Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

All the summer prognostications about Arkansas came with this caveat from national writers that they could see a lot of Ole Miss, circa 2009, in giving Arkansas a Top 20 nod this season. Forget that. Auburn, now the hot favorite in the SEC West for most of ESPN's mouths, has the best chance to fall as flat this year as Ole Miss did last season.

Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN "College Gameday" and assorted other appearances on the network of sports networks, is the latest big name to proclaim Auburn the favorite for the SEC West crown.

Not Alabama, the defending national champion. Not Arkansas, with the best returning quarterback in the conference. Not LSU, with all its talent.

Auburn. The team that was so fortunate to not blow the Outback Bowl to Northwestern, winning in overtime 38-35. The team that lost five of its last seven regular-season games in 2009 after a 5-0 start. The team that lost its starting quarterback and star running back from last year's team. The team that looked like it dressed out some fraternity boys to play defense in its spring game, which the network of sports networks' college channel, ESPNU, broadcast a gazillion times over the past three months in between infomercials with the late Billy Mays. (At some point you're thinking will Auburn and dead Billy Mays both just go away.)

The always astute Birmingham, Ala., News sports columnist Kevin Scarbinsky put out the warning to Auburn fans on Wednesday. He quizzed Tigers Coach Gene Chizik on Herbstreit's adorning Auburn with the bull's-eye, and Chizik said all the right things: The Tigers welcome great expectations. But Scarbinsky's been around the block in Alabama awhile; he warns the Tigers faithful to not get their hopes up, too high anyway.

It's pretty much what we warned Arkansas Razorbacks fans of too, in wake of all the talk that something big and beautiful might be happening this fall in Fayetteville.

After seeing what Auburn can do offensively under a year of Gus Malzahn running the show from that side, national experts see even bigger numbers in 2010. Much of that hinges on whether junior college transfer Cam Newton, who had suitors from Oklahoma to Mississippi State's Dan Mullen (who had seen Newton at Florida for one year before Newton was dismissed from the team), can make a first-year impact on the SEC level. Then, there is that supposed Top 5 recruiting class signed by Chizik, which included 5-star running back Michael Dyer from Little Rock Christian Academy. Dyer is currently running third on the Auburn depth chart.

The experts seem to discount that Chizik's first class after arriving was middle of the pack in the SEC, and Tommy Tuberville's last couple of classes weren't vintage.

Never underestimate the Auburn supporters, which include recruiting "gurus" and popular Internet wags, from overdosing on the orange-and-blue Kool-Aid.

Randy Reece, whose hobby is dallying in key sports statistics and analyzing them, and who posts regularly on our new FORUM pages, wonders whether Auburn's defense will be up to the SEC challenge. He broke Auburn's defensive depth down like this:

* DE second-teamer is a freshman;

* DT second-teamer is a freshman;