With all due respect why would returning lots of starters from a 4-8 team be good news?
With all due respect, I hope you're kidding.
Missouri is returning 15 starters. That means:
a) those guys played last year and thus gained valuable in-game experience
b) it also means that well over 1/2 the team has played together and built some camaraderie (and knows ho
to play the strengths and weaknesses of each other because of that)
c) it gives them the potential to have that many more positions when playing an opponent that they can prevail in
a head-to-head match-up against a new player
d) perhaps the reason they were 4-8 is BECAUSE they were fielding a 'young' team (I honestly don't know, I don't follow Mizzou)
Furthermore:
a) they were two plays from being 6-6 and going to a bowl game
b) this year they replace LSU (in Baton Rouge no less) with Auburn (at home) on the schedule
c) Florida might have been the division champion at 6-2, but they should have lost the LSU game and could easily have lost the Vandy game (they won, 13-6);
also, Miss State had an easier time with UMass on the road than UF did in Gainesville last year
In fact, go look at how close the East REALLY was with some of the games:
Florida 13 Vandy 6
UGA 28 Mizzou 27 (UGA hit the winning TD with 90 seconds left)
Tenn 34 UGA 31 (the double Hail Mary game)
Vandy 17 UGA 16
UGA 27 UK 24
UGA 13 Auburn 7 (only UGA TD was a pick six early in second half - yeah I know Auburn isn't in the East yet....)
Tenn 38 Florida 28 (UF was blowing the Vols out at halftime, 21-3, and it wasn't even that close)
UK 17 USCe 10
USCe 24 Tenn 21
USCe 13 Vandy 10
UK 20 Vandy 13
Vandy was 3-5 in that division and Florida three games better at 6-2. But if Vandy had only scored four more touchdowns during the season - one in each game against UF, USCe, UK, and Auburn - then Vandy would have been 7-1 and won the SEC East.
I repeat....VANDY......would have won the SEC East.
So it's a cluster of facts where you have an experienced team coming back in a notoriously weak division that they've already won twice recently. Indeed, look at how many close games McElwain has WON while Smart and Butch were LOSING most of them.......and you see that in this particular case, those returning starters might be the difference in Atlanta and Shreveport. (And by Atlanta I mean the SECCG NOT the title game folks).
Do I think Missouri wins the East? No, I don't. But they won it twice in a row in recent years so it's not impossible.