The 2013 Miami Heat are a wayward and fractious lot, riven by ego and feelings and constantly in need of affirmation. 

This year LeBron James hasn't so much become an indomitable force of basketball will as he has a psychologist, Dr. Phil sitting on a couch with his head in his hands nodding quietly and listening as his teammates pour out their misgivings.

The LeBron vs. Jordan debate has been ongoing for several years now, but most people have missed the essential difference between the two men -- their generations. LeBron's a millennial hugger, Jordan was an old school puncher. One man tries to work out his teammate's issues by listening, the other bristled at the idea that there could ever be issues. LeBron's more inclusive, Jordan was my way or the highway with his teammates. Once you get this distinction down, everything makes sense about why this debate doesn't quite connect, their talents are both luminescent, but their mental backgrounds are completely different.

Jordan vs. Lebron isn't a battle of basketball wills. 

It's will vs. Dr. Phil. 

Can LeBron's style of leadership, a gentler listening inclusiveness, pay off with a title? 

We've spent a lot of time talking about leaders willing their team to a title, but we've spent hardly any time talking about a player Dr. Philling his team to the title.

As we reach college football eve, the season is so close you can almost taste it. We know it's close at OKTC because you knuckleheads flooded the site yesterday. Between mobile and the main site over 150,000 of y'all were on the site yesterday. That's the biggest single day for unique visitors since we launched the site over a year ago. Later today we'll have Todd Fuhrman's debut column with an insider's look on the opening week's college football lines and what Vegas is telling us to expect.

But in the meantime, I thought we'd put the preseason Heisman favorites out there for you guys to chew on today. Instead of reading who writers think will win the Heisman, how about we just see who Vegas thinks the top 44 Heisman candidates are?

So, courtesy of Bovada.lv, here's that list.

By Stevie Cocksman

I am a Gamecock fan. Have been for over 30 years. It would surprise no one to learn that the things I associate most with Gamecock football are pain, suffering, and disappointment. Yet, for some reason – just like every year for the past thirty or so - I can’t wait for football season.

Two days before Texas A&M kicks off the 2012 campaign and officially becomes a football member of the SEC, it's clear that the SEC is already having a substantial impact for Aggie athletics.

Yes, tickets have sold better than ever before, A&M billboards have sprouted up across the state marking the area as SEC territory, donations have rolled in, and recruiting has been amazingly successful. But perhaps the best sign of A&M's success is this, the University of Texas is waging a campaign to convince the rest of the country that it's an SEC team as well. That's despite the fact that Texas was actually too scared to join the SEC when it had the chance.

Instead of actually joining the SEC, Texas is trying to become a shadow SEC team -- the Longhorns are waging a campaign of disinformation -- they want to play SEC style football without playing against SEC teams.

Which is what cowards want to do, beat up on the weak while claiming to be strong.

Oh, Texas coaches, fans, and players won't admit it because it pains them more than barbwire raked across bare skin, but there's no doubt: Texas is jealous as hell of A&M's move to the SEC.

Florida Gator fans have been able to avoid our awkward fan photo series thus far.

But that's about to end.

You know football season is getting close when I wake up, check my email, and there's an absolute deluge of trash talk photos of rival fan bases submitted to OKTC. And this morning we got a double dose of Florida Gator tattoo fandom.

Secretly, Florida Gator fans like to believe that they're not as redneck as the rest of the SEC fan bases. That may be true for south Florida, but have you ever been to north Florida? The area around Gainesville has so many rednecks living nearby that it makes Mississippi State fans blush.

That's why we're proud to inaugurate the Gators in the awkward fan tattoo club.

It's college football's opening week, like Christmas morning for adults. I'm so excited I could barely sleep last night. The best and shortest season of the year is officially here. Over the next 13 weeks you will live or die based upon a fourth down decision, stand in your living room and pace, scream at the television, upset your spouse or girlfriend over how much you care about a game, kick something, and utter grand pronouncements based upon ten minutes of game time.

And if you're from Alabama you will call me gay.

Right now is the best time in the season, the moment before ball meets foot when anything truly seems possible.

Several thousand years ago a bearded man came down from a mountaintop with ten commandments that changed the world.

It's hard not to like Vandy quarterback Jordan Rodgers. Last month I noticed his Twitter picture and had some fun with it as an awkward quarterback photo. In a first in the awkward photo oeuvre, Rodgers retweeted the article to his followers. That's probably what I would do as well. And it's what a lot of you with better senses of humor would do if you were featured in the awkward fan photo collection. So it's hard not to like a guy with a sense of humor about himself. Jordan has a chance to start two bowl games in his Vandy career. If that happens maybe dressing up as a cheerleader should become a new Vandy quatertbacking tradition.

We're six days away from one of the biggest Vanderbilt football games in school history -- a Thursday night kickoff to the entire season against a top ten South Carolina team. 

Earlier this week we had James Franklin on 3HL and asked him what player he needed to play extraordinarily well for his team to have a shot at an upset. His answer?

Jordan Rodgers.  

The same Jordan Rodgers who recently dressed up as a Vanderbilt cheerleader.

Written by Jackson Martin

So The Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective is at it again, trying to destroy my entire childhood. You might remember them as the guys who did an incredible job of compiling the box score from Space Jam (my favorite movie of all time) or as the college blog that is way smarter than just about everyone else writing about sports right now.

This time they're projecting Pablo Sanchez's career numbers (and probability of using steroids) by his Backyard Baseball statistics. It's worth a read, but I'll save you a little bit of time; he'd be really, really good.

This morning Tennessee announced that the top returning wide receiver in the SEC, Da'Rick Rogers, was suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules.

Immediately the questions that mattered most to Tennessee fans were these, how long is indefinite and what's the suspension for?

Just moments ago Dooley said the team didn't expect Da'Rick back for the rest of the season.

This is a massive blow to the team and is just the latest twist in the star-crossed Tennessee tenure of Rogers.

College football is eight days away and you've probably noticed some changes to the site.

First, we've set up online videos to play on the right side of the screen. This is an experiment that I think is going to get better and better. The idea is simple -- OKTC needs video content as well as written content. I'm continuing to experiment with ensuring that everything we give you is completely free, but that means we have to continue to evolve. Next week we'll have tailgate videos and maybe some additional content from our weekend on the road in college football. As the season progresses we'll constantly update new videos on the site, at least four videos a week of a 3-4 minute duration.

Second, we're launching a gambling portion of the site that will be headed up by Todd Fuhrman formerly an odds maker at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. The idea is simple, we're going to have Todd serve as a Vegas beat writer for OKTC. He'll be reporting what the lines are, where the smart money is going, and keeping us updated on any surprising shifts in the line as a result of injury or otherwise. No other site on the Internet has anyone as qualified as Todd to be keeping us as updated on what's going on in Vegas. 

We'll also have a lot of new content in the area from Vegas content providers that Todd and I have vetted to be the most trustworthy in the business.

All of these additions -- in conjunction with the recent launch of the Bullpen which has already led to several great articles -- are a sign of OKTC's growing strength as we enter our second year as one of the largest independent sites in the country. There's no longer any question about whether OKTC is a strong and viable business, now the only question is, how much bigger and better can we get?

I think the answer is a lot bigger and a lot better.   

Eight days away from kickoff means it's time to check in with our friend Paul Bessire at PredictionMachine.com.

Who answers the question, what happens if you run the 2012 SEC season 50,000 times on your computer simulation?

Written by Brandon Weiss

There were a lot of unanswered questions at the end of Friday Night Lights, including where players could have/should have gone to college. Luckily, I'm here with a list of the best fits for all of the main players in the show.