Outside of Florida and Alabama it has been a season of disappointing results and underachievement for most of the SEC.  So I decided to rank the top 5 disappointments in the Southeastern Conference.

#5) South Carolina

The Gamecocks edge out Tennessee here because, other than the unenlightened national experts, no one who follows SEC football expected much from the Vols this year.  With Ainge, McCoy and David Cutcliffe leaving the team it was a train wreck waiting to happen.  South Carolina on the other hand presented Steve Spurrier with the best defense he has had since his years at Florida.  All the team needed was some offensive production - something Spurrier has always been a master of.  Despite three years in the system, Chris Smelley has not progressed to where he should.  In his second year Garcia looks more like a true freshman than a redshirt freshman.

The offensive development of South Carolina has been woefully inadequate and the blame for that can only lie with the coaches.  Whether it’s the fault of Spurrier or Spurrier’s choice of assistant coaches, the offensive line is still subpar, the special teams look undisciplined and the quarterbacks, an area you would think Spurrier would be the master of, seem lost and confused.  The lone bright spot this season has been new defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson but if he continues to perform this well will he be in Columbia for long?

#4) Mississippi State

I’ll admit that I wasn’t surprised with the Bulldogs record although I didn’t expect as many blowout losses given Croom’s defensive emphasis.  I was SHOCKED to see Croom shown the door so soon after their first bowl game in 7 years and winning the SEC coach of the year.  Then again, I forgot to factor in the modern day fan’s sense of irrational entitlement combined with the instant success that Houston Nutt had in Oxford this year.  And while I hate to say it . . . I’m sure Croom being black didn’t help buy him any time either.  Mississippi is deep south folks and anyone who has been there knows there is a deep cultural racism present in the state.  I look at it like this, if you are black and you WIN it’s no big deal but if you LOSE . . . it’s an issue. 

That being said, I don’t know if a white coach who had only one winning season in five years would have fared much better but I think he might have eeked out a 6th season based on the previous year’s accomplishment and the dreadful state of the program when he arrived.  I just don’t think Croom was willing to put up with the constant harassment and jeers from angry Bulldog fans for another full season.  It probably wasn’t productive for his players or the program.  I never thought Croom was an SEC caliber coach and felt MSU hired him strictly for public relations purposes, expecting him to fail.  Croom was an honorable man and a good hire to restore credibility to the program.  However he didn’t have the recruiting ability nor brilliant mind to win at a second tier school like MSU in the nation’s toughest football conference.  Unfortunately for MSU I don’t see their next hire being that much better and will likely hover around .500 for the foreseeable future or until the league loses some of its top coaching talent.

#3) LSU

Sure, LSU lost a number of quality players to the NFL but they also returned a huge number of pro prospects who failed to both play to their potential and exhibit any leadership on the field.  Without Bo Pelini the defense looked lost and lethargic.  Forced to play a redshirt freshman quarterback for much of the season, LSU threw half as many touchdowns to the other team on interception returns (7) as to his own teammates (14).  The trenches that LSU was supposed to dominate turned out to be contested in far too many contests.  The Tigers came up short in all phases of the game.  The offense didn’t perform, the defense didn’t perform and the special team performance was underwhelming at best.

What we are left with is a referendum of sorts on Coach Miles.  His recruiting efforts have been solid but now he is coaching a team of his own recruitment and design, will he bounce back to double digit wins or will he be stuck in the 8-9 underperforming range (at least underperformance in the minds of LSU fans who believe that their school is an elite football program).  Next year will be a year or reckoning for Miles.  Will he make any changes in his coaching staff (some would seem to be in order)?  Will he develop team chemistry?  Will he develop leaders to push the program back to great heights?  All that is left to be determined but the seat is definitely starting to heat up in Baton Rouge.

#2) Auburn

From preseason Top 10 to a losing record seems like a long way to fall. It reminds me of Tennessee’s collapse in 2005, the season that in retrospect was the beginning of the end for Phil Fulmer.  Whether Tommy Tuberville can hang on another two years is a matter of conjecture.  Tuberville has proven himself to be a terrific gameday coach but his weakness in the recruiting arena has put the program on a downward spiral.  While Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Florida State struggled in the beginning of the decade Tuberville was able to capitalize and land enough athletes to build the program to a solid foundation.  However the current SEC climate has shown that only the best coaches can survive in the conference and Tuberville’s program has steadily slipped back to mediocrity.

Apart from the two division champions (UF and UA) the league in general was not very good.  If anything, this should have been a year where Auburn could have maintained a winning record.  The fact that they were unable to shows just how bad the team really became.  Humiliating blowout losses to West Virginia and arch-rival Alabama can’t be good for Tommy’s popularity on the Plains.  The long term war between Head Coach Tuberville and King Alumni Bobby Lowder has been waged for almost a decade now.  The Petrino fiasco was a major victory for the head coach but it seems now the tide has turned back in favor of Lowder.  The far reaching effects of this season are likely to lead to the eventual removal of Tuberville and could signal a return to the old school (aka cheating) ways of the past under self-appointed football Czar Lowder.

#1) Georgia

Bulldog fans came into the season dreaming of a national title and left calling for the heads of defensive coordinator Willie Martinez and Mark Richt.  Though eminently talented at a number of positions, Georgia never seemed to play as a team and all those people who dismissed the warnings based on this team’s off-season shenanigans look a little silly right now.  Not only did Georgia not win a NATIONAL title, they didn’t win an SEC Title, didn’t win their division, didn’t land another BCS bowl and lost their state championship to Georgia Tech for the first time in 7 years.  This team reminds me a little of last year’s Florida team except instead of getting valuable experience, Georgia looks to lose their two biggest playmakers in quarterback Matt Stafford and running back Knowshon Moreno.  If so, then THIS was the season that set up for a title run, not next year. 

While the Bulldogs are talented and look to be competitive for years, no one can predict how good or bad they will be with new starters at key positions.  Even Georgia’s 9 wins seemed much more difficult to obtain than they should have been.  A shootout win against Kentucky, close wins against offensively challenged Auburn and South Carolina (including a late comeback to beat Auburn), games against Tennessee and Vanderbilt that really shouldn’t have been as close as the score indicated.  Early in the year people said Georgia couldn’t win the national title because of their SCHEDULE.  Well, guess what?  Georgia lucked out in some respects.  The SEC was down this year which set Georgia up for a great season. 

Of all the games circled before the season only the Florida game played out to be as challenging as anticipated:  Arizona State was nowhere near the team in Dennis Erickson’s second year that they were in the first,  LSU was a shell of its National Title self.  South Carolina struggled throughout the year, and Auburn couldn’t even post a winning record in 2008.  Georgia’s losses besides the Gators, Georgia Tech and Alabama, were two teams expected to be in rebuilding mode this season.  While still a difficult schedule, the underachievement of a number of teams made it much more manageable.  Losing to the top two teams in the league is hardly a condemnation of the Bulldogs program.  Getting BLOWN OUT in both games is not as forgivable.