LSU Football: Was LSU Disrespected by the SEC Media in Birmingham?

According to most national polls, LSU is considered to be a very serious candidate to win the BCS National Championship in 2011. In fact, they are ranked in preseason polls anywhere from first to fourth.  

The Tigers return 16 starters from last year's 11-2 season and a Cotton Bowl championship team and they are being led by a senior quarterback along with many other juniors and seniors. In addition, LSU will have many players that were important contributors to last year's team success.

The Tigers are expected to be very talented and experienced, which are two very big components required to win a National Championship and they are the main reasons why LSU is being picked so high nationally.  

However, when it came to the SEC media day in Birmingham, AL, the SEC media experts did not seem to think too highly of this LSU football team's experienced and talented players.  

In fact, LSU had only one player chosen to be on the All-SEC first team, while Alabama had eight players chosen.  

As further insult to injury, schools like Kentucky and Ole Miss even got two players selected on the All-SEC first team. 

In light of its lone All-SEC first team selection, one has to ask why the national experts expect this 2011 LSU team to have enough talent to be considered a National Championship contender. 

I guess as in the opinion of the SEC media, LSU will just send a bunch of fairly decent players on the field to compete with superior talent SEC teams, and they will somehow have a chance become the national champion.

Near the end of the 2011 SEC media preseason gathering in Birmingham, it came time to decide who the media thought would be the 2011 SEC champion, and Alabama, with its eight All-SEC first team players, was selected with over three times the votes over a distant second-place LSU.

According to the SEC media, Alabama will apparently just run away with the SEC race this year.

The SEC has always been an "anybody can beat anybody on a given Saturday" type conference, so picking a runaway champion is rather short-sighted.  

As for the LSU fans, they can all take heart in the fact that these so-called SEC media experts have only been right three times out of the last 20 years in picking the actual SEC champion. 

The SEC will have as many as seven teams ranked in the top 25 this year, and it is regularly considered the toughest conference in America, so picking any one team to just roll through this conference is a rather risky undertaking, to say the least.   

There is always a surprise team or two when they tee it up in the fall, as both Auburn and South Carolina were surprise teams that ended up playing each other in the SEC Championship Game.

Alabama was favored last year, but they unpredictably lost to both LSU and South Carolina, so that is further proof as to why it is so hard to pick anyone as the runaway SEC champion.  

Even though I am sure these sportswriters are well-intended in their predictions, I tend to think most of these guys are voting with their hearts and not their minds.

One thing for sure is whichever team wins the SEC championship will have to win it on the field of play each and every Saturday and not in the mind of the sports writers of this conference, thank God.