A sampling of what writers around the nation and are saying about SEC football:

RON MORRIS The State (Columbia , S. C. )
Few doubted Nick Saban would return Alabama to elite status. Few believed he could do it this quickly. Only a victory at LSU on Nov. 8 stands between Alabama and an unbeaten regular season. Arkansas fans should have watched what they wished for. Houston Nutt proved long ago he is one of the top coaches in college football, yet Arkansas fans ran him out of town after 10 seasons, three SEC West titles and three Cotton Bowl appearances. Bobby Petrino might someday have Arkansas challenging for the SEC West title again every season. Really, though, who is sorry now that Nutt left ?

Sometimes a coach simply makes a big mistake in hiring an assistant coach. Tommy Tuberville blew it when he named Tony Franklin his offensive coordinator. In doing so, Tuberville changed the face of Auburn football from a team that played smash-mouth to one that ran the Spread offense. Big mistake. Tuberville fired Franklin, and now the veteran coach has to patch up things on the Plains. What’s not to like about how things are going in Gainesville, Fla. ? Beautiful weather, winning programs across the board and a chance to win national championships in nearly every sport every year. Football is no exception, and the Gators are riding high with a 5-1 record and No. 10 national ranking.

Georgia was overrated as the consensus No. 1 team in the preseason. Then it all came crashing down in a dismal firsthalf showing against Alabama. Games against LSU and Florida will determine if Georgia is a contender or a pretender. You might not have noticed Kentucky is 5-2. You probably will notice that Wildcats will struggle to gain bowl eligibility. Winning one or two more games could be difficult. No bowl trip will leave a blue moon over Kentucky. Does it get any better than this for LSU ? Les Miles has taken this program to a new level. The defending national champions are 5-1, improving Miles’ record at LSU to an amazing 39-7.

Mississippi will struggle to reach a bowl game. Give Nutt a couple of more seasons, though, and he will have Mississippi annually challenging for the SEC West title.

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You have to feel for Mississippi State fans. Just when they thought Sylvester Croom was the perfect fit at Mississippi State, the Bulldogs take a huge backward step. A victory over Mississippi and an 8-5 season last year made it look like Croom had slowly (four seasons ) built Mississippi State into a solid program. Instead, the bricks have crumbled with a 2-5 start this season.

We knew all season that South Carolina lacked a running game. Only in the loss to LSU did it become apparent how woeful and costly it could be. South Carolina ranks 109 out of 118 NCAA teams in rushing, averaging 100. 25 yards.

Poor Phillip Fulmer. His teams won nine games and 10 games, respectively, the past two seasons. His 2007 club played in the SEC Championship Game. He has won a national championship. Probably the best Tennessee can do this season is 7-5, which is not close to being enough to keep your job in Knoxville, even if you are Fulmer.

It could happen this weekend. Vanderbilt would become bowl eligible with a victory against visiting Duke. A bowl game would be the fourth in Vanderbilt’s history and the first since the Hall of Fame Bowl of 1982.

ED SHEARER The Advocate ( Baton Rouge )
Both Georgia and LSU hope they’ll meet again in the Georgia Dome in December, but both face tough hurdles to land berths in the SEC Championship Game, beginning with their head-tohead meeting in Tiger Stadium on Saturday. No. 9 Georgia is a two-point underdog. The Bulldogs still have the Gators to play, as well as longtime rival Auburn. LSU, the defending national champion currently ranked 11 th, will entertain the Crimson Tide on Nov. 8. The Tigers also have to play Ole Miss on Nov. 22.

Coach March Richt tore a page from the only coach to win a national championship at Georgia — Vince Dooley. Dooley was noted for making foes look like world beaters.

“We are going to Baton Rouge and one of the most storied stadiums in the country, a place I can truthfully say is the loudest place I’ve ever been,” he said. “It’s going to be a great challenge and a very, very difficult challenge for us. They are big, strong, fast and talented. They are really really good.”

Coach Les MIles of LSU returns the compliments. “Georgia is certainly great,” Miles said. “They started the season No. 1 in the country and are very talented.” Miles is especially aware of the Bulldogs’ potent offensive weapons — quarterback Matthew Stafford and running back Knowshon Moreno, as well as some outstanding receivers.

The game will feature two of the top running backs in the SEC. Moreno has run for 762 yards and 11 touchdowns and LSU’s Charles Scott has 631 yards and eight scores.

RAY MELICK The Birmingham (Ala. ) News The next offensive coordinator that Tommy Tuberville hires at Auburn will be his sixth in 10 years. And all but one, current Arkansas Coach Bobby Petrino, was fired. “It just reeks of something that’s not right,” said the last of those coordinators, Tony Franklin, who confirmed stories of Tuberville going out of his way to back Franklin all day Tuesday, then suddenly walking into Franklin’s office Wednesday and telling him he was letting him go.

“The pressure at Auburn is incredible. The standards are such that you don’t just win, you have to win every game.

The one constant in Tuberville’s staff has been his offensive assistants beneath the coordinator position, meaning every coordinator Tuberville has hired has had to adapt to a staff that has been with Tuberville since his days as head coach at Ole Miss.

“ I talked to Tommy about bringing in at least one guy with me, one guy that I knew would completely buy into the system. He said he’d think about it, but it didn’t happen. That’s my fault, for taking the job anyway,” Franklin said. “The thing that is important is not what happens when everything is going good, but happens when things go bad. That’s when it helps to have people who believe in you and are willing to go down with you. That makes it harder to jump ship.

“ You fired a really good football coach. And you had a good coach before me and you fired him. It’s not like it was perfect before me and everything went bad.”

Tuberville insists he is committed to the Spread offense. Franklin isn’t so sure.

“Committed to the Spread ?” Franklin said. “First of all, the Spread is nine million different things. To me, it is a word that means a formation where you spread the field. What you do out of it is your personality.... what Tommy’s committed to is trying to do something different, to be better on offense. He said he was committed to the Spread, then came back and said [the next coordinator ] doesn’t have to be a Spread guy but has to know something about the Spread.

“ He’s obviously not as committed as he thought he was.”