(08-18-2018 11:59 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: JRsec,
The SEC has a reputation of being the most cutthroat league. Some really good coaches have been fired because they could not beat Saban, and before that Meyer. Saban has only intensified that image and added a sense of heightened paranoia. My guess is no coaches in the SEC voted for any coaches in the SEC because they are all paranoid.
It's just fascinating to see how the underbelly of the SEC reputation as the best in college football means it is assumed, even by those coaches in the SEC to have all the worst behavior of the sport (whether true or not). Saban has given them all have his paranoid world view.
Personally I don't think the SEC is any dirtier than the ACC or B1G or P12. But I do think it's more paranoid. And I think that is what the poll of coaches suggests.
Stugray, the SEC doesn't have paranoid coaches. It has 14 guys making more money than they ever could have dreamed of making. And 14 guys who compete extremely hard in everything they do. In those regards it is no different than the Big 10 except for maybe 1 or 2 million a year on average in the salary figure.
The SEC gets picked on because we dwell in the richest pot of 5 star players in the nation and every coach in the nation who is worth a hoot recruits the Southeast. When they don't land enough of our homeboys to compete they cry foul. They claim we cheated, that we had to somehow manipulate the choices of kids who grew up down the road in order to get them to stay in the conference that has put more kids into the NFL than any other conference around us for the past 30 years. So in part the accusations are a form of projection because those who try to land our 5 star athletes are the "most likely" suspects to have offered an inducement to a kid who grew up watching and idolizing SEC teams and players, and who want mom and dad to be able to watch them play. So when those kids choose out of their own self interest to stay at home to play, somehow we cheated.
Now you submit that our coaches are paranoid and therefore were reticent to vote for each other. That's hooey! The SEC coaches have coached in the college ranks all of their lives with the hyper-competitive nature of recruiting the Southeast. Quite frankly they just don't give a damn about coaches polls, surveys, and most don't even like talking to reporters. Over the course of their year recruiting consumes most of their time. Game preparation is a welcomed break from recruiting the way it is a welcomed break for the players from practice.
It's called envy! And when the other coaches recruiting the area lose their excuses are always that the other guy cheated. We've been used to that kind of treatment for decades down here. The Southeast is still underrepresented in the national media and since the Civil War we've been blamed for about everything.
USC nearly gets hammered for major violations but its the SEC that cheats. SMU gets the death penalty but its the SEC that cheats. Barry Switzer runs one of the dirtiest programs ever but the SEC cheats. Major atrocities are committed against children and athletes at Penn State and Michigan State, and now there appears to be a sexual deviant in the staff at Ohio State a school that had its own recruiting scandal under Tressel but the story is the SEC cheats. North Carolina offers fraudulent classes to keep players eligible and the SEC cheats. Notice a pattern here?
Yes the SEC has had its share of sanctions over the years and I'd be the last one to say that cheating never happened in the SEC. But even Hugh Freeze's very public evidence of offering inducements has paled in comparison to the out of control nature of college football in other regions of the country.
The whole truth of this public perception is that we win, win a lot, have the most highly rated recruits within our native footprint, land most of them, and win with them, so all of the other coaches out there are going to stick to their stories that we cheat and they don't.
Where I come from we call that denial and the accusations we call projections. It's motivated out of envy and the need to make excuses. And that is the long and the short of it and this fluff, ill conceived, or possibly contrived click bait piece wasn't worth the time we've taken to discuss it.