Last week I dodged eating Alabama crow when the Tide came back and defeated Southern Miss. This week I am forced to eat some of the Tennessee variety of that big black bird.

The Vols certainly missed out on their chance to play for the national championship when they couldn’t handle Florida Saturday. Alabama manhandled Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina team and looked good doing it.

Georgia and Auburn, along with Florida, are better than I anticipated and will all be in the mix for division championships until they play each other later.

LSU will be tested when Tennessee visits Baton Rouge this week, but only if the Volunteers decide on one quarterback or the other. The system they are using now, with Rick Clausen and Eric Ainge both in the mix, just isn’t working.

From what I heard, a pair of plays in the Ole Miss-Vanderbilt game Saturday were subjected to replay review. I did not see the first of the two plays, but the second, which involved a close catch-no catch call, seemed from the television view to be not even close.

The officials had ruled the play a catch, but the call was correctly reversed by the replay official. The review took much too long, and the outcome was so obvious that nobody on the Ole Miss sideline objected at all.

I noticed the referee in that game was Rick Loumiet, who lives in Pearl River, La. He did a good job, even though his listed position on the SEC football officials’ roster is back judge.

I don’t know why the change. The referee originally assigned to the game may have been unable to work for some reason, and Loumiet may have been assigned to the game as alternate official and later moved to referee.

Rick is one of the few officials in the SEC who lived in the path of Katrina, and if anybody were to have been unable to work that game, it would have been Loumiet.

I have described the duties of the alternate official, the most obvious of which is as electric clock operator. A number of years ago I was assigned as clock operator of the Colorado-LSU game in Baton Rouge.

The head linesman was former Vicksburg and Georgia Tech great George Morris. During the third quarter George had knee trouble, and I went in as head linesman in his place.

In an earlier season, Auburn was playing at LSU in an important game, and I received a late assignment as clock operator. The late Red Cavette had the assignment as referee but withdrew for some reason.

Bob Aillet, then early in his career, was moved from the clock to referee to replace Cavette and proceeded to work a brilliant game on national television. That game gave a jump start to Aillet’s career, and he moved up quickly in the official’s rankings. Aillet’s son, Bobby Aillet Jr., is currently a veteran field judge in the SEC.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were eating at Fertitta’s Restaurant in Shreveport (as recommended by Fertitta’s friend Joe Fortunato) and we ran in to Bobby Aillet Sr. and his wife, Dorothy. We had a nice visit and caught up on some officiating news.

And that’s official.

Al Graning is a former SEC official and former Natchez resident. Reach him at

AlanWard39157@aol.com

.