On a breezy, gray-blue November afternoon, the munchkins roared again. In a certain 1939 film they cheered the death of an evil old hag. Last Saturday, the oppressed wee folk around the SEC howled and danced and ding-donged all night long. Temporarily putting aside their differences, they yipped and jigged following the apparent downfall of their chief tormentors, the Florida Gators, and their coach, regarded by foes as the Wicked Witch of the Southeast.

Across the SEC, Steve Spurrier has cowed Florida’s opponents so utterly and for so long that you might think he had the power to swoop from the sky and hurl fireballs at them. It certainly must have seemed that way at times, given the way the Gators filled the air with footballs.

At the Gator Bowl last Saturday, though, plucky Georgia dropped a 37-17 whap on Florida like a house falling out of the sky. Suddenly, the yapping, cocksure Gators were yoked with two conference losses, and the chances that they’ll appear in the SEC championship game are only slightly greater than the likelihood of Deion Sanders taking a vow of silence. It is now almost safe to pronounce, incredible and scary as it seems, that the Wicked Witch is dead.

Florida’s demise, temporary though it may be, goes unlamented across the Southeast, where Spurrier stirs up such animosity that fans wouldn’t offer him a glass of water if his hair were on fire.

Partly, that’s because he’s brutally unvarnished in his assessments of opponents. Partly, it’s because Spurrier sometimes relishes talking smack—as he did earlier this year when he quipped, “Fifteen years is a long time,” in response to a question from Bulldogs fans about whether he’d still be coaching when Florida made up the 44-29 series deficit against Georgia.

Largely, though, fans from rival schools loathe Spurrier because he doesn’t feign humility when talking about them (or himself)—and because he backs the talk with Ws.

Until Saturday, anyhow. Nowhere have the dancing and trilling been more ecstatic than in Knoxville, since no team has suffered more cruelly under Spurrier’s sorcery than the Vols. For three years running, Tennessee might have played for the league title, or even aspired to a national title, had the route not taken them past the Gators’ dark castle.

This year, after the Vols were chomped by Florida again, the old pattern seemed about to repeat. After LSU exposed the Gators’ vulnerable underbelly, UT fans dared to hope. But even the orangest of the orange bleeders found it difficult to envision how Georgia would rout the defending national champions and vault the Vols into the catbird seat.

Now, if the Big Orange can manage not to turn into little pumpkins against Arkansas, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt, they’ll earn their first trip to the conference championship game since the SEC plunked them in the same division with the Gators. And the Gators, should they win the rest of their games, can at best hope to find themselves in the Citrus Bowl—the place Spurrier once dubbed “the winter home of the Tennessee Vols.”

Anyone brazen enough to suggest such a scenario for Florida before the season began would have quietly been ushered to a private room and invited to pee in a cup. Now you can even hear suggestions, offered without a hint of irony, that Vanderbilt might be able to sashay into the Sunshine State and slap the Gators around.

Such is the crazed and Oz-like state in which the SEC—well, much of college football, when you get right down to it—now finds itself. Go figure. Auburn, with the best record in the SEC West, gets skunked by Mississippi State? Alabama gets ripped by piddly Louisiana Tech? Every team in the West—even barefoot, nose-pickin’ Arkansas—still has a shot at the division title? Are we still in Kansas?

To help make sense of this chaos, and as an homage to Bro. Spurrier, we’d like to respond to a few of this week’s most pressing mailbag questions, in the frank and hotdog manner of the Big Gator his own self.

Could Tennessee actually, really, maybe win the Mythical National Championship?

Sure, and Madeleine Albright could be our next president if enough other people get shot first. Right now, Phil Fulmer has enough to fret over—three conference games—without some stalk-sucking fans gushing about a national crown.

Who’ll win the SEC West?

Who cares? When they all have a shot, nobody has a shot. These doofuses will so thoroughly spend themselves beating up on each other, they’ll wallow around in the title game like dogs in carrion.

If you were a betting person (for amusement purposes only), your scrip should be on LSU. The Tigers have the least mine-strewn schedule and, in contrast to at least two of the other contenders, no alums are actively plotting to string up the coach.

Does Vandy have a prayer against Florida?

Well, perhaps in the same sense that Joan of Arc had a prayer while the English were preparing her for the bonfire. To be fair, the Commodores in the past two years have saved their best games for their best opponents. But this contest, against a Gator team skulking around with an exceptionally sour attitude, has great potential for becoming aesthetically challenged.

Will Auburn hire a big-name coach if Terry Bowden jumps to Texas?

First off, why would anyone be crazy enough to jump into a potential fire at Texas, where boosters breathe down coaches’ necks like a desert wind, unless it was to escape a certain frying pan at Auburn?

It’s true enough that persnickety Auburn boosters have been sizing up the skillet for Bowden, who felt such pressure to win a title that he dared not venture out in public even to hear his friend James Taylor sing, lest fans accuse him of slacking. We’re also prepared to concede that, to make a career of coaching, you have to be at least one bun shy of a Big Mac.

Still, what big name would be crazy enough to venture willingly into a viper’s den at Auburn? The Tigers’ best shot might be to pluck up an established winner from Division I-AA, as Georgia did with Jim Donnan.

Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall at Alabama right now?

As long as I’m not a fly on the wall of one of them Crimson Tide Winnebagos with the horn that plays the fight song. If Alabama finishes 4-7—and they might—don’t be surprised to see a caravan of RVs head for Mobile, where they’ll plunge straight into the Gulf like a pack of fat red lemmings.

What’s with Ole Miss banning the rebel flag?

A slippery slope indeed. Next thing you know, they’ll be allowing fluoridated water, teaching evolution, and raising the marrying age to 15.

Who do you like for the SEC Championship game in Atlanta?

Tennessee and Mississippi State? The viewer demographics would leave the TV people powerfully unhappy, and that’s reason enough to root for it. This matchup, at least, would be one defiant gesture against the powers that rule our lives.

How it looks from the La-Z-Boy

Florida 34, Vanderbilt 6

Tennessee 27, Southern Miss 14

LSU 21, Alabama 14

Ole Miss 20, Arkansas 10

Michigan 20, Penn State 16

Florida State 21, North Carolina 13

Nebraska 38, Missouri 17

Oilers 20, Giants 17