Knoxville has 106,000 seats, checkerboard end zones and the Big Orange Navy parked outside the stadium in the Tennessee River.

	AROUND THE SEC
	East Florida Georgia Kentucky South Carolina Tennessee Vanderbilt	West Alabama Arkansas Auburn LSU Mississippi Mississippi State

Athens has the Hedges and Sanford Stadium, the most beautiful ballpark in America.

Nashville has the most cosmopolitan feel and the best music scene.

Columbia has the most underrated nightlife and, now, Lou Holtz.

Lexington offers side trips to Keeneland Race Course to bet the ponies.

Tuscaloosa has Dreamland, the greatest barbecue on the planet.

Auburn has a live eagle and flying rolls of toilet paper at Toomer's Corner.

Baton Rouge boasts Mike the Tiger and an unparalleled night-game buzz -- not to mention a short drive to New Orleans.

Fayetteville features grown adults in plastic pig hats, which you just don't see every day.

Oxford has William Faulkner's old haunts and a lineup of coeds that won't quit.

And then there is Stark Vegas, as it is dryly labeled in Dixie. The land that fun forgot.

But stop the presses. Old No. 12 has become the most desirable football locale in the SEC in 1999.

The reason? The schedule attached to the local team.

For example: Kentucky is preparing for its annual run through the SEC sausage factory: No. 2 Tennessee, No. 5 Florida and No. 14 Georgia. Mississippi State is preparing for a tiptoe through the tulips: no Tennessee, no Florida, no Georgia.

The Bulldogs play in the SEC West, which for the fifth straight year figures to be the division of lesser resistence. And coach Jackie Sherrill hit the scheduling lottery, drawing South Carolina (1-10 last year), Vanderbilt (2-9) and Couchless Kentucky, thus dodging the trio expected to dominate the league once again.

Kentucky coach Hal Mumme, wouldn't you rather live in Starkville -- or Little Rock or Oxford, for that matter? Someplace where you and your aspiring program wouldn't have to tackle the Big Three every season? "That's all right," Mumme said with a smile. "Those guys have got to coach at Arkansas and places like that. I get to live in Kentucky."

		In the self-proclaimed Mecca of college football, it is that magic time of year. The school colors are freshly laundered, RVs fully stocked, rumors dutifully spread, coaches roundly criticized, and tickets artfully scalped. Training camps are opening, talk-show junkies opining, and sports pages bulging. The annual pilgrimage that is SEC football is approaching. But in a land that begs for religious certainty in its football, this year is different. This is the year of the question mark, and it is downright unsettling. How could we lose to three Yankee teams in bowl games last year (well, Virginia Tech is almost Yankee)? How could either Alabama team focus as distractions mount? How could Florida get bad on red-zone offense, and LSU worse on defense? How could five teams be capable of winning the West Division and Auburn not be among them? How could the Georgia staff be infiltrated by Volunteers (will Yellow Jackets be next?) And how in the world did Lou Holtz find his way into our league? Is nothing sacred anymore? When we arrive at the stadium lot in our RVs 10 days before the opener, what in the world can we count on? Fun, I think, and the answers to some of the above. But in the end, the biggest question will be answered in the same old place, at the same old time, when Tennessee visits The Swamp on Sept. 18.

The defending national champion Volunteers and the Gators have been ranked in the final Top 10 four straight years. The West hasn't had a Top 10 team since 1994. The East champion has beaten the West champion in the SEC title game six years in a row.

Mumme has a point. Florida had never won an SEC title until this decade, Tennessee had a habit of losing the big one and Georgia suffered through seven misspent years under Ray Goof.

But that has all turned around rather dramatically. And on the other side of the South, Bear Bryant -- and even Gene Stallings -- have left the building at Alabama. So has Pat Dye at Auburn.

The SEC is not a patient place, and there is no evidence that this geographic inequity is going to clear itself up anytime soon.

As long as Phil Fulmer and Steve Spurrier are around, Tennessee and Florida figure to have no significant slippage. Georgia coach Jim Donnan recently pronounced his program strong enough to avoid boom-and-bust cycles.

And now Holtz is in the mix at South Carolina, adding immediate respectability there. The East's rallying cry: Thank goodness for Vanderbilt. In Year One without their immensely comfortable Couch, wouldn't it be a fine time for the Wildcats to be in the second-best West?

Mike DuBose is sitting in a burning building at Alabama. Auburn is trying to dig out from a year of self-inflicted embarrassments. LSU's Gerry DiNardo is under pressure after a 4-7 flop in 1998. Mississippi has talent but a rookie head coach. Arkansas will be hard-pressed to match last year's 9-3. And Mississippi State, despite the user-friendly schedule, is a question mark with two returning offensive starters.

In fact, the Bulldogs had the same kissed-by-Roy-Kramer schedule a year ago. Remember what happened then?

They were one of the SEC's major surprises. They went 8-4, won the Western Division and played in arguably the school's biggest bowl game ever, the New Year's Day Cotton Bowl, against Texas.

Stark Vegas doesn't have much going for it, but Jackie Sherrill rolled a 21 on the schedule. Geography does have its privileges.

Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.