as the 1990s. And enterprising journalists have consistently chronicled those excesses throughout the history of the sport.

What has changed in the past decade is the emergence and explosive growth in the industry catering to the needs of teams pursuing the premier players (and the fanbases that follow them).

It was into this fast-changing landscape that Feldman ventured in 2006 to get a look at the inner workings of a program that had hitched its wagon to the hope of securing blue-chip talent - the University of Mississippi Rebels. The result was his book Meat Market.

The tome is a worthy addition to the long tradition of expository journalism examining the questionable practices associated with recruiting in college football. And, since the industry of recruiting and the stakes involved has only grown since Meat Market's appearance on bookshelves in 2007, it is a more valuable read today than ever.

In the early 2000’s, Ed Orgeron’s was a coach on the rise due to his key role in developing talent for Pete Carroll’s powerful USC teams. Ole Miss tapped him as head coach in 2005 after recognizing a need to attract on-field talent as the key to returning the football program to the Southeastern Conference’s elite. The next year Feldman followed Orgeron and his staff during the critical months leading up to the 2007 National Signing Day.

The one drawback of the book is that sometimes the tale is overshadowed by Orgeron’s larger-than-life personality. It's sometimes difficult to focus on the details of the team's recruiting campaign due to the torrent of colorful anecdotes concerning the bombastic caffeine-fueled Cajun. That's unfortunate since it gives the proceedings something of a comic air even though the subject of Meat Market makes it something that needs to be pondered in complete seriousness.

That quibbling reservation aside, Orgeron’s Ole Miss turns out to be an ideal subject for Feldman's examination of the recruiting process precisely because the program lacks the deep pockets of many schools it competes against. To make up the difference Orgeron's plan is to expend more effort than anyone else and Meat Market outlines in gruesome detail how the Rebels attempted to do just that. And, in the end, fell short.

Continue reading this post »

Marathon.

Even if you aren't a runner, the word carries a hefty amount of meaning. It suggests a difficult and arduous challenge that can only be overcome due to perseverance. It's also a place. A city in Greece where a famous battle occurred 2,500 years ago that was where the significance of all these things came from.

For runners, the Battle of Marathon is indelibly associated with Pheidippides. This Greek soldier/messenger is said to have rushed from the scene of the fighting back to the city of Athens to announce the victory over the Persians -- a distance of about 25 or so miles depending on which route you take.

But why was this news so critical that a man would run so far and so hard he would drop dead upon delivering it? What was there about this battle that mattered so much that it's entered into the collective consciousness to the extent it has?

Continue reading this post »

Way back in June of last year we took a look at how all the college football preview magazines were predicting Alabama's 2011 would turn out like. Turn out two of them, Athlon and Phil Steele, got it right by choosing the Crimson Tide as the team to win it all. The Sporting News put the eventual number two, LSU, in the top slot -- the only mag to have the Bayou Bengals in the top three.

Just for comparison's sake, I put together the list of all four pre-season magazine's Top 25 lists alongside the final USA Today Coaches Poll (which is used to select the BCS National Champion). The correct guesses are in red and the teams each listed that did not appear in the final poll are highlighted in grey.

Needless to say, the hits were few and far between while the misses were in abundance. The four magazines got a whopping six teams in their correct placement at the conclusion of the 2011 season. And none of the tabloid prognosticators tapped final poll teams Baylor, Kansas State, Cincinnati, Clemson or BYU (although Steele was the only one to include Southern Mississippi and Houston).

The collapse of Oklahoma and Florida State alongside LSU proving to be astonishingly good (at least during the regular season) pretty much threw a spanner in all the magazine's top picks. After the No. 6 slot a few few clear patterns -- Arkansas was a lot better than they thought and Nebraska was a lot worse -- but, for the most part, it's clearly just a crap shoot.

Obviously there were some outside factors at work here (mainly the scandals at Ohio State and Miami) tbut, for the most part, the pre-season mags pretty much suck at making picks worth putting money on. But we're going to buy them again this year anyway and pore through them looking for some secret insight about the season ahead.

Running, for those of us not blessed with a surfeit of talent, is a personal challenge that has a side benefit of keeping us healthy. In fact, for a lot of amateur runners, the latter is much more important than the former. But how, exactly, does running make us healthier?

It seems so common-sense as to be obvious but, very often, that's exactly the reason we should give the question a bit more scrutiny. Turns out there's been a bit of progress on this front recently.

A paper published this month in the scientific journal Nature suggests that exercise helps belay illness through the process of autophagy. This is the cellular mechanism by which the body processes unneeded components (such as proteins) for re-use as energy sources (such as amino acids). As an area of scientific inquiry, autophagy has been around since the 60s, but interest in it has blossomed in recent years due to its promise as an anti-aging strategy.

Continue reading this post »

With Auburn's naming Scot Loeffler as the Tiger's new offensive coordinator on Sunday, the 2011-12 SEC Coaching Carousel has finally come to a stop. The grotesque carnival of innuendo and speculation that began on Nov. 7 with Ole Miss firing Houston Nutt has finally reached its conclusion.

Yes, there are still a host of position coaching positions to be sorted out but that's part of the annual churn for every program. We'll let Phil Steele sort all of that out. Now the head coaches and coordinators in place, plans for the 2012 season can begin in earnest.

This year was marked by consistency at the head coaching level and mass chaos amongst the coordinator slots. Nutt and Texas A&M's Mike Sherman were the only head coaches in next year's SEC to be affected but almost half of the coordinator positions in the league were affected.

The two teams that played in the conference championship, LSU and Georgia, saw no change at the top spots while three others - Mississippi State, Vanderbilt and Missouri - also chose to avoid the ride this off-season.

Last month, Team Speed Kills provided a scorecard to keep track of the changes and with the close of this phase of the silly season, we give you both the initial and final versions of the tally after the jump...

Continue reading this post »

Continue reading this post »

So here we are again, basking in the delightful glory of an Alabama Crimson Tide National Championship facing that terrible dilemma: What is the best shirt to buy in order to commemorate this grand occasion?

There's the official game shirt rolled out for the players to don after the final whistle blew in the Superdome (pictured above). While Todd was quick to alert us all to the infinitely more awesome LSU version of this shirt posted for sale on Amazon.com it seems the powers-that-be interceeded and won't allow us to procure any before they are sent to their new home in sub-Saharan Africa.

Still, even the most cursory review of any fan apparel site shows there are a multitude of designs to choose from and, like last time, we're interested in knowing which are your favorites. And if you can find a shirt that can out-Gump this one Todd found, please let us know.

As for me... this one says just about everything that needs to be said, IMHO.

If it's the off-season, it's time for Phil Steele to start dropping serious knowledge bombs all over the place. Today he get's the conversation off with a bang offering his tally of the 2012 returning starters. Included is the breakdown by conference which, to help our loyal readership, we will show here.

Tennessee leads the SEC with a whopping 20 returning starters. Of all the woes Derek Dooley must contend with next year, experience ain't one of them. Auburn, a sieve for starters last season, will bring back 18 players who were in the starting lineup during 2011.

Interestingly, no less than ten teams are returning starting quarterbacks next season or just more than 70% of the teams in the conference. That's up from the less than 60% of returning signal callers the SEC saw last year.

Steele notes that incoming Vanderbilt coach James Franklin inherited a squad that returned a whopping 21 of 24 starters in 2011. The Commodore's abundance of experience continues into 2012 as they boast 18 returning starters matches Florida and Auburn for second in the conference.

Alabama's National Championship defense faces steep challenge with just 13 returning starters in 2012, tied with Kentucky, Mississippi State and Missouri at the bottom of the SEC. With at least three of Alabama's departees slated for the first round of the 2012 NFL draft, the whallop of talent will be particularly acute in Tuscaloosa. A run of highly-ranked recruiting classes has the larder well stocked but only a portion of it is fully battle-tested.