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The 2006 SEC season will be a year of transitions for a lot of the traditional powers. Off the field distractions have been relatively few in this hyper active league, which leaves most of the changes thankfully in player personal changes. There are some intriguing questions that will be answered over the next few months.
Being from the Upstate of South Carolina, an ACC enclave, surrounded by SEC territory, I have always been a bit fascinated by the spectacle of the SEC as much as the actual competition, in a rubber necking, looking at a traffic accident sort of way. A lot of the soap opera action in the SEC has been toned down.
Time will tell if the academic fraud accusations against Auburn will stand, but heat will turn up if the Tigers advance far up the national polls. All fans will still hate Georgia, Spurrier will get more media attention than his team, fans will still have a love/hate relationship with Mike Shula and the world will go on. Should be fun to watch from my natural ACC perspective.
Will Georgia have a a stable QB and O line? Will Tennessee recover from last season’s disaster? Can Auburn survive the preseason hype? Will probation cause depth issues to appear at Alabama? Will Arkansas and South Carolina make a move from the middling pack of the conference and show signs of being competitive for the league crown?
SEC East
The eastern division should be the more compelling this year, if for no other reason than there really is not a clear cut favorite at the end of the summer. Saying that, the following is my prediction for how the East will shake out.
1. Florida - Chris Leak ends his college career on a high note as the transition to Coach Meyer’s offense becomes more complete. Defensive depth should carry the team against teams like Georgia and USC.
2. Georgia – The Bulldogs defense should carry the offense, as they transition a new quarterback the first half of the season. I expect the Bulldogs to play quite well towards the end of the year.
3. Tennessee – The Volunteers will rebound and win 8 or 9 games this season and yes, David Cutcliffe’s return will pay dividends, but the Vols are still predictable enough to lose to both Georgia and Florida.
4. South Carolina – In Steve Spurrier’s second the season, the Gamecocks will have the benefit of an easier schedule, with only Florida and Clemson as difficult games on the road. But struggles on the lines on both sides of the ball will prevent this team from controlling any evenly matched team.
5. Kentucky – The Wildcats will show some signs of life this season, especially running the ball. The October match-up in Lexington vs. USC will be for a bowl game.
6. Vanderbilt – Without Cutler, the most underrated QB in years in the SEC, the Commodores settle back to earth, win 3 to 4 games.
SEC West
The SEC West this season will be a two team match-up. Arkansas and Alabama will be playing for third and the Egg Bowl is for pride only.
1. Auburn – Probably the best overall team in the South, the Tigers rightfully have national title hopes. Kenny Irons and a fast defense will have huge years.
2. LSU – Les Miles may end up being a better coach than Saban on the bayou. Were the Auburn game at Baton Rouge…
3. Arkansas – an improved Razorback squad coupled with an easier schedule makes this third place choice in the west a no-brainer.
4. Alabama – after the high of the Cotton Bowl, a lack of depth on defense plus a one dimensional offense means the Crimson Tide will struggle to 7 wins this year
5. Mississippi – plays Kentucky and Vanderbilt plus new quaterback and the Rebels have a nice break even year, might squeak into a bowl
6. Mississippi St. – Lack of talent continues to haunt the Bulldogs. If they can beat South Carolina to start the season, a 6-6 campaign is possible. But the skill positions just will not be consistent enough.
SEC Title
Auburn will defeat Florida for the second time and if all goes well, will use the SEC title to advance to the BCS title game in the first week of January.
The explosive growth of technologies available to the public at large, especially those of the multi-media variety are obviously having profound affects on the global life. It would be easy to say that a multi-media world is most predominate in suburban American culture, yet the ever-present technology, almost constant drumbeat of images, sound and motion are just as easily accessible to the wider world by their very nature. There is something almost seductive about a multi-media world that loses its power to a small degree with every exposure. The least common denominator factor of the multi-media age has contributed partly to what is known as the world becoming flat.
Ken Myer’s of the Mars Hill Audio Journal has referred to these things as the “Image Culture” where consumer technologies (such as on-line tools, iPods, phones & PDA’s, etc.) instead of producer technologies that use raw means like data-processing and manufacturing systems. In a sense, for one of the first times in history, non-real technologies, things that have little physical substance are driving the culture and daily life. Most concerning for Myers is how a multi media based technology culture affects our experiences and expectations for how we live and what we think of what particular place we live, or our place in this world.
It is hard to step back from the constant nature of the multi-media world that I have personally grown up in and ask why things have ended up the way they have. It is much, much easier to be a multi-media technology evangelist in a since, or to simply take things as they are.
Christine Rosen, in an article in the New Atlantis, called “The Image Culture” uses for example the use and misuse of multi-media during the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and how it affected the public’s and government’s response to the crisis to demonstrate how pervasive images are in shaping our view of reality and really away from a word and thought based view of reality that was prevalent in the West until the last 50 years or so. What Rosen brings to the concept of how an image culture has changed us is that multimedia has lost power due to its ever present ability and gained power in the way that it has replaced written words and direct speech.
The rise of a multimedia culture has not necessarily advanced in realism or truth in how we understand the universe. And that may be the biggest danger for the consumer, that by embracing a constant stream of images over written words, the user will have greater access to realism, truth and reality. The problem is not that TV or any multimedia is inherently bad, or worse than any written word, the real problem arises when consumers embrace multimedia over everything else and in the process become less precise and with a diminished ability to communicate to each other.
The promise that a multimedia culture would produce access to the masses to images and sounds previously only available to the elite has now become a bit of a false promise, as language deterioates and only the sounds and images of our culture remain, the consumer is less able to make distinctions. From day to day life involving meal purchases or an afternoon’s diversion to larger issues that shape our view of the world, such as our faith, how we use the surrounding multimedia culture is something that we should daily consider and evaluate.
Rosen’s New Atlantis article is a great starting point for those looking for questions to engage the surrounding multimedia culture and ways to effectively (or not) harness it, instead of allowing it to harness you. In the next few weeks, as college football fans will tote satellite dishes and marine batteries to parking lots, anniversaries of national events like Katrina or 9/11, and as the constantly developing media culture advances, developing responses and thoughtful approaches becomes essential to participating in the world we live in.
This past weekend, the wife and I were staying with some friends and visiting what ended up being a rainy day in Charleston, SC. Our friends recommend that we eat at the Hominy Grill. Time constraints though, and a desire to eat at the incredible Jestine’s Kitchen at the corner of Meeting and Wentworth streets, did not allow us to stop at the Hominy Grill.
In an amazing confluence of good food, networked servers, the Food Network and some ingenuity along the way, I did find a great recipe for Sesame Crusted Catfish with Geechee Peanut Sauce and Sauteed Okra from the Hominy Grill to serve to a guest the wife and I were hosting this week. The catfish breading fries as some of the best I have had, and the okra is not bad either. Lowcountry cuisine is outstanding to me, and if you enjoy it, the following is the recipe, or what we had for dinner last night.
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Ramesh Ponnuru’s recent book, The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life is on first glance a book dealing with the politics of divisive right to life and bioethics issues on the contemporary American scene. What it really is, is an ethical book within the context of the modern American political and cultural atmosphere.
What the book achieves, through its thoroughly researched propositions and ethical examinations of bioethics , is one of the better references and argument for a strict understanding of defending life at its margins before birth and in end of life circumstances.
Ponnuru, a senior editor for the conservative bi-weekly National Review and practicing Roman Catholic, does not base his discussions on theological premises. Rather he attempts to address right to life issues from common scientific and ethical understandings in modern American life.
By arguing in the negative, that there are societal forces that exist either out of neglect, well-meaning ignorance, pragmatism or even intentionally negative actions, he argues for an overarching culture of life and an examination of thought and practice in every area in order to preserve and care for life in all its stages to the best extent possible.
The book is divided into three sections: What Roe Wrought, Bioethics of Death, Life and the Parties. The first section is devoted to a closer examination of the legal dilemmas caused by the Roe v. Wade decision and the ethical problems it has created. The second section is the strongest part of the book, which is good a thing because of the increasing level of attention that will be given to bio-ethical issues in the coming generation. The last section deals exclusively with how abortion and bio-ethical issues have transformed American politics and where the debate is likely to be going from this point forward.
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Saturday, the wife and I ventured east to west on the Cherokee Scenic Highway (11) along the ‘roof’ of South Carolina. The road is the northernmost highway in the state, running from Cherokee County in the east, near the N. Carolina state line all the way to Oconee County in the west, near the Georgia state line. Our trip took us from the I-85 intersection to near Table Rock state park in Pickens County.
Highway 11 is everything its four (to six lane) highway to the south, Interstate 85 is not. It is just a state road along some of the more pastoral scenes in the state. Like many of the old roads in South Carolina, its historic connection is that the highway follows the precolonial Cherokee hunting path. Probably no other section of road in the state represents what the Upcountry was once like, before the New South era of superhighways, strip shopping centers and the like.
Though not directly on Highway 11, once you enter the road off I-85, you cannot help but to notice the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, the Gaffney Peachoid. There are many, many things I love about America. For example, this is the sort of country where if a local municipality needs a new water tower, a local official can say in the late 70′s “Let’s build it in the shape of a Peach!”And by golly, it gets built.
No wonder polio was defeated, the communists wilted under pressure and microwave popcorn revolutionized the convience food market. The “Peachoid”, over 10 stories tall and holding over a million gallons of water, is just off I-85 and is there to declare to the world, and especially the Peach State of Georgia, that little Cherokee county produces more peaches than all of Georgia combined.
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About five miles away, westward of here is the little community of Cowpens and the Cowpens National Battlefield, site of the January 1781 Patriot victory over a British calvary and light infantry regiment. I did not stop there on Saturday, I have been there before and it is really best to see it in January about the anniversary of the battle. Historical accuracy demands it! Ha!
Or if you just want to see the Hollywood version, watch the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot, that has as its climatic scene this battle, though in great Gibson form, the battle has all the bad guys speaking Oxford English accents, lots of slo-motion blood splatter and plenty of explosions.
For the next 30-40 minutes or so, Hwy. 11 is just a pleasant country road. You will notice the further west you travel, the greater the hills and then on the right, the Blue Ridge mountains rising in the northwest, or the “Blue wall”, as known in these parts.
The ride takes you through small towns like Chesnee, Campobello, Landrum and Fingerville. All have been dominated in the past half century or so by the textile industry and the local Miliken manufacturing concern. The small downtowns are becoming time capsules, because they are not being modernized by much new growth. Probably the only way to ’save’ the center of these towns is by gentrification, where the old becomes idealized nostaligic, barring of course any new major employers moving into the area.
This is peach country. Peaches on the roadside, peaches in the ditch… peach and assorted vegetable roadside stands pop up every few miles. Orchards, streching as far as the eye can see spread out on either side of the road. Like much of the agriculture industry in the state, smaller farms are being swallowed up by larger farms, or just selling out of the business altogether. One of the larger, and more successful farm operations is the Cooley Farms, Strawberry Hill operation, advertised in all the mid-American kitsch that you can imagine down the road.
Sure, Strawberry Hill has a very large peach stand, complete with palmetto trees, but the diner across the street has everything for that a traveller across mid-america could want: a player piano, classic cars, a 50’s juke box, ice cream, great short order food, etc.
Further west from Strawberry Hill, and into Greenville County’s former “dark corner”, you will see an amazing transformation taking place. In a former relatively obscure area, filled with small farms are arising the Cliff’s golf communities and just south of Hwy. 11 is the growing North Greenville University. Both are rapidly changing this rural area. Soon to be seven golf communities and the home and operations center of golfer Gary Player, The Cliff’s have opened up a floodgate of development into this area just miles into the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Further west in Greenville and into Pickens counties, lots of land has been set aside for public use though in the Mountain Bridge Wilderness area incompassing parts of Jones Gap, Ceasar’s Head and Table Rock state parks. A relatively new conservation preseve, the Ashmore Heritage Preserve is just off Hwy. 11, and probably completely invisible to 99% of folks that pass through this area on the way to the better known state parks.
The preserve is over 1,000 acres of land that has not really been touched since the Civilian Conservation Corps started and then stopped a development on the property. The land is a botantist and biologist dream with many rare species of plants and animals living in obscurity, where they will likely remain. If you go, bring your bug spray. The gnats and moquitos have no fear of humans.
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And if you would just as soon stop traveling a bit and rest and eat after a day’s drive down Highway 11 and a 5 mile hike through the wilderness, you should probably stop at the best pizza and pasta restaurant in the wider region, just north of Highway 11 in the small resort community of Tryon, NC, Side Street Pizza and Pasta. Arrive early though, folks come from all around and you will find, like I did that the wait is about 45 minutes or so on a Saturday night.
