It's no secret that Johnny Manziel is Outkick the Coverage's favorite SEC football player of all time. 

But even we continue to be amazed by his feats of athletic excellence.

Last night he homered during San Diego Padres batting practice while wearing jeans and boat shoes. Then he executed one of the most amazing first pitches in history.

How so?

He reenacted his fumbled touchdown pass against Alabama.

Really, he did.

Watch.  

Amazingly, lots of you who read OKTC hate the SEC. Earlier this year our man JT gave you a reason to hate every school in the SEC.  His article was wildly popular. Yet, if anything, the SEC hate has only grown since then. That happens when the two best teams in the country are still in the SEC even after five consecutive national titles. Come Saturday millions of people who would just as soon the entire South drift away from the rest of the country -- a modern day Mason Dixon line would be somewhere South of Cuba -- will tune in to CBS to watch the two best college football teams in the country decide who the 2011 national champion will be. 

Update: Now the country has even more reason to hate LSU and Alabama, they're playing twice.

Lots of these haters -- we've ommitted the z for now -- will find it difficult to choose a side to root for or against. 

So OKTC has simplified things for you by creating a handy hater's guide for LSU and Alabama. Once you decide on a side to hate, go ahead and print off our drinking game guide for LSU-Bama as well. You'll be all set to be an angry drunk.

Now, as a preliminary, we don't hate either of these schools -  in fact, I personally like them both -- but we do know that many of you pick a side by first choosing who to hate.

 So without further ado, here's a hater's guide to the biggest college football game in SEC history.

The biggest game in SEC regular season history is just two days away. I'm heading down to Tuscaloosa this afternoon. For the record, yes, this is the first time I can ever remember going to a game two days before it kicks off. Truly, that's how big this game is. With ticket prices surging and the vast majority of college football fans across the country priced out of the game, most will be watching the game on television. That means CBS's Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson will bring the game into your homes.

Verne Lundquist, a dead ringer for Benjamin Franklin with his white mullet, rotund figure and spectacles, has been calling the SEC game of the week for a decade or more. Along the way Verne has become an eccentric staple in Southern living rooms, like your uncle at Thanksgiving who keeps trying to get you to sell your gold fillings and put the proceeds into his foundation which is seeking to overthrow the electoral college. Meanwhile, Gary Danielson, plays the role of the Midwesterner who has suddenly realized that everything is better in the South than in the Midwest. Danielson, who made a career of calling Big Ten games, joined the SEC and immediately established his bona fides by making the case for Florida to play for the national title over Michigan in 2006. Now he's a euphoric homer for all things Southern.

Danielson reminds me of an immigrant who can't quite get over the fact that he really gets to live in America now. Everything is euphoric. 

Run for the hills, ladies and gentlemen, we're just two days from The Grass Bowl. That means you have two more days to decide who to wager your hard-earned cash on. If you listen to Vinnie Verno, the decision is an easy one, take Bama -5. Meanwhile, Vinnie Verno also points out an unbelievable doppelganger -- James Franklin is a dead ringer for Humpty-Hump. Don't believe me? Watch the below video.

Also, while Vinnie Verno may be willing to bet his baby, there's only one touting service that is truly worth buying. 80% against the NFL spread? Good Lord.

You can go to his site here for free picks, fantasy news and whatnot. He's hitting right at 80% against the spread right now.

Now, on to Vinnie Verno.

Just when you thought the betting line was all you needed to be concerned about, along comes Bodog with some of the most extensive prop bets for a regular season college game I've ever seen. Want to bet on individual player yardage? It's possible. Want to bet on whether individual players will score touchdowns? That's possible too.

It's insane.

I've cut and pasted Bodog's press release below so you can see all the prop bets below. We're not usually in the business of cut and pasting PR releases, but given all the interest in this game, I think these odds are more interesting than 90% of what will be written about the game.

LSU at Alabama (8 ET/CBS) – College Football Armageddon is upon us. Alabama-LSU has provided us with several memorable games over the past quarter-century. This year, it provides us "The Game." There are too many storylines here to count. It's Saban Bowl V. It's No. 1 vs No. 2. It could, and should, be a de facto play-in game for the BCS National Title. A potential - albeit highly unlikely - rematch could loom in January in that title game if things fall perfectly into place. Both teams are coming off bye weeks. With the decision to move this matchup to prime time two weeks ago, the final piece was added to the puzzle setting the stage for the most hyped regular season game of perhaps the past 20 years (if not ever.) Rumors abound on message boards about celebrities who may be in attendance. In addition to 102,000 inside the stadium and millions watching at home, tens of thousands of others are expected to show up for the party without a ticket. With the extra time to get ready and the number of future NFL stars set to be showcased, it's the closest thing the college football regular season has to a Super Bowl. But can it possibly live up to the expectations that the fans and media have set? What needs to happen for this game to live up to the hype? And what will happen?

Late Thursday night Outkick the Coverage broke the story of pending press releases inadvertently visible on the SEC website that announced the arrival of Missouri as the SEC's 14th member. One of those releases featured CBS Sports columnist and CBS TV host and analyst Tony Barnhart analyzing the benefits of Missouri as the 14th member of the SEC. Barnhart's analysis was solid -- he's very good at what he does -- but there was only one problem -- Barnhart is also employed by CBS as both a columnist, TV reporter, and host which means he had access to major expansion news and didn't break it at CBS.

In his defense Barnhart told Paul Finebaum on Friday:  "I was asked about Missouri in a what if? No one gave me inside information."

Reached by OKTC Barnhart reiterated those comments adding that since he was asked about Missouri in a hypothetical context he never had any direct knowledge of Missouri to the SEC. Barnhart told us that if he'd had that knowledge he would have reported it.  

That's a defense, but is it a persuasive one? Finebaum didn't press Barnhart on the issue -- and when asked he told OKTC he didn't want to comment further -- but the next question that begs to be asked is this one, did you provide analysis for other schools in a hypothetical fashion?  

Happy Halloween.

This year y'all killed it with SEC related costumes. If you haven't already seen the best costumes that we put up on OKTC, you need to click here now. Sarah Palin and Glen Rice, Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth, A.J. McCarron's chest tattoo, the LSU Honey Badger, Harvey Updyke and a tree, and Barbara Dooley? These were all genius costumes. Every single one. Most impressive of all was that you're all readers of OKTC. Which confirms something that I've been feeling for a while now, OKTC readers are, by and large, some of the smartest and funniest on the Internet. 

Notwithstanding the occasional, "your gay," I love checking my email and Twitter feed just to see what you guys are passing along. 

I don't say it enough, but an awful lot of this site's success is thanks to y'all. In fact, the numbers reflect it. Sixty percent of our site traffic is shared content. That is, you guys are passing along our links to your friends. Whether that's on Twitter, Facebook, or via email, that's incredibly gratifying. There are an awful lot of sites out there that rely almost exclusively on Google search to drive most of their site traffic. This isn't one of them.    

The NBA lockout is still dragging on and players are doing whatever they can to stay in shape. Including, evidently, playing a little intramural flag football with Oklahoma State's Sigma Nu team. I know lots of you are a bit hungover -- or at least saddened -- by Halloween's passing. So why not watch the best young player in the NBA run around with frat guys? Be sure and listen to the Twitter story that made all this happen too. My favorite part is Durant picking up his teammates at their house.

In the meantime, the Starting 11 will be up in a little while.

But until then, enjoy.

Anyone else halfway expect Durant to play with the backpack on?

You're either a Nick Saban guy or a Les Miles guy.

As the Grass Bowl inches closer and the biggest regular season game in SEC history nears, it's become an incontrovertible fact, you're riding with Les or you're rolling with Saban. The single most fascinating aspect to this game is the extreme differences beetween the two men helming their respective teams. One man coaches based on rigroous gameplanning and data points, the other believes in football karma, the gods of the sod.   

If you're a Saban guy you don't believe in karma or ghosts or anything outside the realm of game film. You're a process guy, a rigorous applier of logic to a game or your own life. Nick Saban is very smart like lots of men are very smart. I guarantee you Saban was good at math, he coaches football like it's a difficult equation to solve. Input the right weight at linebacker, the mammoth defensive tackle and the corners with loose hips and the result is the stifling of movement. Football to Nick Saban is a process, but it's also an equation that he's solved.

Please excuse my dear Uncle Nick. (It's algebra, stupid!)    

There's a debate right now in the Indianapolis Colts organization about whether or not the team should draft Andrew Luck. Some are worried about angering Peyton Manning -- who should, by the way, be NFL MVP this year without playing -- if the team drafts his replacement. Others feel that the time is right to groom a successor. Right now the Colts are 0-7 and in a dead heat race with the Miami Dolphins in the Suck for Luck sweepstakes. (I know the Rams suck too, but they've already given Sam Bradford 450 million). Well, it appears that even Colts fans who are willing to follow their winless team on the road in Nashville are in favor of sucking for Luck.

By halftime it was 20-0 Titans and the Colts had been outscored a robust 82-7 in their past six quarters.

During these six quarters it's altogether possible that head coach Jim Caldwell has not spoken on the sideline.

But this group of six fans -- the other three guys are wearing the same jersey -- are ready for Andrew Luck. (So are a lot of other fans who watched Luck last night in primetime against USC).