Morning Six Pack: November 21, 2012

It’s only Wednesday, but it feels like Black Friday already. Do a little shopping, then check out these six college football stories from around the country.

Coaches’ organization honors a Tide assistant

The American Football Coaches Association has named Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart as the organization’s assistant coach of the year.

Rutgers’s Move Offers Many Potential Upsides

Besides the added income from playing in an elite conference with its own television network, joining the Big Ten could help the Scarlet Knights’ recruiting.

Here’s Brutus Buckeye Reenacting The Chattahoochee Video

Did you know? The Ohio State University has a waterskiing club, and college mascot Brutus Buckeye is a member. Two questions:1. Is it cost effective to wear that in the lake, and 2. Is there any footage of him joining the Ohio State Beekeepers?

Mason close to 1,000 yards

Tre Mason has been by far the most productive running back for Auburn this season. Mason, a sophomore, has 150 carries for 920 yards with eight touchdowns, which accounts for more than half of Auburn's 1,689 rushing yards this season.

Source: Duke, David Cutcliffe agree to contract extension

According to the report, the deal could be done as early as today and should be completed this week, and would run through the 2018 season.

Quotable:

But a funny thing happened in 2012. The SEC split itself neatly, if not quite evenly, into two divisions, a fierce Gang of Six, three in each division, and a less-imposing Knitting Circle of Eight. While it's easy (and not unfair) to say that you can't play hypotheticals, there is one mathematical fact in the SEC. Every time a team from that Group of Six has played one of the other eight, it has won. Every single time. The record for the Haves vs. The Have-Nots is a perfect 27-0, and unless Auburn, Arkansas or Missouri can pull a big upset this weekend, it will end up at 30-0. So a fair argument can be made that the more non-Top Six teams you played (to be fair, some were pretty good teams such as Mississippi State and Vanderbilt), the better off you were. Proof in the pudding? The two teams that didn't draw a big-time cross-divisional opponent were Alabama and Georgia. Which two teams will, barring a big upset by Auburn, wind up in Atlanta? Alabama and Georgia.

Look a little deeper. If the division titles were settled only by intradivisional play - the Steve Spurrier Suggestion from the spring - true chaos would be upon us. Both divisions would have three-way ties at the top (again, assuming the favorites win this weekend) with identical 5-1 records. But LSU, Texas A&M and South Carolina all lost to tough cross-division opponents. Florida won two such games but had to play Georgia on the heels of playing LSU and South Carolina, and lost head-to-head to the Bulldogs. Alabama fans, of course, will say the Crimson Tide could have beaten Florida and South Carolina as easily as it rolled past Missouri and Tennessee, but ask LSU fans if they would like to swap schedules and see.

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