This has been a tough week for the SEC

The Southeastern Conference has had a lot of great football weeks in recent years, but this hasn’t been one of them.

USA Today ran a story Thursday suggesting the SEC’s reign as America’s best conference is being challenged by the Pac-12.

USA Today wrote the Pac-12 poses “the stiffest challenge the SEC has faced in its record-breaking stint atop the FBS.” The SEC has won seven straight national championships.

It was worse, though, off the field. It started with South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier acting strangely and slurring his words on his postgame television show after the Gamecocks’ win last week.

Was Spurrier pickled or just pooped? Or both.

Jeff Shultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides the video and commentary here.

The woes also continued for two-time defending champion Alabama, which announced Wednesday it had indefinitely suspended star defensive back HaHa Clinton-Dix for a violation of team rules.

Thursday, it was learned Clinton-Dix had taken approximately $500 from the school’s assistant strength coach, Corey Harris, who has been put on administrative leave.

This follows a Yahoo! story that claimed D.J. Fluker, the starting tackle on the Crimson Tide’s last two Bowl Championship Series title teams, took money from an agent while he was playing. If true Alabama would likely have to vacate those two championships.

It got worse Thursday when the University of Mississippi said it was investigating allegations several freshman football players may have used gay slurs during a staging of a school play, “The Laramie Project,” about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard.

This was quite a contrast to last week’s ESPN airing of “The Book of Manning,” which fabulously chronicled the famous football family’s story dating to father Archie’s All-American days on the Ole Miss campus.

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