Look ma, we made it!

Despite Covid-19’s best effort, the SEC will begin play on Saturday and will hopefully have a memorable season.

A conference only, 10 game season with a championship game to decide things, yeah, sign me the hell up. The only bad thing about all of this is no Florida State this year.

Anyway, on to the picks…

SEC Pick of the Week: No. 23 Kentucky at No. 8 Auburn (-7.5), 12:00pm ET on SECN.

It seems like everyone and their mother thinks that Kentucky is going to win this football game. The thing about that is, if any coach has shown the ability to escape it is Gus Malzahn. Every single time it appears that he will lose and his back is against the wall he finds a way to get the job done.

Bo Nix is a year older and ready to go, the defense loses a lot, sure, but they’ll be fine against Kentucky.

In a matchup of two teams that very well could finish third in their respective divisions, I’ll take the Tigers to cover.

Keep an eye on: Mississippi State at No. 6 LSU (-16.5), 3:30pm ET on CBS.

Ahh, what to make of the defending champs. They lost a lot. And I mean a lot. A new quarterback, new receivers, a new defense, basically, and some new coaches.

I’m still waiting for the wheels to fall off the Tigers bus and I think their slow decline starts now. But I’ve been saying that for the last couple of years and all they’ve done is ignore me and have one of the two or three most impressive seasons of all time last year.

As for the Bulldogs, well, bring on the air raid, Mike Leach and pirates.

This game might be closer than the experts think, as they like to say on that gameday show.

Upset alert: No. 23 Tennessee (-3.5) at South Carolina, 7:30pm ET on SECN.

If anybody has the Volunteers’ number the last decade or so it is most definitely Will Muschamp. The Vols are something like 1-7 against him as a head coach.

I’m not as high on the Vols as most seem to be but I’m not thinking that the Gamecocks are going to be world beaters either. I actually have Carolina winning this game outright, though with a very low level of confidence.

Trending up and Trending down:

We’ll get to these categories as the season continues.