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HOOVER, Ala. — Florida will again win the Eastern Division while LSU will be the SEC’s overall football champion — if the media picked it right.
LSU was an overwhelming choice to win the league championship in voting by 80 media members as SEC Media Days wrapped up Friday.
Florida was a solid choice to win the East, getting 41 votes to 16 for Tennessee, 12 for Georgia and 11 for South Carolina.
Tennessee produced three first-team All-SEC picks: punter Britton Colquitt; safety Jonathan Hefney, and linebacker Jerod Mayo.
Quarterback Erik Ainge and tailback LaMarcus Coker were on the second team.
Kentucky’s Andre Woodson was the first-team quarterback, by a vote of 62-6 over Ainge.
The top vote-getter at any position was Arkansas tailback Derrick McFadden, the 2006 Heisman Trophy runner-up.
The Razorbacks led with five first-team picks: McFadden; tailback Felix Jones; center Jonathan Luigs; receiver Marcus Monk, and Jones, again, as return specialist.
The media had more modest expectations for new Alabama coach Nick Saban than the Crimson Tide fans do. Alabama was picked to finish fourth in the West.
LSU might consider getting picked first a kiss of death. A year ago, Auburn was the overwhelming Media Days favorite to win the SEC title. The Tigers didn’t even make the conference championship game.
In 2005, Tennessee was predicted to win the title. The Vols finished 5-6.
In 2004, eventual champion Auburn got only one vote at Media Days.
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Phillip Fulmer through the years
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Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
Comments » 6
CrankE writes:
Can't help but ponder the irony: Randy Sanders-fired by UT, coaches Andre Woodson who is the overwhelming selection for first team All SEC QB with 62 votes. David Cutcliffe, who preceded and replaced Sanders, coaches Erik Ainge who got a mere 6 votes for first team All SEC QB. Now does anyone think that UK will have more wins than UT by December or that UK will beat UT. If they do all that, I'll believe the hype.
DarthVol writes:
There it is again. Randy Sanders was fired? Has there been a new tell-all book released that I don't know about?
BuckFama writes:
This vote reflects the opinions of a group of guys who write about sports. In most of the cases, we don't know anything at all about the writers' credentials as far as how much they know about the sport, how much experience they had playing or coaching that sport, or what kind of access they have to the programs or athletes they cover. Take these votes for what they are. And look back at the record of how often this group gets it right.
The only votes that mean a thing are the postseason votes (and won-lost records). This stuff is just filler until the seaon starts.
andy112382#209793 writes:
I think the track record of their picks recently speaks volumes to what these predictions actually mean and how important they are. The teams haven't even gone through fall drills yet, and several starting spots haven't been filled. These are merely educated guesses, at best.
Basketball_Jones writes:
Well you can look atthe Woodson thing a few ways. 1st maybe the offense was Fulmers problem not Sanders. Possibly Fulmer could have been holding Sanders back with this conservative system we run. 2nd Woodson could have just been a diamond in the ruff who needed a little tweaking and Sanders gave it to him. 3rd Maybe Cut has been a product of his system with kids like Manning(2), Shular, and Tee Martin. All of those kids were great players and both Shular and Tee were great athletes, the Manning boys have great genetics. Lastly this could all just be nothing and Woodson was alsways going to be a great QB, I mean there are only 3 proven QB's in the SEC so he had a 33% chance of being #1
andy112382#209793 writes:
You know the whole Woodson/Sanders thing, I always said Sanders was a fine teacher when a position coach, it was not until given power of the offense and managing the entire offense and not just simply being one-on-one with a group he specialized in (QBs or RBs) he was just a poor coordinator but a fine position coach when able to focus his time and efforts on one spot. Just because you are great at one job, doesn't mean you are a sure thing at the next step up, someone who is a great vice president may make an awful president for example....or just because you are a super college coach doesn't mean you are a 'cant lose' case in the pros *cough*spurrier*cough*....Kentucky hasn't given him the OC job, so that might be why he is comfortable for the time being.
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