WAKE UP! New Year’s Eve Early Bowl open thread and viewing guide

Good morning, and Happy New Year’s Eve to you all. Ready for some early morning SEC action?

The conference’s early bowl schedule, pitting the dregs of the Grits Belt against midmajor powers and higher rated P5 squads, was predictably lackluster. Throw that in with some good ole’ fashioned bad play, bad coaching, and an historically bad year overall, and the SEC is 3-4 going into the meat of the New Year’s games.

Why bring this up? First, some of you are SEC partisans, and that’s fine, even understandable — humans are a tribal, ingroup/outgroup sort of critter. But more importantly, a bad showing over the next two-three days by some of the Conference’s bigger names will result in a narrative that we hear for the next nine long months. It will affect the perception and thus the rankings of teams, which in turn affects Alabama’s 2017 strength of schedule in a very real way, and particularly so in the early part of next season.

I’m not usually one for conference bandwagoning; good things for Auburn or LSU or Tennessee are not good things for my tribe, so to speak. But I also know where our bread is buttered, so (very selfishly) Go Big Blue and Geaux Tigers.

Today’s early schedule:

Kentucky vs. Georgia Tech (-3.5): Taxslayer Bowl

Date and time: Saturday, Dec. 31, 11:00 a.m. EST

Location: Jacksonville, Fla.

Stadium: EverBank Field

TV channel: ESPN

Live Online Stream: Watch ESPN

You can say hit to the ‘Cats at our sister site, A Sea of Blue.

LSU (-3) vs. Louisville: Citrus Bowl

TV: 11 a.m. EST, ESPN. The announcers are Dave Pasch, Greg McElroy, and Tom Luginbill.

Location: Orlando

Radio: Louisville and LSU

Online streaming: You can catch this game at WatchESPN.

And, LSU’s site is, as many of you know (and some of you detest,) at Valley Shook