Friday Afternoon Links: July 18th

Sorry about the late links. Here's some stuff from the last day of Media Days on Thursday, and a look at the things have been talked about so far today.

The media presented their preseason picks for the conference standings and championship game, as well as their All-SEC honors. They like Alabama to best South Carolina in the title game, with Auburn being ranked second in the West, as well as overall. Alabama has been picked to win four times in the last five years, winning once, and only then in the season the voters chose LSU. They've only chosen correctly four times in the last 22 seasons.

On the all-conference teams, Auburn led the way with 13 representatives, including four first-teamers: Nick Marshall, Sammie Coates, Reese Dismukes and Gabe Wright. Marshall was also named to the Walter Camp watch list, another trophy for the best player in the nation.

Inside the hotel on Thursday was a little talk about Auburn's two miraculous endings last season, with Georgia and Alabama on site. Mike Szvetitz writes about how those two teams are doing their best to get past what happened, despite the pain.

The SEC was able to announce a major deal with Comcast, getting the SEC Network picked up by another giant cable provider.

Matt Scalici, Blake Ells and WarBlogle discuss Auburn's time on camera and a little of the rest of the week in Hoover on AL.com's Auburn podcast.

Some basketball news came out Thursday night, with reports of Bruce Pearl convincing Cliff Ellis to return to the Plains for a two-for-one series beginning this December 5. Ellis, who many wish had never left Auburn, now coaches at Coastal Carolina. Brandon Marcello also covers Pearl's handling of the hardwood Tigers actually having too many scholarship players right now, and the shuffling that will come as a result of that.

Jon Solomon has a good article about Mike Slive and his comments on how the conference allows schools to police themselves when it comes to handling athletes who break rules, especially those regarding sexual conduct, in light of the recent awareness being brought to the attention of campus sexual assaults and schools' (particularly their athletic departments, who at 20% of institutions have the lone oversight in these cases) failings of victims.

Jason Dufner, who sits a pretty even through 36 holes at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, is playing this week with a number "43" patch on his club bag in honor of Philip Lutzenkirchen. The great Scott Van Pelt briefly talked about it during ESPN's coverage of the Open.

And lastly and definitely leastly, Wetumpka offensive lineman Brandon Kennedy elected to commit to Alabama on Friday, rather than Auburn. Nick Birdsong wrote about his decision at AL.com.

Alright, have a great weekend everyone. War Eagle!