The University of Mississippi appears to finally be moving forward with plans to replace the Tad Pad.  Having a basketball game called due to rain in the gym will do that for you.

According to The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, later this summer it’s expected that Ole Miss will announce plans for a $125-150 million fund-raising campaign “aimed primarily at replacing aging Tad Smith Coliseum.”

“There’s been so much done as a university to improve athletics facilities as a whole, they realize this is the last bastion for us and next hurdle that needs to be cleared,” said Andy Kennedy.

The building is expected to seat 10,000 and will likely bear some similarities to Auburn’s new arena which opened this past season.

1.  This writer says college athletes need to think before they tweet.  (Because college kids are well known for thinking before they act.)

2.  Former Mississippi State mascot Tatonka Gold — better known as Bully XX — was euthanized yesterday.  (Not as much fanfare as when an Uga passes, no?)

3.  Louisiana Tech will pay $300,000 to back out of game with MSU.  That leaves State looking for another FBS foe to add to its 2012 schedule.

3.  Freshman defensive back Senquez Golson will be attending summer school at Ole Miss as promised.

4.  Has the “cycle of mediocrity” runs its course in Oxford?

5.  Looks like former UM quarterback Nathan Stanley — repeatedly pushed aside in favor of transfers — will himself transfer to Southeastern Louisiana.

Yesterday, we appeared on WKJK-AM in Louisville.  During a discussion with Kentucky play-by-play man and show host Tom Leach, we pointed out that John Calipari’s new mega-contract with Kentucky is simply a wise investment by the school.

With every win Calipari puts on the board — and we’re talking about the ones the NCAA allows him to count — exposure increases for UK.  That’s exposure for the school, not just the hoops program.  Winning brings exposure and exposure brings revenue (and even new students). 

That was our take anyway.

Turns out, Coach Cal has now detailed that very thing on ESPN Radio:


“Our licensing revenue doubled last year and half of that double goes back to the general fund for our campus, $4.5 million in licensing.  The other thing is we had 14,000 applicants for 4,000 positions for the freshmen, which is the highest in the history of the school.  What you hope is you’ve added value… for everybody, not just me.”


When Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2007 and it was announced he’d make about $4 million per season, fans and media members gasped.  “How can any school pay a coach that much?”

“Mal Moore can answer that,” writes Kevin Scarbinsky of The Birmingham News.  Saban has taken the Tide to BCS games (more money, more exposure), won a national title (more exposure), led the school to a stadium expansion (more money), and driven up merchandise sales (more money). 

That big money UA and UK are spending for their top o’ the line coaches?  It’s actually smart money.  The schools are getting good returns on their investments.

There’s a reason so many of us feel guys like Calipari and Saban are “worth every penny” of their huge contracts — the bottom line proves they are.

1.  Mike Anderson will need buy-in from his first Arkansas team.

2.  Here’s a look at LSU’s 2011 football chances… from an Auburn point of view.

3.  Kudos to Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News for compiling a list of the time-killing lists most often posted by websites in June and July.

4.  Gene Chizik says he hopes his new book gives folks encouragement because “everybody lives their 5-19.”  He wants them to know that their failures can be overcome… just as he grabbed a national title two years after posting his own 5-19 record at Iowa State.

5.  Here’s more on Chizik’s new book.

6.  AU freshman receiver Jaylon Denson is present and accounted for on The Plains.

“All In” — the new book from Auburn’s Gene Chizik — will present a strong defense of former AU quarterback and Heisman-winner Cam Newton:


“Going to bat for Cameron Newton is something in my hear I feel very strongly about.  That’s not because he won 14 games at Auburn, but because of he person that he is. … He needs to be remembered at Auburn as a great individual as well as a great player.”


Chizik began promotion for his book today.

So is this discipline or roster management?  Probably depends on whether or not you yell, “Roll Tide!” or “War Damn Eagle!”  Either way, Nick Saban announced yesterday that two Alabama footballers have been suspended from the team and a third player — already on suspension — will not return.

“Keiwone Malone and Darrington Sentimore have been suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules and policy,” Saban announced.  You might remember Sentimore’s name — hard to forget that one — coming up last week regarding a possible transfer out of Tuscaloosa.

Also, defensive back Robby Green is officially off the UA team.  He was ruled ineligible by the NCAA for the 2010 season and was suspended by Saban for Alabama’s spring practice this year.

Green’s departure is the fifth from the Tide program since the end of last season.

1.  Another sport, another title for the SEC.  Congratulations to South Carolina… back-to-back national champs in baseball.

2.  Kentucky will unveil new football uniforms tomorrow.

3.  This writer says John Calipari’s “super conference” idea is a bad one.  (This includes a spectacular “Caddyshack” reference from Eric Crawford of The Louisville Courier-Journal, by the way.)

4.  Trae Golden and Jordan McRae hope to become offensive threats on Tennessee’s basketball team.

5.  Former Arkansas leading scorer Rotnei Clark will visit Butler as a transfer option this week.  (Virginia and Oklahoma are also options.

Marc Berman of The New York Post doesn’t think John Calipari’s new $36.5 million deal with Kentucky will stave off rumors that he might head to the New York Knicks.  At least not as long as “powerful agency CAA still thinks it runs the Knicks.”

As you probably know by now, Calipari buddy William “Worldwide Wes” Wesley works for CAA.  As long as Wesley is friends with Coach Cal and CAA continues to sink its tentacles into the Knicks, Calipari-to-the-Knicks rumors will circulate.

Berman seems to believe them, by the way:


“Will (Calipari) be coaching Kentucky when he’s 60, when the contract ends?  Don’t bet on it.  The time is just about now to make the switch to the NBA.  His time as head coach of the Nets in the late ’90s should be a distant memory by now.  It is almost time for him to get another shot.”


Berman points out that during this week’s SEC teleconference, Calipari said, “Obviously there’s buyouts and all that kind of stuff in there,” when asked about his new contract.

Ah, ha!

Only Calipari had this to say on ESPN Radio this week:


“What (AD Mitch Barnhart) ended up doing is moving some longevity bonuses up a little bit, some other bonuses around a little bit and then he put stuff toward the end of the contract.  We added some buyout stuff so he felt comfortable. … I’m not looking to leave.  this was about him wanting to reward me without going bonkers.  I was fine with that.  If we keep doing well at Kentucky, they’ll come back.”


Good to know that $36.5 million isn’t going “bonkers.”

Berman also claims — as others have — that UK’s coach would jump to the NBA if a coach/GM or coach/president job were offered to him.  We still believe, however, that if Calipari is as smart as we at MrSEC.com think he is, he’ll remember how Rick Pitino walked away from the greatest gig in college basketball only to wash out in the NBA.  Now Pitino plays second-fiddle to Coach Cal who’s occupying his old seat in Lexington.  If Calipari is smart, he’ll stay right where he is.

(Thanks to John Clay of The Lexington Herald-Leader for bringing this one to our attention.)

Over the weekend, former Florida linebacker Channing Crowder suggested on his new radio show that “hypothetically” he might have sold his UF jerseys to some folks in Jacksonville who liked the way he played.  As you know, selling collectibles and merchandise is a no-no for college athletes.

Yesterday, Crowder backed off of his hypothetical suggestion while on ESPN’s “SportsCenter”:


“I have all four of them (UF jerseys).  My momma has two of my jerseys on her wall in her house, and I have the other two in my house.

I was playing off the whole Terrelle Pryor thing when businessmen were buying his stuff.  I was saying that, if somebody wanted to buy my jerseys while I was in school, why can’t I sell them because they’re my jerseys and have my name on the back?  When I was at Florida, I made ’55′ a relevant jersey number at Florida, so why couldn’t I sell my jersey when I was there with my name on the back?  That was the point.”


And that is the sound of a man trying to remove his foot from his mouth.

At the SEC Meetings in Destin, Mike Slive’s league surprised just about everyone when 12 school presidents voted to overrule the wishes of 12 well-paid, powerful football coaches.  At the time, it was hinted that the SEC would like to see other conferences adopt their guidelines — such as the “soft” 25-man cap on oversigning.

CBSSports.com has learned that the SEC wants the NCAA to do more than that.  The league recently sent a letter to Leeland Zeller — the NCAA’s associate director of academic and membership affairs — describing a number of changes to the body’s recruiting bylaws that Slive and Company would like to see changed.  Here are a few:


1.  The SEC wants coaches to once again be able to text message recruits.  They do propose a limit on texts, however, to protect the student from endless messages.  (CBSSports’ Bryan Fischer says that several representatives from other conferences suggested such a move move would have national support.)  This would prevent schools from having to report accidental texts.  If a coach responds, “Who’s this?” to an unknown sender and that sender turns out to be a prospect, that’s currently a secondary violation.

2.  The SEC wants an earlier date set for the first off-campus contact between coaches and recruits.  (The earlier the better for the SEC… and we’ll get into that more later.)

3.  The SEC wants the NCAA to allow athletic coaches and administrators to accept friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter, respectively, without the school’s compliance department having to monitor those moves.  The SEC claims the monitoring “presents a significant compliance challenge.”  No doubt.

4.  The SEC wants coaches and staff members to be able to receive phone calls placed by recruits, recruits’ parents or recruits’ coaches.  This would prevent schools from having to report accidental answers.  If a coach answers his phone — not recognizing the number calling him — and simply says “Hello” to a recruit who has phoned him… that’s currently a secondary violation.

5.  The SEC wants the NCAA to change its calendar.  Instead of having four periods denoted as contact, evaluation, quiet and dead periods, the SEC wants a three-period calendar consisting of off-campus, on-campus, and dead periods.  As Fischer points out, this would decrease “bump” rule violations.  Also, spring recruiting would become even more important… probably speeding up the commitment process even further.

6.  The SEC wants to see prospects given the option of taking earlier visits, but it will not propose a specific deadline at which visits can begin due to a lack of consensus among its own coaches.

7.  The SEC wants 7-on-7 camps and other “non-scholastic” events to be banned from NCAA campuses.  The SEC already banned 7-on-7 camps from its own campuses this spring.


Thoughts:

* In the spring, the league’s presidents ignored the wishes of their football coaches.  This effort to ease up on recruiting restrictions might just be an olive branch to those same coaches.  “Yes, we made things a bit tougher on you with our moves this spring, but now we’re trying to make things easier for you overall.”  It’s also a nice cover-your-rear move for some inside the league who might believe the SEC hurt itself recruiting-wise with its spring decisions.

* The SEC is home to the deepest pool of talent in the nation.  The SEC is also home to the richest, biggest name coaches in the country.  Is it any wonder the league would like to see the recruiting calendar condensed and moved up a bit?  What conference do you think will have the easiest time gaining early commitments?  Inside the SEC, schools with more in-state talent usually rank well ahead commitment-wise of schools with poorer in-state talent.  The same would hold true at the conference level if the SEC were given a better shot at keeping Down South talent at down home.

* It will be interesting to hear the Big Ten’s Jim Delany weigh in on this proposal.  As the commissioner of America’s self-appointed moral standard-bearer, will he say that now is not the time to start relaxing NCAA rules?  Or will he listen to his league’s football coaches and say these moves — even if they give the SEC an advantage in terms of early commitments — will make life easier for college programs overall?

* You might remember that NCAA president Mark Emmert dropped by the SEC’s get-together in Destin.  He also once served as chancellor at LSU.  For those reasons, it would be very surprising if Slive and the SEC were to put forth a proposal this large without first running it by Emmert and getting the president’s take on whether or not its contents will be well-received by other leagues.  Here’s guessing Emmert gave a thumbs-up to some of this back in Destin.