On what shaped up as Separation Saturday in the Southeastern Conference, a couple of things about the league's pecking order in football manifested themselves.
First, there is no room at the top. The line forms to the right behind No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Georgia. With Oregon losing at Stanford, Iowa moved up to No.3 in the polls but who knows how grand the gulf behind the SEC exacta might be.
The home teams, each favored by double digits, composed defensive masterpieces at Tuscaloosa and Athens. Arkansas and Georgia kicked off at noon Eastern and Alabama and Ole Miss shortly after 2:30 p.m. Central. The competitive aspects of both games were over early, long before the dinner hour.
Alabama allowed 291 yards and 21 points against Ole Miss, which led the nation with 635 yards and 53 points per game. The 42-21 final sounds deceptively close only because of two Rebel fourth-quarter touchdowns.
"We got dominated up front," said Lane Kiffin after Nick Saban improved to 24-0 against his former assistants.
Sam Pittman said much the same after Georgia proved even stingier against Arkansas, winning 37-0 in the kind of game that Vince Dooley, for whom the playing field at Sanford Stadium is named, might have treasured.
"We've got to get better, and we will, but today they just outphysicaled us and played bully ball on us and made us like it," Pittman said, his team outgained 365-162 in total offense. "We didn't like it, but there was nothing we could do about it at times ... because they were just rolling us out of there on both sides of the line of scrimmage."
Georgia's performance should not surprise amyoone. For as long as the Hogs and Dawgs have played, Georgia has relied on power running, north and south variety, and run destroyers along the defensive front. Kirby Smart, with the same flair on defense as Kiffin on offense, has put together a defense through recruiting and expert offense that has allowed 23 points in five quarters. Pittman, before replacing the hapless Chad Morris at Arkansas, helped build the Georgia offensive line.
Arkansas is surely better than Vanderbilt but, like the Commodores last week, couldn't score on Georgia. A missed second-quarter field goal (first of Cam Little's career) cost Arkansas its best scoring chance, and a deep pass toward the Bulldog end zone in the final minute went long.
Otherwise, Arkansas was outgained on the ground 273-75 and needed a lot more than 87 yards passing from KJ Jefferson and fourth-quarter fill-in Malik Hornsby. Treylon Burks had three catches for a quiet 10 yards, and Trelon Smith led the ground game with six carries for 28.
Georgia ran 68 plays to Arkansas' 45 and kept the ball for 36:30. The game surely would have been more decisive if the Razorbacks had put the ball on the ground. By contrast, Arkansas needed to play on short fields, which did not happen due to no Georgia turnovers and typically flawless kicking by the Bulldogs.
As against Arkansas in the second half last year at Fayetteville, Georgia blocked a punt. Zamir White fell on this one (he scored two touchdowns on the ground), and it was 21-0 after 12:43 off the clock.
The Razorbacks' sloppiness against such as Rice and Georgia Southern could be overlooked. In a road game, with nothing else going right, 11 Arkansas penalties for 103 yards against Georgia were too much to overcome.
Georgia set the tone early, driving 75 yards from the opening kickoff, White scoring from three yards on its only third down. Two false starts and a six-yard sack of Jefferson came in front of the Georgia student body, stoked for the early kickoff on ESPN, its GameDay crew in town.
"They just lit a fuse down there," the network's Kirk Herbstreit, sensing Arkansas' problem, said. "This put a charge into them."
By the fourth quarter, when Georgia gashed the weary Arkansas middle for its last touchdown, Chris Fowler commented, "They're just physically mauling them."
Stetson Bennett IV, replacing the injured J.T. Daniels (a 76.1% passer), went to the air only 11 times, completing seven for 72 yards. Although Arkansas remembers him for throwing six picks at Fayetteville last year, Matt Corral likely will be the best quarterback it has faced Saturday in Oxford. A quarterback can learn a lot in two years under Lane Kiffin, and Corral had Heisman Trophy buzz swirling before the Alabama game.
A Little Rock sportswriter squawked Sunday about Arkansas getting another earlybird start and on ESPN. That results from Arkansas and Ole Miss losing by double digits and this becoming a matchup of top-15 teams instead of a top-10 pairing.
It was noted also that CBS snapped up two games, Georgia at Auburn (3:30 p.m.) and Alabama at Texas A&M (8 p.m.). The first game renews the oldest football rivalry in the South and the second matches Nick Saban against another former ex-aide, Jimbo Fisher, who also has won a national championship. Back-to-back SEC losses (Arkansas and Mississippi State) have warmed the hot seat under Fisher. Saban, like Ol' Man River, just keeps rolling along.
Crazy, crazy that LSU at Kentucky, 6:30 p.m. on the SEC Network (Resort Channel 79), features one of the three 5-0 SEC teams. And it's not LSU, which went down to Auburn, 24-19, at Baton Rouge for the first time since 1999.
Though Bear Bryant coached there, football is an acquired taste in the Bluegrass State, where basketball rules. But after storming the field against Florida, Kentucky fans might skip the last race at Keeneland (opening Saturday of the fall meeting) not to miss this one.