Lots of buzz about conference expansions.  The Big 12 is about to be toast with the pending Nebraska move to the Big 10 triggering a chain reaction.  Most of the rumors concern Texas, Texas A&M, and OU to the Pac 10, but there’s a strong chance those schools could end up in the SEC.  Mike Slive, the SEC Commissioner, has made it clear that the SEC won’t be left behind in the formation of super-conferences.

Now, I’ve got mixed feelings about SEC expansion, but the idea of a conference that spans the full extent of the old Confederacy warms my heart.

One downside to all this is that Baylor will be left out in the cold.  Rumor has it that Berkeley wants no part of the Baptist Notre Dame.   I personally would like to see Baylor as the Vandy of the SEC West.  We’ll see what Frank thinks about all this. Update:  Frank’s already on the case, as you can see.  I should have known something about this would already be on SA.

At any rate, it’s good to be thinking about football (and it is about football).  If you want to keep up with the nitty gritty, the SEC Rant is the place to go.

The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins destroys the National Organization of Women for their opposition to Tim Tebow’s ad. For those who don’t follow Jenkins, she is both a staunch feminist and pro-choice. The whole column is a must-read. Here is the red-meat section:

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the “National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.” For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow’s 30-second ad hasn’t even run yet, but it already has provoked “The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us” to reveal something important about themselves: They aren’t actually “pro-choice” so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn’t be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikini selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn’t.

Every two years, the unwashed LSU faithful crawl out of their brackish swamp and travel to Oxford, MS, bent on defiling our cosmopolitan soil like so many socially-perverse locusts. But we welcome you, that even one of your young might leave with the indelible mark of civility.

As to the game: beware of the man who has singlehandedly redeemed the name “Dexter.” Be sure and wave as he runs past you, because it’s all you can do.

Update: Dexter McCluster also passes.

The best match-up for pure Old Skule SEC goodness, Alabama vs. LSU.  In the tradition of its one-time faculty member, William Tecumseh Sherman, here begins LSU’s march to Atlanta and then the sea (Pacific rather than Atlantic this time around).

In fact, Miles seemed to be channelling Sherman in his pre-game comments:

“My aim, then, is to whip the Gumps, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.  Fear is the beginning of wisdom.”