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The SEC was losing its bowl season battle with the Big Ten before the Florida Gators pounded Ohio State in the BCS Championship game last January. Florida entered the title game as a 7-point underdog to the then-undefeated Big Ten champs but won 41-14 by holding the Buckeyes to 82 yards of offense.

The win gave Florida 13 wins against only one loss, a 27-17 defeat at Auburn when the Gators had been 2 ½-point road favorites. The SU record left fans in a state of rapture, but backers were regularly let down by the school’s poor ATS showing.

The title means even less friendly lines in 2007. Florida is a football factory, one of a handful of schools who reload rather than rebuild, but the Gators lost more talent than most teams could dream of fielding in the first place.

The quarterback position is all Tim Tebow’s. We know he can move the pile in short-yardage running situations and has arm strength to spare. The question bettors need answered, however, is whether Tebow can run Florida’s spread as efficiently as Chris Leak did last season. Tebow’s high school numbers were awesome, but he won’t be facing high school defenses this season.

He’ll have lots of help from his receiving corps, led by burners Andre Caldwell and do-everything sophomore Percy Harvin. SEC defenses are esteemed for their collective speed, but no one in the conference can stop this pair in one-on-one coverage.

Tebow might be operating behind the SEC’s top offensive line as well, a unit returning four starters from last year’s championship squad.

Nine Gators were selected in the spring’s NFL Draft, seven on the defensive side of the ball. Only two defensive starters return. And while speed is still the name of the game in Gainesville, it’s tough to replace that much experience.

Defensive end Derrick Harvey looks like a solid NFL rush end or outside linebacker for years to come and strong safety Tony Joiner is a good one. Beyond them, it’s up to newcomers and former depth players to match last season’s ferocious run defense. It’s hard to see it happening, but few schools can recruit defensively like Florida did this past year.

The special teams are full of questions. Kicker Chris Hetland is gone and while many would say “good riddance” after his 6-for-15 performance on field goals last season, it still means the Gators are going with a largely untested kicker. They’re also looking at a true freshman at punter and their top expected return man, Brandon James, was just suspended indefinitely on drug possession charges.

Finally, who’ll run the ball? The Gators won in 2006 without a stud back but it’s not a blueprint they want to follow. Florida had six players with 125-plus rushing yards last season, but only two of them were running backs and the sole returning RB among them, Kestahn Moore, had only 289 yards on the ground.

Head coach Urban Meyer has found success at every level during his collegiate coaching career and surrounds himself with bright football minds. Dan Mullen runs the spread offense while Greg Mattison and Charlie Strong run the defense.

Mullen runs Meyer’s spread creatively, as evidenced by the school winning a national title without a feature back. The title game was a coaching mismatch offensively, as the Buckeyes had no clue what was coming when the Gators had the ball. Mullen’s creativity might be handcuffed, however, with Tebow playing as an every-down quarterback this year.

Mattison and Strong will be challenged to match last year’s defensive success. Having phenomenal athletes at their disposal will help but they’ll have their hands full as a crew of underclassmen learns on the job.

Meyer himself looks after special teams, reason enough to suspect that this potential weakness will be seen as a strength by mid-season.

Like last year, the Gators have a couple of warmups before facing Tennessee in the season’s first real test on Sept. 15. Playing Sun Belt favorites Troy in the second week will be an interesting ATS battle as versatile Trojans quarterback Omar Haugabook tests Florida's young defense.

The conference schedule is manageable. Visiting LSU on Oct. 6 is a nightmare, but no one escapes the SEC with an easy slate. The Gators have a week off after the visit to Baton Rouge, though given the Sept. 29 game with Auburn, scheduling a week off before the LSU visit might have been preferable.

In other big rivalries games, the cocktail party with Georgia goes down on Oct. 27 and the Gators visit Florida legend Steve Spurrier and his Gamecocks on Nov. 11.

The regular season schedule ends with a pair of in-state non-conference games at the Swamp. Florida Atlantic on Nov. 17 is a gimme, but Florida State on Nov. 24 is not. The Seminoles have a lot of questions coming into the season – we’ll know by October whether the season finale will be a clash of Top 10 teams or merely an SEC Championship warmup for the Gators.

It’s easy to point at the turnover on defense and the holes in the offensive backfield, but it’s a fool’s game to doubt the Gators coming in to 2007. They have the athletes and the coaching staff to make another run at the national title, though LSU is the near-unanimous preseason SEC favorite.

The schedule allows hope for an 11-1 SU regular season record, enough to land the Gators in another SEC Championship game. Florida could have another nightmare ATS season, however, thanks to its young defense and exceedingly-high expectations.

An Arkansas football fan commissioned a poll asking Razorbacks supporters if they're satisfied with embattled coach Houston Nutt.

''Be very careful overreading this thing,'' said Robert Eisinger, chair of Lewis and Clark College's political science department. ''Sometimes no data are better than bad data.''

Roger Wooley, a longtime Razorbacks fan living near Birmingham, Ala., was hoping to measure public opinion on several topics facing Arkansas' athletic program. He released the poll results Monday at a news conference in downtown Little Rock: 63 percent of those surveyed are either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with Nutt, and 28 percent are either somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.

The Razorbacks went 10-4 last season, but Nutt has been under fire after the departures of offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn and freshman quarterback Mitch Mustain. One fan has filed a taxpayer lawsuit over a nasty e-mail sent by booster Teresa Prewett - a friend of Nutt's family - to Mustain. The suit claims the university didn't investigate it thoroughly enough.

The survey of 600 Arkansans - 500 of whom were regular viewers of Arkansas sports - by Campaigns and Communications Plus Inc. of Sherwood had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent, Wooley said.

Eisinger was one of two public opinion analysts who cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the survey. Adam Berinsky, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, warned about the order in which questions were asked.

Respondents were first asked about some topics from recent months, such as the infamous e-mail from Prewett to Mustain. Later, respondents were asked their views on the leadership of athletic director Frank Broyles, Chancellor John White and ''the current University of Arkansas football coach.''

''By the end, when you're asking how satisfied are you with the leadership ... you've just basically gotten people to think about negative things and told them negative information,'' Berinsky said.

Wooley stood by the poll, saying he worked with the polling firm to ensure the survey was objective. The firm provided a cover letter saying ''the client specified that all questions be neutral in order not to sway the participants and adversely impact responses.''

University of Arkansas athletic department spokesman Kevin Trainor released a statement after the survey was made public.

''It only reaffirms our belief that people all over the state of Arkansas are passionate about the Razorbacks,'' Trainor said. ''We appreciate our fans and value their feedback and support. We are looking forward to another outstanding year of Razorback athletics.''

Wooley, 58, had prepared a statement before the news conference. He called on Arkansas fans to come together after a tumultuous offseason.

''I think a good first step would be for both sides to realize that neither has as strong a public support as they thought,'' Wooley said. ''I am hoping that an objective poll can demonstrate that. How about we acknowledge that there are dedicated Hog fans on both sides, and start seeking a solution?''

The poll included 600 respondents, at least 500 of which had to watch Arkansas sports ''as often as they could,'' according to the cover letter. The overall breakdown on Nutt was as follows: 24 percent very satisfied, 39 percent somewhat satisfied, 13 percent somewhat dissatisfied and 15 percent very dissatisfied.

But whether those results are meaningful is in question. Berinsky said the poll was better than an unscientific Internet poll - he and Eisinger had no major complaints about the survey's sample. But

NCAA FOOTBALL FREE PICKS- (associated press) : indiana head coach dies.

Indiana football coach Terry Hoeppner died Tuesday of complications from a brain tumor, a university spokesman said. He was 59.

Hoeppner, who had two brain surgeries in the past 18 months, missed nearly four months on medical leave. He died at 6:50 a.m. at Bloomington Hospital, said J.D. Campbell, the school's sports information director.

Hoeppner, who went 9-14 in two seasons as Indiana's coach, had taken three medical leaves since December 2005. He hadn't been seen publicly since late February.

Hoeppner left the team temporarily three times in 15 months starting in December 2005 when doctors removed a tumor from his right temple a year after athletic director Rick Greenspan hired Hoeppner.

His wife, Jane, said in a statement announcing Lynch's hiring that her husband was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments. He had been hospitalized last week, but was expected to return home Friday.

In September, a CT scan revealed another growth in the same area of Hoeppner's brain. When doctors operated a second time, Hoeppner left the team - an absence expected to last two weeks that lasted through spring practice.

NCAA FOOTBALL PICKS- (associated press): charges filed against florida lineman.

Prosecutors have filed two charges against suspended Florida player Ronnie Wilson in an early April shooting incident.

Wilson, 19, allegedly fired a semiautomatic weapon into the air after being chased following a nightclub incident. He was charged with battery and discharging a firearm in public. Arraignment was set for July 3.

The alleged victim claimed Wilson spat on him and slapped him in the face at a nightclub. Wilson told police he did spit on the victim but denied hitting him. Wilson allegedly left the club, pulled a rifle from his trunk and fired a shot in the air.

Florida coach Urban Meyer called the incident a ''major concern'' following the arrest in April, and suspended Wilson indefinitely from team activities. Meyer declined comment on the charges through sports information director Steve McClain.

-- Alabama's Nick Saban is a football coach, not a pitch man. His domain is the football field and film room, not the podium and banquet circuit.

The Crimson Tide coach knows, after all, that he'll be judged on wins and titles rather than speeches and commercials, anyway.

''Here's what everybody needs to understand: Why did I get hired here? To do what? Coach football, right? I'm a coach,'' Saban said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press.

It's why his eight-year, $32 million contract, approved by university trustees on Thursday, stipulates that he doesn't have to make more than 15 appearances a year at alumni gatherings and other such functions. Don't expect to see him in commercials or on billboards either.

Saban said he had a similar limit in place at LSU and other stops. It's why he chose to recruit and hire a staff instead of saying yes to many of the 100 or so requests for appearances that poured in during his first two months on the job.

''It's a full-time job to run this football program and the guys that are on this team and get them to all do what they're supposed to do,'' Saban said. ''I think that's what people expect.

It's a trade-off most Alabama fans will likely accept even if they'd love a little bigger slice of the $4 million-a-year coach's time.

''This is the way I've always done it,'' Saban said. ''I do it because I know what my priorities are. I know what's important to being successful.''

He also knows that his hiring in January raised expectations for a team that went 6-7 last season and hasn't had sustained success in a decade. The Tide are +7500 on SPORTSBETTING.com to win the BCS Championship in 2007-08.

Saban did, after all, lead LSU to a Southeastern Conference championship in his second season and a share of the national title two years later. He prefers to talk about ''the process'' of achieving those successes instead of predicting when (or if) they'll happen.

''You've got to be realistic about your expectations,'' he said. ''Expectations can be a negative when you have high expectations and they're not realistic and they don't come to fruition and everybody gets a negative attitude.''

''Something's going to go wrong. Count on it,'' he said. ''Everybody talks about the SEC championship that we won in the second year (at LSU) or the national championship we won in the fourth year. But we lost to UAB the first year.''

Saban and his wife, Terry, have already had some highs and lows during their first six months since he left the Miami Dolphins.

The biggest high: 92,000-plus fans filling Bryant-Denny Stadium for a spring game, believed to be a national record for what essentially amounts to a scrimmage.

''Never was there a more heartfelt moment by the Sabans (than) to see that kind of support for what we're trying to do as what there was at the spring game, with all those people coming to support the team,'' Saban said.

The lows: He was roundly criticized in Miami for leaving a couple of weeks after vowing, ''I'm not going to be the Alabama coach.''

''I was forced to make statements that I shouldn't have made relative to our future, and I was criticized for it,'' Saban said. ''And rightfully so. I did it. I don't want to have grudges and I do care what people think. But I don't criticize others.

''I've got to be responsible for my own self-determination when it comes to that stuff and do the best we can to do it the right way in the future.''

During nearly a decade on the job, Weiberg was credited with doubling the annual revenue distributed to member schools to a record $106 million last year. He started in December 1998.

''There is never a perfect time to depart a position like this,'' Weiberg said Thursday. ''I am proud of the growth and progress of the Big 12 over the last nine years.''

Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers said Weiberg brought unity to the league, a merger of the Midwest-based Big Eight and four Southwest Conference schools in Texas.

''It was a shock, unexpected,'' Myers said. ''It's definitely better as a result of his leadership the last nine years. We'll definitely miss him and wish him the best.''

No replacement has been chosen. Harvey Perlman, chairman of the Big 12 Board of Directors, said he will consult with other board members to determine a transition plan.

One of Weiberg's darkest days as commissioner came in 2001, when a plane carrying members of the Oklahoma State men's basketball program crashed in Colorado, killing 10. Among the dead was Jared Weiberg, a student manager on the team and the commissioner's nephew.

Weiberg's new job is vice president of university planning and development for the Big Ten Network, which plans to launch in August. The network, a joint venture of the Big Ten Conference and Fox Cable Networks, will cover Big Ten athletic and academic events.

Steve Hatchell was the Big 12's first commissioner, serving two years after the league began competition in 1996. Dave Martin served in an interim role until Weiberg was hired.

FREE COLLEGE FOOTBALL PICKS- (associated press): norte dame narrows qauarterbacks to 3.

The competition to replace Brady Quinn as Notre Dame's starting quarterback was narrowed to three Wednesday instead of the two coach Charlie Weis wanted.

''Each of these three young men brought something unique to the QB competition. Evan ran the operation the best, Jimmy threw the ball the best and Demetrius made the most plays. For these reasons, they will compete for playing time,'' Weis said.

Sharpley, Quinn's backup last season, is the only one of the three with game experience. He was in eight games last season, but threw just two passes, completing a 7-yarder against Michigan.

Clausen is the most highly touted player to arrive at Notre Dame since Ron Powlus in 1993. Clausen enrolled at Notre Dame in January after graduating from high school early.

Jones avoided possible controversy last week when prosecutors in LaPorte County dismissed a misdemeanor charge of marijuana possession against Jones after the owner of a car he was driving said in court papers was sure Jones didn't know the marijuana was in the ashtray.

Notes: Weis also announced that cornerback Gary Gray, who enrolled in January after graduating from high school early, had shoulder surgery and is expected to miss the season. Gray was injured most of the spring. ... Notre Dame will use Big East officiating crews this season instead of crews from the Big Ten.

FREE COLLEGE FOOTBALL PICKS- (associated press) mother of stabbed punter say's he's doing fine.

Florence Mendoza squirmed in a fourth-row bench Thursday as lawyers discussed the case against the former Northern Colorado backup punter accused of trying to kill her son.

''I don't think anybody would like to sit and hear what went on the night that their son was hurt,'' Mendoza said after a motions hearing for Mitch Cozad, charged with attempted first-degree murder in a knife attack on her son Rafael, the starting punter.

Rafael Mendoza was attacked on Sept. 11 in a dimly lit parking lot outside his apartment in Evans, a small town adjacent to Greeley. He suffered a 3- to 5-inch-deep wound in his kicking leg.

Cozad, of Wheatland, Wyo., has pleaded not guilty and remains free on $500,000 bail. If found guilty of attempted murder, he could face up to 48 years in prison.

Police have said they believe Cozad stabbed Mendoza to try to get the starting job, and the case drew quick comparisons to the assault by Tonya Harding's hit man on Nancy Kerrigan.

Cozad's case is scheduled to go to trial July 30. A pretrial readiness conference was moved up to July 2, the last day the judge will accept a plea agreement.

Asked whether talks were under way about a plea deal, defense lawyer Joseph Gavaldon said only that ''they're always ongoing.'' District attorney spokeswoman Jennifer Finch declined to comment.

Prosecutor Michele Meyer called four witnesses: two Evans police officers; a university police officer; and Nathan Cole, the university's coordinator for student rights and responsibilities.

Cole testified about bringing an eviction notice and a no-trespass letter to Cozad's dorm room on Sept. 12. Cozad, who was suspended from the university and kicked off the team, had an hour to vacate his dorm room.

While Cozad waited in Cole's office for his mother to pick him up, Evans police arrived, handcuffed Cozad and took him away, Cole said.

After nearly two hours of testimony Thursday, Florence Mendoza walked outside and leaned against a concrete wall in the bright sun.

Rafael Mendoza returned to the team just two weeks after the attack and averaged 39.9 yards on 56 punts last season. He hopes to punt for the Bears again next fall, his mother said.

USC +250

Florida +700

Michigan +800

LSU +1200

Texas +1000

West Virginia +1200

Oklahoma +3000

Penn St +3500

Arkansas +3500

Georgia +4500

Nebraska +3500

Virginia Tech +3500

Ohio St +2000

Florida St +3500

Wisconsin +3500

Texas A&M +6000

Louisville +2000

Auburn +6000

California +5000

Tennessee +5000

Miami FL +4000

Rutgers +5000

Notre Dame +4000

Alabama +7500

Iowa +10000

UCLA +5000

Clemson +7500

Oregon +10000

BYU +20000

Colorado +20000

South Carolina +10000

TCU +20000

Arizona St +20000

Oregon St +20000

Boston College +20000

Missouri +20000

Texas Tech +2000

Boise St +20000

Arizona +20000

Wake Forest +20000

Maryland +20000

North Carolina St +20000

Georgia Tech +20000

Hawaii +20000

Oklahoma St +20000

Pittsburgh +20000

Kansas St +20000

Purdue +20000

South Florida +20000

December 19 , 2006 HOME - SPORTS NEWS

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