That may be the case, I’m not sure. LSU has three, and so does Tennessee, for example.

At this point, though, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Pre-season rankings aren’t anything overly predictive, and what seems tough may not be so much once the season actually rolls around.

And while we do play several top teams, we also have probably seven teams on the schedule that don’t have a legitimate shot at being a top 25 team (Tulane, Western Kentucky, Arkansas State, Arkansas, Ole Miss, MSU, and Kentucky).

It’s a pretty simple formula, really: Win all of the ones you should win, and then get your fair share of tough, close games and you’ll be in good shape. If we can just win all of the games we should, and get two wins out of five toughies, we’re sitting at 9-3 with a good season, and that’s what you have to do.

returns one starter on O-line and two other guys who have one start each int he bowl game last year. Phil Steele says they the entire unit has 34 combined starts, 14th lowest in 1-A, including just 14 career starts on the PSL.

from my perspective, lack of depth on O-line can really hurt, particularly early in the season. I think we have a great chance to get into the backfeild early and often this August 30.

That is my hope with Clemson. I’m not really all of that concerned about their defense. I don’t think we can light them up, but I do think we can do well enough against them to get a victory. If we can control the line of scrimmage on the defensive side of the ball, however, we can really limit the offense and put ourselves in a great position to win.

when I look ahead to the 2008 season. There are some extreme similarities, and a few new wrinkles that we have going for us this season that we didn’t have in 1999.

In 1999, we were coming off a seven win season and we were returning our offensive line and backfield. Defensively, we added depth on the defensive line, but would eventually start two to three freshmen at linebacker (Marvin Constant, Saleem Rasheed, and Darius Gilbert). We used Cornelius Griffin’s improvement to unexpectedly rise in the West; this season, we’ve had several defensive linemen such as Alfred McCullough, improve dramatically to give depth behind Lorenzo Washington and Brandon Deaderick. We have guys like Terrence Cody joining the unit when we had Kenny King and Jarret Johnson joining in 1999.

According to the magazines I’ve seen, we are expected to lose almost all of our tough games (just like we were in 1999) even though we lost by a touchdown or less to some of these teams last year and have more coming back in 2008.

If there were ever a darkhorse team who could anonymously sneak through the season playing better than anyone expected, it’s our team in 2008. Sure, we have freshmen who will play significant roles, but our team will be more talented in 2008 than it was in 2007 and in 1999, and football rarely plays out as the quasi-experts at Athlon and ESPN predict. It probably never plays out as they expect, actually. Talent will always be more of an advantage than experience. We might lose a couple because of our youth, but we might rise up and win a couple we’re not predicted to win, too.

And Outsidethelines was right about home-field advantage being overrated. Teams don’t lose games and say, “If we’d played them at home, we would have won.” I don’t see our road schedule as a terrible disadvantage. In 1999, we won in Florida, Auburn, and finally in Atlanta.

In 1999, we won in Florida, Auburn, and finally in Atlanta.

And that’s not to mention going to Oxford and beating an 8-4 Ole Miss team that was probably a lot better than their record indicated. Aside from us, their three losses came by a combined nine points, and they have some legitimate NFL talent on that squad too.