SCHEDULE
Friday
Alabama at Auburn, 1:30 p.m. (CBS)
Saturday
Clemson at South Carolina, 11 a.m. (ESPN)
Ole Miss at Mississippi State, 11:21 a.m. (SEC Network)
Florida State at Florida, 2:30 p.m. (CBS)
Arkansas at LSU,  6 p.m. (ESPN)
Tennessee at Kentucky, 7 p.m. (ESPNU)
Georgia at Georgia Tech, 7 p.m. (ABC/ESPN2)

GAME OF THE WEEK
Tennessee at Kentucky, 7 p.m. (ESPNU): Normally an afterthought on SEC rivalry weekend, this game looms large for both teams and the rest of the league in the bowl pecking order. With a victory, Kentucky would take a huge step toward landing a New Year ’s Day bowl bid at the Outback Bowl. The Wildcats would finish second in the East Division and be hard for the Outback to pass up. Problem is, UK has lost its last 24 games against Tennessee, the longest current streak between two teams that meet annually and the second longest of all-time to Penn State’s 27-year stranglehold against Temple. But the Wildcats come in on a high after rallying past Georgia 34-27 last week by outscoring the Bulldogs 28-7 in the second half. That was Kentucky’s first win in Athens since 1977 and the ’Cats also ended a losing streak at Auburn that dated back to 1966 with a 21-14 triumph on Oct. 17. RB/KOR Derrick Locke is the centerpiece of the UK offense. Last week he rushed for 80 yards and caught two passes for 80 yards. To beat the Vols for the first time since 1984 and first time in Lexington since 1981, UK needs a solid defensive effort. The Wildcats forced four second-half turnovers last week and got a career-best 11 tackles from linebacker Sam Maxwell. Tennessee heads into its first-ever night game at Commonwealth Stadium with QB Jonathan Crompton red-hot. In the last seven games, Crompton has passed for 1,694 yards and 18 touchdowns. He has 2,345 yards and 25 scoring strikes for the season. Paced by Crompton and TB Montario Hardesty’s 1,127 rushing yards, the Tennessee offense has been explosive the last two months with 35 plays of 20 yards or more, eight that have gone for touchdowns.

AROUND THE SEC
Alabama RB Mark Ingram needs 72 yards to establish a new single-season rushing record for the Crimson Tide. He has 1,399 yards on 194 carries and has topped 100 yards in five of seven SEC games. … Auburn DE Antonio Coleman tops the SEC with 13.5 tackles for loss and 7.5 sacks. That’s among his total of 41 tackles and he also snared an interception he returned for a touchdown, a blocked kick, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery. … AU is led in tackles by LBs Josh Bynes and Craig Stevens, with 84 and 83 stops, respectively. … Alabama DB Mark Barron leads the league with six interceptions, which is sixth nationally. … Auburn QB Chris Todd needs one more touchdown pass to match the single-season school record of 19 held by Jason Campbell (2004) and Heisman Trophy winner Pat Sullivan (1971). … Auburn K Wes Bynum is 14-of-15 on field goals this season, the fourth best percentage (93.3%) in the nation. With 88 points this season, Bynum is 14 points shy of the single-season scoring record. … This will be the 10th time Alabama and Auburn will meet at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The Tigers are 7-2 against the Crimson Tide at home,  including wins in the last three meetings on the Plains. The visiting team in the series has won five of the last 10 games after the home team won the seven games before that stretch. … South Carolina LB Eric Norwood enters the Clemson game with a school-record 29 sacks. … The Gamecocks rank seventh nationally in pass defense, allowing 163.6 yards a game. … USC QB Stephen Garcia is 7-7 as a starter. … Gamecocks WR Alshon Jeffery is the top freshman in the SEC in receptions (39), receiving yards (670) and receiving touchdowns (6). … Although most of the 106 games between South Carolina and Clemson have been played in Columbia, the Tigers have still dominated with a 49-29-3 record in the state capital. … Clemson has won six of the last seven games and 10 of the last 12. … Mississippi State DE Pernell McPhee is second in the SEC with 12 tackles for loss. … The Bulldogs secondary is anchored by freshmen Corey Broomfield and Johnathan Banks, who have combined for nine interceptions, three returned for TDs. … Ole Miss WR Shay Hodge is averaging 6.5 receptions and 117 yards over the last four games with three 100-yard games. Hodge leads the SEC in receptions and receiving yards – 57 for 927 yards. … The home team has won nine of the last 10 games in the Egg Bowl, although the Rebels have won five of the last seven games. The series is tied 9-9 since it returned to home sites in 1991 after being played in Jackson from 1973-90. … Florida QB Tim Tebow enters his final regular-season game as the highest ranked passer in SEC history at 169.3. … The Gators receiving corps is led by the tandem of TE Aaron Hernandez with 46 catches for 571 yards and WR Riley Cooper with 38 grabs for 641 yards, which also includes a team-high seven TD receptions. … Florida is on a school-record 21-game winning streak, which is also the nation’s longest current streak and the fourth longest in SEC history. … The Georgia offense has registered 669 rushing yards in the last three games, anchored by 196 in last week’s loss to Kentucky. … Bulldogs LB Rennie Curran climbed above the 100-tackle mark last week, his second year in a row above that plateau. Curran has 107 stops this season after leading the league with 115 a year ago. He currently trails Vanderbilt’s Chris Marve by 14 tackles, but Marve’s season is over. … Georgia Tech’s 45-42 triumph over Georgia in Athens last season snapped the Bulldogs’ seven-game winning streak over the Yellow Jackets.

• Here’s our look at news around LSU.

Stevan Ridley headlines re-tooled running attack

Les Miles faces music during radio show

Gary Laney column

• Alabama wants to remove all doubt against Auburn in the Iron Bowl writes Gentry Estes of the Mobile (Ala.) Press-Register.
• Underdog Auburn won’t be intimidated by No. 2-ranked Alabama writes Andrew Gribble of OANow.com.
• Rick Cleveland of the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger says the Egg Bowl is a big deal like it should be.
• Players under the radar provide strong backbone for Kentucky season.
• Vols defense gets boost from return of Janzen Jackson writes Austin Ward of GoVolsXtra.com
• Gamecocks won’t be distracted this season when they tangle with Clemson writes Joe Person of the Columbia (S.C.) State.
• Urban Meyer insists regular-season finale is all about seniors.
• Bulldogs look for season-changing performance against Georgia Tech writes Marc Weiszer of OnlineAthens.com.

• Here’s our coverage from Les Miles’ day of mea culpa.
• Ole Miss defensive coordinator Tyrone Nix takes a no-nonsense approach writes David Brandt of the Clarion-Ledger.
• Emotions are running high at Florida as Tim Tebow approaches his final home game. Also on the Gainesville Sun’s site, there’s a story about Urban Meyer deflecting rumors about him and the Notre Dame job.
• With two long streaks over, Kentucky takes aim at its most frustrating skid against Tennessee writes Chip Cosby of Kentuckysports.com.
• The Auburn offense will try to carve out some running room against Alabama’s stingy defense writes Andrew Gribble of OAnow.com.
• Speaking of the Auburn offense, the Tigers’ fast-paced scheme has the Crimson Tide’s attention.
• Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen doesn’t have to dig too deep for motivation. All he does is reminds the Bulldogs of the 45-0 loss to Ole Miss a year ago.
• Georgia DB Reshad Jones wants a chance for redemption against Georgia Tech writes Marc Weiszer of OnlineAthens.com.
• South Carolina linebacker Eric Norwood is ready to unleash some anger against Clemson writes Joe Person of the Columbia (S.C.) State.

-- Here's a link to the transcript of our chat today with Advocate sportswriter Randy Rosetta. As you would suspect, there were plenty of questions about the ending of the LSU-Ole Miss game (more on that in a moment).

-- LSU is wearing new uniforms against Arkansas on Saturday, as part of Nike's Pro Combat Uniform promotion. We have pictures of the various uniform pieces here, here, here, here and here (thanks to Richard Murphy for being gracious enough to pose for the photos).

-- And, most importantly, the entire audio of Les Miles' news conference is below. He tackles the end of the Ole Miss game early and often.

-- You can check out some more of our LSU-Ole Miss post-mortems right here. And I usually don't go national, but Les Miles' end-of-the-game clock mismanagement has him linked with another lightning rod. Stewart Mandel/SI.com.

-- Things weren't all positive for Ole Miss on Saturday. Parrish Alford/NEMS Daily Journal.

-- A look at what's at stake for Auburn in the Iron Bowl. Charles Goldbert/The Birmingham News.

-- The Iron Bowl action starts well before kickoff. Ray Melick/The Birmingham News.

-- "It's a special week" for Florida. Edward Aschoff/Gainesville Sun

-- Mark Richt's worst season at Georgia gets tougher Saturday. Marc Weiszer/Athens Banner-Herald.

-- Tennessee provided its own Rudy moment against Vanderbilt. David Climer/The Tennessean.

Safe to say, though, the one he’s about to embark on won’t be one of the best weeks Miles has ever been through.

The challenges facing the LSU football team and Miles this week are enormous, and one of the major subplots will be the scrutiny and questions Miles will encounter.

There will be plenty of legitimate questions, some out of left field, and there will be an abundance of bitterness and emotion mingled in.

Passion is something LSU fans don’t take a back seat to anyone on. In the good times, that passion is a wonderful thing for coaches. In rough times, that passion is as difficult to navigate as anything else a coach deals with.

Because of that passion, this will be a rough week for Miles, maybe the roughest he has had to deal with since he arrived in 2005.

And it should be.

Miles is one of the highest paid coaches in the country and his staff of assistants is one of the most expensive in the country.

Make that much money, and your accountability is a shared commodity by an expansive fan base that doesn’t understand why what happened Saturday in Oxford, Miss., happened.

I don’t think it’s a fragile limb to walk out on to say had LSU lost to Ole Miss on a missed Josh Jasper field goal, the mood would be much different right now.

Disappointment, sure. Would there still be folks grumbling about losing to the Rebels? Undoubtedly.

But to squander a chance like the Tigers did in a game they could’ve hung their season on? 

As veteran CBS announcer Verne Lundquist repeated several times at the end of the broadcast “What are they doing?”

What they did, what Miles and his offensive coaches did, was blow it.

The variables to weigh are clear-cut:

1. Why not run the ball with Stevan Ridley from the 32-yard-line twice or three times and give Jasper a chance to kick a game-winning field goal from at worst 49-50 yards away? Ridley was fresh, the Ole Miss defense had to be winded and Jasper had already connected from 50 yards.

2. Why didn’t somebody call a timeout as soon as Ridley was dropped for a 7-yard loss on third down? That’s not all on Miles. As the quarterback and presumably a team leader, it’s on Jordan Jefferson’s shoulders to find the closest official and call it as soon as he can. If the coaches haven’t told him that or don’t have enough trust in him to make that decision independently, something’s terribly wrong.

3. Why not have the field-goal unit gathered and standing on the sideline in position to sprint onto the field and line up in case the chance is there? If most of those players were on the field on offense, then have the second team standing there at the ready.

4. With the delay in moving the chains, why not urge the on-field officials to ask the replay booth to take a second look at the 43-yard pass play to Terrance Toliver to make sure there weren’t 2 or 3 seconds left – as it looked like on the replays I saw – instead of 1 to give your team the breathing room it needed?

5. Go back even further and on a second chance on the two-point conversion, why run the same exact play and not line up and let Ridley or Jefferson try to pound out the 54 inches the Tigers needed to knot the score?

Those questions and so many more are going to dog Miles this week and could potentially haunt him and the LSU program the rest of this season and beyond.

In his postgame press conference Saturday, Miles came off as distraught and stunned as he meandered around with his answers.

Moments later in a radio interview with Jordy Hultberg, Miles struggled even more to describe what had just transpired.

To be fair, nobody will take this loss harder than Miles. Venture to say he didn’t sleep well, if at all, Saturday night. Re-watching the end of the game Sunday might very well cost Miles a few more nights of sleep.

But he has plenty of company – thousands of die-hard fans who live and die with the Tigers – who want, need and deserve answers.

The Tigers literally ran out of time six yards short of the end zone because of poor clock management in the final 30 seconds.

On fourth-and 26, Jordan Jefferson completed a 42-yard pass to Terrance Toliver at the Ole Miss 6 with one second left. But the Tigers couldn't stop the clock upon the restart after the first down.

Click here for a game recap.

So far, the second half hasn't been kind to the Tiger offense, which has burned a timeout and taken two delay-of-game penalties. LSU punted on its first three offensive series of the quarter. A pass-interference penalty against Ole Miss on third-and-10 from the LSU 1 saved the Tigers from a fourth consecutive punt before the end of the quarter. And LSU returned the favor by committing a holding penalty on the next play

Ole Miss hasn't been much more efficient. The Rebels committed a false-start penalty that effectively killed their first drive before it got started, and they failed on their other two possessions.

The Tigers start the period second-and-17 with the ball at their own 4.

Ole Miss subsequently drove for 47 yards for a score -- Jesse Grandy's 3-yard touchdown run. But trailing 17-15 with 4:40 to go in the second quarter, the Rebels made the bad decision to go for a 2-point conversion and it failed.

Ask LSU how that worked out two weeks ago at Alabama when the Tigers did it in the third quarter with a 15-10 lead and didn't pick up the two. Chasing the points by going for two before the fourth quarter is unnecessary risky business.

A key sack on a third down in Ole Miss territory in the final two minutes of the half short-circuited an LSU drive and forced a punt.

The Tigers will get the ball first to start the second half.