Nick Bell is fighting for his life
Everyone should offer their thoughts and prayers as quickly as possible for Nick Bell of Mississippi State, after Dan Mullen spent the day giving updates on the player's worsening condition.
"We found out this weekend it's metastasized through his body," Mullen said. "He took a little turn for the worse in the past three days. He's in a battle right now."
A word: IF YOU DON'T HAVE FIRSTHAND INFORMATION, PLEASE DON'T TWEET SOMETHING RIGHT NOW. Not trying to be mean, but I have not yet been able to find any information to confirm a rumor that's floating through Twitter.
It's Election Day
I mention it to begin today because a) YOU NEED TO VOTE IF YOU ARE REGISTERED AND ABLE; and b) I am a political reporter and will be taking care of those duties most of tomorrow and Wednesday. Year2 will handle Sprints tomorrow and the SEC Power Poll will be pushed back to Thursday. This is an every-other-year kind of thing, so please indulge us. All that taken care of, the news.
Arkansas missing one of Ryan Mallett's favorite targets
Why was Greg Childs still in to play against Vanderbilt late in the game, a move that appears to have cost Arkansas their best wide receiver for the rest of the season? Because Vanderbilt's starting defense was still playing.
"That was the second play of the fourth quarter," Petrino said. "Every starter on both sides were in the game."
Even so, Arkansas didn't determine until Friday that Childs, suffering from an ankle injury, would even play. Seems (more than) risky to have him in, once the Hogs went up three scores against a team that has virtually no offense.
Travis Haney is being exceedingly kind to Vanderbilt. The Commodores do not have an offense of any kind, virtual or not. (Especially not now, but we'll get to that in just a minute.) Whether the loss of any wide receiver will make a difference against the similarly nonexistent South Carolina secondary Saturday remains to be seen, but it could factor into games later in the season.
Commodores lose their leading rusher
The season just gets better and better for Vanderbilt, who will now have to find out what they can do without Warren Norman. Norman, who's run for 459 yards and 4 TDs on 77 carries, is one of the few playmakers on the Commodores offense that other teams have to worry about. He had a key 51-yard run as Vanderbilt took the lead against Arkansas this past Saturday, which was a third of the Dores offense for the game. Anchor Of Gold has easily the best response.
You'll start until you don't
Derek Dooley is basically admitting that if he has two, he has none. Tyler Bray will be Agent Zero this Saturday.
"Until a quarterback says, ‘Coach, you’re an idiot for not playing me all four quarters,’ by his play and not his words, then we’ll just keep sorting through it. Neither has had actions that say, ‘Play me for four quarters.’ There’s enough in both of their play to say maybe you should put the other guy in a little bit. We’re going to keep doing it until they perform at a level where we feel like we’re really bad evaluators by playing the other guy."
Rocky Top Talk isn't sure what to think right now.
We know that Matt Simms is a tough kid who has taken an absolute pounding. We also know that Tyler Bray is underweight and is the bigger injury risk based on physical factors alone. On the flipside, Bray's passing is clearly superior and his field awareness appears to be better. Back to the frontside, Simms is more mobile and can scramble and block better than Bray. On the flipside again, Bray seems to shift in the pocket a lot better than Simms, and has already avoided several sacks that I thought were guarantees.
The situation at quarterback in Knoxville really isn't Dooley's fault; if you want to blame anyone at all, you should probably be pointing the finger at Messrs. Fulmer and RECROOTIN' Kiffin. But he still has to straighten it out, and I'm not sure he's really helping things right now.
I'm sure you've all heard about this ...
I largely agree with Year2 on ChokeGate. A supposed adult taunting a college student during a football game -- and a backup kicker that has struggled to fill his new role, at that -- sets a new low for juvenile acts in a rivalry that has seen its share of them. But let's keep things in perspective here, folks. Any notion that anyone in this rivalry is going to act like an adult during the game went out the window somewhere between the Riot by the River and the Urban Meyer Timeout-a-palooza. It's just another World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.
Wow, what could he possible do to earn that?
I would be surprised by almost nothing that Jonathan Dowling could have done to get completely kicked off the Florida football team.
There is no chance of Dowling earning reinstatement. "Done," Meyer said.
Remember, this is a coach that reinstated someone who sent a death threat via text message to an ex-girlfriend. So this was pretty major.