Imagine, if you will, your favorite SEC football coach sitting down at the poker table for a friendly game. In his hand rests cards he knows he’ll hold, and a few cards he knows he should fold. The difference between winning and losing? A little bit of good fortune with the wild cards he’ll draw from the deck.
Now bring your mind back to football, where that wild card is the difference between winning and losing a game in front of 100,000 rabid fans on a Saturday afternoon. In the cutthroat world that is SEC football, sometimes the outcome of the game really does rest in the balance of the performance of a handful of players breaking one way or the other.