Arizona versus Carolina: A conversation about the NFC Championship Game

 The following is a conversation between four strangers about this evening's NFC Championship game (click here for thoughts on the AFC game):

Even in the snow.

JOHN NOLAN: As much as this game on paper should be about the offenses and their respective playmakers, it’s the defenses that will decide who wins.

2014 NFL Playoffs: Saturday's Divisional Round

The following is a conversation previewing the 2014 Divisional match-ups (a discussion of Sunday's games can be found here):


Baltimore v New England @ 4:35 on NBC

The New England Patriots haven't been the same since George W. Bush left office.

Staring into the Eyes of Giants: Georgia vs. Auburn

Goliath, being a giant and all, casts a shadow that goes well beyond the walls of a Sunday School room or even the farthest church pew from the pulpit, and like any figure from ancient times, he goes by many names and comes in many forms. The first Goliath I ever met was William Lattimore: he was the fastest kid in the third grade, and despite shooting a basketball like a Mujahideen with a rocket launcher, he never missed. Then there was Quentin Moses who in middle school stood like a Philistine above a bunch of musty-smelling adolescent Hebrews, and the list could go on to include Michael Hudson of Battlefield Middle or Reed Fairchild of Spotsylvania Middle. Different names. Same effect. When coach asked you to guard one of them one on one or you found yourself eye to eye with them across an imaginary yard marker, you knew they were better, that your legs weren't fast enough, that your arms weren't long enough--that you needed the miracle of a slingshot to slay the giant standing before you.

Auburn's Dirty Play

Russ brought these compilation videos of Auburn's Nick Fairley to my attention in the comments section of our SEC picks last week.  He probably thought watching them might make me feel better after last week's Georgia-Auburn game--they didn't.  I still believe that anytime Auburn is undefeated it's a sure sign that there's something amiss with college football, and it may not have anything to do with pay for play scandals.




Now, I'm definitely biased because I'm a Georgia fan, but these plays suggest to me that Nick Fairley is a dirty player and if he's not dirty, he's definitely living on that line.  I'm not sure the Georgia offensive linemen should have retaliated against him.  It makes it feel like they sunk down to Fairley's level, but I'm not sure what a group of linemen are supposed to do when they've watched a guy not just go after their quarterback but go head hunting on multiple plays.

Is Fairley talented?  Extremely.  But he's also putting others and himself at risk with the savage manner in which he plays.  When a guy like this begins to develop a reputation, almost anything he does will be deemed dirty and the players of other teams will watch him through a lens of "if this guy so much as breathes on my quarterback, I'm coming after him."  But it's not just other players that will watch Fairley more closely: it's the refs as well.  Because of his play, number ninety is now under a microscope with the Iron Bowl coming up, and one has to think that the SEC can not continue to let him maim quarterbacks in this manner.



In the above video, it's possible that Aaron Murray and Nick Fairley's face masks got tangled together, but because of Fairley's reputation, it isn't difficult to imagine that he's intentionally bearing down on Murray's helmet as a means of taunting.  And that's the problem with Fairley's play, it makes everything he does questionable, and while Auburn thoroughly outplayed Georgia in the last three quarters of the South's oldest rivalry last week, Fairley's conduct escalated the hostilities in the game to the point where two of his teammates will now miss the first half of their game against Alabama for throwing punches.  Fairley's play is hurting his own team, and this pattern of play goes beyond the Georgia game, as shown by the following play against LSU:



Auburn is currently being investigated for whether or not it paid Heisman Trophy candidate Cam Newton to play at their school, but sometimes being a dirty program is as much about what you do on the field and not just what you do off of it.

LCB SEC Picks: Game of the Week

Georgia v (2) Auburn @ 3:30 on CBS
Langston:
The Cam Newton story feels too Salem Witchy for my tastes, as I have a hard time believing a college kid would call a coach (someone acted on his behalf, or without his knowledge) and demand pay-for-play and an even harder time believing this story would have gained any steam if Auburn was 8-2 and out of the BCS and SEC race. I don't know if he's getting or gotten money, but if he is/has, he is one of many elite athletes getting ducats for playing the game.

If you don't think is a witch-hunt, think again. Why the delay of all this information coming out? Mississippi State supposedly reported this to the SEC last January, most likely after they found out their bid was too low. ESPN learned of this in August, and yet nothing hits the wire until Auburn gets the number one spot in the BCS rankings. Acting on this breaking information, every reporter bolts to be the first to break the next Cam controversy, whether it was speeding tickets, stolen laptops or Florida leaking private educational information illegally two years after he left. It's all inconsequential and petty, that is until they show us proof that he knowingly took cash, and it's just making everyone involved look just as dirty as the allegations.

Now, this game is important because every Auburn game for the rest of the season has a huge effect on the rest of the country, and more-so than just the effects on the BCS title game. If War Eagle loses, the SEC, NCAA, and BCS will be bailed out from a potentially embarrassing situation. If they continue to win and Cam does get suspended or found to be taking the cash, everyone involved looks terrible. The SEC has had this information since last January, if they let him play this season knowing he was trying to get paid, they look like they don't care and are probably looking at some legal repercussions themselves. If he gets suspended after the SEC title game, your talking about a Newton-less Auburn team in the national title game against Oregon, in what would sure to be a blowout. Could there be a bigger nightmare scenario for the BCS, when there are teams like Boise and TCU that are still undefeated? I don't think so. As for the NCAA, I doubt they want to make stripping a team of a National Title an annual rite of passage.

As for the winner of this game, I can see it going either way, basically because Cam's playing status is still up in the air. If he plays, I see this being a close one, with Auburn winning by four to seven. If he doesn't, Auburn probably goes into a depression and Georgia rolls.