(We’re counting down to the first Saturday of college football, now 31 days away)

As a little throw-in in the midst of all that data Phil Steele throws at you in his magazine, he lists his estimated homefield advantage for every team. We looked at the SEC Eastern Division on Tuesday, so let's take a look at the SEC Western teams:

Alabama: 5.5-point advantage

Arkansas: 5.5

LSU: 5.25

Auburn 4.75

Texas A&M 4.75

Mississippi State 3.75

Ole Miss 3.0

As we noted yesterday, USA Today's Jeff Sagarin assigns a generic 3.0-point home advantage for any team, so Ole Miss - from Steele's perspective - has no additional edge playing at home compared to any other team playing at home. The Rebels are 4-10 at home over the past two seasons.

I read an essay recently that was publushed last year that tried to argue Mississippi State as having a significant homefield advantage based on real performance compared to projected result, but the fact is the Bulldogs are 28-36 at home in the past decade, 10-10 for Dan Mullen.

LSU is 62-8 at home in the past decade, with 17 home wins in a row. Alabama is 55-17, but that loss at home last year to LSU, and one the year before to Auburn, suggests that it is possible for a (very slightly) inferior opponent to win at Bryant-Denny.

The SEC West team with the best record "against the spread" at home over the last 10 years is actually Arkansas. Which suggests a little something about true homefield advantage.

(We’re counting down to the first Saturday of college football, now 32 days away)

(We’re counting down to the first Saturday of college football, now 33 days away)

We looked at the most crucial early stretches in the schedule for teams in the SEC Eastern Division on Saturday, so now it's time to do the same for the SEC Western teams.

Alabama: Sept. 1 vs. Michigan (at Cowboy Stadium), Sept. 8 vs. Western Kentucky, Sept. 15 at Arkansas. Defending national champs have won 13 consecutive openers, but it's fair to say that not all of them were against a non-league BCS foe. The Tide is working on a 10-win streak in home openers, but don't need to get caught looking ahead.

Auburn: Clemson on Sept. 1, at Mississippi State on Sept. 8. We're going to quickly find out what kind of team Gene Chizik has this time around. Here's a guess that he's going to have more 8-win seasons at Auburn than 14-win seasons, but an 0-2 start will make it very tough to get to 8. LSU visits on Sept. 22.

Arkansas: After the Sept. 15 home game against Alabama, the Razorbacks play a good-on-paper Rutgers team on Sept. 22 before two road SEC games - at Texas A&M on Sept. 29 and at Auburn on Oct. 6. If Bobby Petrino had been in Fayetteville, you could see Arkansas going at least 6-1 through that stretch, but this team now has a lot to prove. 

LSU: There doesn't appea to be anything to fear on the Tigers' September schedule, with four non-conference home games including a Sept. 29 mismatch against Towson. But Phil Steele points out that the visiting team in the LSU-Auburn series has won just once in the last 12 meetings. The path gets tougher in October, with back to back league games - at Florida (Oct. 6) and home against South Carolina (Oct. 13).

Mississippi State: Home against Auburn on Sept. 8 and at Troy on Sept. 15. Dan Mullen hasn't beaten Auburn in three tries, so this one is crucial. But win that one and the next game looks trappy, in the fashion of the Bulldogs' most recent games against UAB.

Ole Miss: The Rebels must win the three winnable early games - Sept. 1 against Central Arkansas, Sept. 8 vs. UTEP and Sept. 22 at Tulane. To do otherwise would be a disaster. That leaves the Sept. 15 game against Texas, and the No.1 task there is to play hard and leave it all on the field - the two home games last year against the highest-ranked teams resulted in two losses by a combined 104-10 margin. Such efforts for a new staff would be unacceptable.

Texas A&M: Aug. 30 at Louisiana Tech, Sept. 8 vs. Florida. I have expressed concerns about that opener already - this will be the Super Bowl for La. Tech. The SEC opener, played at home, will be emotional - but the Gators should be significantly better. 

If you're keeping up with the Olympics, we hope our daily Olympic page in print editions of the Daily Journal will be helpful. It's brought to you in part by the fine folks at Renasant Bank, and we have to give them a big tip of the cap.

The page will include previews of each day's TV events, the top news from London and at least one "good read" each day about an athlete or event of interest.

We also have an online Olympics page (link here), utilizing the power of the mighty Associated Press. It has all kinds of stories and a nifty medal chart.

On the run up to the Olympics, I gave you my perspective on security matters in a cclumn here. I imagine I'll write a couple more before the games end. My wife wrote this column in 2010, during the Winter Games, which ponders why we enjoy watching the Olympics so much.

We've written quite a bit in the past about former Ole Miss standout Brittney Reese of Gulfport, a favorite in the women's long jump. You can catch up with stories about her by Parrish Alford (here) and the AP's David Brandt (here).

The morning after both she and current Ole Miss standout Isiah Young made the U.S. Olympic team, we published this story. Parrish went on to write in more detail about Isiah Young (here).

Mississippi State will be represented by sprinter Daundre Barnaby, who's from Canada. Brad Locke caught up with him and wrote this story before the Games began.