New year, new ballgame

Alabama coach Nick Saban has expressed several times this year that armies defend forts but college football teams don’t defend national championships. Saban believes that what happened last season — the Crimson Tide capping their first 14-0 record with a 37-21 win over Texas in the BCS title game — stays in last season. Yet the topic of repeating, or even defending, is expected to be extremely popular Wednesday when Saban and the Tide open the Southeastern Conference media days event in Hoover, Ala. Saban coached LSU to a 9-3 record in 2004 after guiding the Tigers to the ’03 BCS crown. One monstrous advantage the 2010 Tide have over the ’04 Tigers is at quarterback. LSU never had stability that season with Marcus Randall and JaMarcus Russell, while Alabama returning starter Greg McElroy was superior to Florida’s Tim Tebow in last year’s SEC title game and posted the second-lowest interception rate in league history (1 per 81.25 attempts). [More]

SEC Media Days

We’ve still got another six weeks or so before the college football season kicks off, but the juices will start to get flowing on Wednesday with Southeastern Conference Media Days in Birmingham, Ala. There doesn’t figure to be the kind of individual spectacle that came with Tim Tebow’s arrival last year, but the three-day event certainly won’t be short on story lines. The first day figures to be a zoo, with Alabama Coach Nick Saban and Florida Coach Urban Meyer resuming their tug-of-war for control of the SEC and the college football landscape. Reigning Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram will also make an appearance. Kentucky Coach Joker Phillips will make his SEC Media Days debut on opening day as well. Meyer was on top of the world going into last year’s Media Days, coming off a national title with perhaps the most celebrated college football player of the modern era at his side in Tebow. Now it’s Saban who appears to be the league’s alpha dog after toppling Meyer and Florida in the SEC championship game en route to the national title. [More]

Arenas ready for training camp

Former Alabama defensive back Javier Arenas expects to be in training camp with the Kansas City Chiefs when it begins in less than two weeks despite not having signed a contract. The 5-foot-9 Arenas’ growth from little-known recruit to All-American and national champion is a true underdog story. Before Alabama came calling late in the recruiting process during Arenas’ senior year of high school in Tampa, Fla., his only other offer was from Florida Atlantic. The Chiefs drafted Arenas in the second round of April’s NFL Draft. The team’s training camp begins July 30, and Arenas plans to be there to help his new team. Some might say Arenas has to prove himself all over again, but he doesn’t see it that way. He’s just trying to be himself. “It’s not so much trying to prove myself,” Arenas said. “It’s just working hard because that’s who I am. I know what I’m capable of. Some people don’t think I’m capable of it, so I just happen to prove them wrong. But it’s not me trying to prove myself. It’s just me being who I am.” [More]

Roll Tide!

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