South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier believes opponents are starting to pick up on the Gamecocks’ signals as they’re being sent in from the sideline.  That’s one reason he had two people sending in signals this past Saturday night:


“We have not done a very good job of hiding our signals.  So we had two guys signaling last week.  We were not worried about it as much as we should have, so we are going to try to be more conscious of that.”


Inside the SEC, Carolina has played Georgia and Vanderbilt already… which leads one to believe either the Dawgs or the Dores have a reputation for stealing signs.  Then again, maybe it was trained Navy codebreakers who caught Spurrier’s attention two weeks ago.

1.  Alabama has to ready for Florida’s quickness.

2.  Running back Dee Hart is recovering well from knee surgery, but he’s a longshot to play this year.

3.  Gene Chizik believes Saturday’s game at Carolina will tell Auburn where it stands in the SEC.

4.  With offenses unafraid of Barrett Trotter as a runner, Kiehl Frazier’s name continues to get more mentions.

5.  With pass protection an issue for Arkansas, expect Texas A&M to bring the blitz on Saturday.

6.  A&M AD Bill Byrne wants to keep the Hog/Aggie game at Cowboys Stadium.  (That’s because Jerry Jones pays both teams big cash to play there.)

7.  Injured Razorback running back Broderick Green may return before year’s end.

8.  Quarterback Jarrett Lee’s development at LSU is one of the top stories in the SEC this season.

9.  Leading LSU trash-talker Tyrann Mathieu thinks it may be time to zip it.

10.  A grand jury will decide what’s next for Jordan Jefferson and Josh Johns.

11.  As MSU toys with its O-line, left tackle James Carmon practiced “everywhere” yesterday.

12.  It’s time for State’s veterans to step up.

13.  The Ole Miss run game ain’t what it used to be.

According to Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard, the Big 12 is stabilizing after a regularly-schedule meeting of the league’s remaining athletic directors yesterday:


“Ultimately we have to prove it because there will always be doubters.  All I can say is the people we were locking arms with that room feel pretty committed to me.  I take people on their word.  I’m not worried about it at all.”


Well, trusting people is a dangerous position to take.  After all, members of Pitt’s administration were working on Big East planning right up until the point they pulled the rug out from under their league-mates and announced a move to the ACC.

That said, Pollard told reporters that formal agreements to ensure stability in the Big 12 are “still a work in progress.”  He also added that “all nine member institutions are fully engaged and committed” to finalizing those league-saving agreements.

Missouri AD Mike Alden deferred to Pollard when asked about the meeting, but his one comment was hardly a ditto to Pollard’s statements.  “It’s a crazy time,” said Alden.

Indeed.

Here we go again.

Just as we said when alleged street-agent Willie Lyles (photo at left) popped up on LSU’s payroll… Tennessee’s got a reason to be concerned. Turns out the talent scout turned street agent was making money off of UT dating back to early 2009. The school paid $15,000 to his then-employer, Elite Scouting Services.

Lyles’ actions have drawn scrutiny from the NCAA and led to headaches at Oregon and LSU in the past year.

At this point, Tennessee fans — like LSU fans before them — will probably bombard us with “our school just got legitimate info from him” emails. Perhaps. But the fact remains, there’s not a school in the country that wants to find Lyles’ name or his employer’s name on its old bank statements. The guy is bad news. Where he’s gone, the NCAA follows.

This does not mean UT is on the verge of being hammered, however.  For now, it appears that an ex-coach from a staff that has already been investigated illegally paid for a trip for a player who did not actually sign with Tennessee.  All things being equal, it would seem that Garza stands to be in more trouble than UT.

However, if the NCAA starts asking UT to turn over the information/video that Elite Scouting Services and Lyles provided Lane Kiffin’s staff, the school had better hope it’s got more to show for its money than Oregon did.  The Ducks are in serious trouble, by all West Coast accounts.

Speaking of the West Coast, it should come as no surprise that Kiffin — UT’s head coach at the time — says he had no idea Willie Mack Garza had funded Lache Seastrunk’s unofficial visit to Knoxville.
“All I can say on that is that the alleged incident, I had no knowledge of, or knowledge of a relationship at all.  I have always been committed, wherever we’ve been, to doing things the right way and cooperating with the NCAA, so that’s all I’ve got on it.”

Uh, yeah.  And that’s why Tennessee’s compliance department wept tears of joy and sang The Hallelujah Chorus upon his skedaddle.

As we noted yesterday, Kiffin is like the jelly-of-the-month club — he’s the gift that keeps on giving.  Mark Wiedmer of The Chattanooga Times Free Press believes it might be time UT gets spanked just for hiring the guy in the first place:

“But at some point, shouldn’t the program be held at least a little responsible for hiring these bums? If a school is never penalized for violations beyond the dismissal of the coach who commits them or the games he won during that time, what great incentive is it for the school to monitor its employees?”

Derek Dooley and the UT administration would no doubt argue that the football program has been punished with a two-year-old black cloud that’s hung over Tennessee’s recruiting efforts.  Vol fans will buy that.  Fans of other schools won’t.  And the earth will continue to spin.

But the gist of all the above is this: Lyles being connected to Tennessee in any way, shape of form is a bad thing.  Ditto Oregon.  Ditto LSU.  For lack of a more pleasant metaphor, Lyles is the dung to which the NCAA flies are drawn.

And UT really stepped in a pile of it when it hired Kiffin and his band of no-goodniks.

(Sidenote — One other interesting note tying Tennessee and LSU together.  Anyone else remember the back-and-forth bidding war between those shools in late 2008 for the services of key Kiffin aide, Ed Orgeron?  We’re just sayin’.)

As we put together some research for a new round of expansion pieces, this will have to be a headline-heavy day on the site.  (Sorry, but I’m tired of doing research and writing til 2am.)

So here goes with some of the top stories making news around the league today:

1.  Here’s the transcript from yesterday’s conference call with Mike Slive and Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin.

2.  Florida’s Charlie Weis is ready to throw the “kitchen sink” at Alabama on Saturday.

3.  The Gators have confidence they can run on the Tide.

4.  But Bama’s had success against Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps in the past.

5.  Last year’s loss to MSU still haunts Georgia.

6.  UGA is focusing on special teams work after a bad day at Ole Miss.

7.  Safety Bacarri Rambo played against the Rebels after losing an unborn son just two days prior.

8.  Florida’s “lightning hit the outhouse” last week, but now Kentucky fans an LSU team that wants “to bloody your nose.”

9.  UK fans are already lining up for tickets to the school’s Big Blue Madness basketball event.

10.  Stephen Garcia will get the start at quarterback for South Carolina this weekend.

11.  The Carolina defense feels it’s up to stopping Auburn’s Mike Dyer.

12.  The guys on Tennessee’s offense aren’t taking Buffalo lightly.

13.  Freshman linebacker Curt Maggitt is making plays and some mistakes for the Vols.

14.  Ex-Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl may still be living in style, but the former aides who followed him down the road to ruin aren’t nearly as well off.  (A sad story.)

15.  Vanderbilt has lost starting linebacker Tristan Strong for the remainder of the season due to a knee injury.  (Another sad story.)

Ole Miss athletic director Pete Boone — appearing on the Head-To-Head radio network across the state of Mississippi yesterday — addressed the criticism that he has been receiving and his job status:


“Absolutely our fans are frustrated as I am and certainly any of the Ole Miss family is frustrated.  And the Vanderbilt game, obviously, was a very low point because of just the game itself and how it was played.  But at the same time, we picked it back up last week a bit and there are a lot of emails that come in… It is a lot of passion.  And thank goodness the Ole Miss folks have passion.  But we’re gonna get it done…

No, I have no plans to step down… I will retire at some point and time.  I’ve got two and a half years left on this contract.”


Asked if he’s the best man for Ole Miss job, Boone said, “I think I am.  If I didn’t I would leave.”

Boone also said his door is open to everyone, including groups like Forward Rebels that have been placing ads in Mississippi newspapers calling for the AD’s job.

Les Miles to the NFL?

Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com reports today that “it has become clear Miles has vaulted near the top of some lists as the next hottest NFL coaching candidate.”

This isn’t the first time such talk has bubbled up.  Jerry Jones has been rumored to have an interest in Miles — which would get him out of Arkansas’ division in the SEC, by the way.  And Miles does have some NFL experience serving as a Cowboys assistant for two seasons.

“He’s the most intriguing coaching prospect I’ve seen in a long time,” one exec told Freeman.  “I think he has a great deal of talent and can deal with the modern athlete.”

Perhaps.  But it’s probably safer to say that Miles “has a great deal of talent” to work with in the state of Louisiana and that he “can deal with the modern athlete” at the collegiate level. 

Why NFL teams continue to rush after college coaches remains a mystery.  For every Jimmy Johnson, there are a dozen Dennis Ericksons, Steve Spurriers, Nick Sabans and Pete Carrolls… guys who can’t match their college successes in the pro game.

At LSU, Miles’ team rallies around their coach.  The Mad Hatter?  Eating grass?  Occasionally speaking in gibberish?  The Tigers have got his back.

You think that would be the case with multi-millionaire adults?

Freeman: “I think it’s only a matter of time before Miles is gone to the pros.”

MrSEC.com:  We think Miles is perfectly suited for the college game, has one of the nation’s true plum jobs where recruits can be harvested by the bushel, and he enjoys the rah-rah camaraderie of college kids.

If Miles exits for the NFL while still on top of the college game, we’ll eat his hat.

In the last 12 hours, a wave of Mike Slive/SEC-related nuggets have hit the internet and we’ll do our best to break them down below.  Here goes…

1.  Making major headlines on ESPN is Slive’s comment that the BCS’ two-team limit might be removed as conference’s expand.


“I do know this: That Bill Hancock has put together a lit of issues that he believes the commissioners and the BCS bowl oversight committee out to be looking at as the BCS develops a position on upcoming negotiations.  I think that’s one of them.”

Obviously, the more teams a league lands in BCS bowls, the more money for that league and its schools.  And the SEC and Big Ten would likely benefit the most from such a move.

If this is the first you’ve heard of such talk, then you’re probably in the majority.  No outlets have been discussing this possibility at all.  Well, except for one:

“With more schools, the Big Ten and SEC would most certainly push for the current two-teams-in-the-BCS limit to be upped to a three-teams-in-the-BCS rule.  Additional bids would mean millions more for the leagues that land them.”

That’s from right here at MrSEC.com.  On May 17th.  May 17th of 2010. It was in Part 4 of our exhaustive “Expounding on Expansion” piece from 18 months ago.

Again, if you want to know what’s happening in expansion from a business point of view — before it happens — keep it tuned right here.

(For that matter, there’s been talk on the internet this week of the SEC expanding to 16 teams, forming four four-team divisions, and holding its own type of mini-playoff.  Not new.  We discussed four-team divisions in this May 17th, 2010 piece.  And while I can’t find the piece using our somewhat flaky archive system, we also wrote an article detailing how a four-team semifinals might be added to the SEC somewhere down the road, creating a new, massive influx of television cash.)

2.  According to an Associated Press chit-chat with Slive, the SEC is fine and dandy with sticking at unlucky 13.  Here’s what the commish said during a media conference yesterday:

“I really can’t emphasize this enough.  This has all been about Texas A&M.  We have not initiated any conversations with any institution.  This was about Texas A&M understanding that some of the complexities that 13 teams brings, and that’s really it…

“I know there will be enormous speculation (about a 14th school).  There will be speculation about how we’re going to schedule.  There’ll be speculation about whether we’re going to go to 14 and if we go to 14, who’s that going to be, how’s that going to happen, when’s that going to happen.  They’re all appropriate questions.  We will deal with those on a timetable that works for us.”

And none of that, of course, means that the SEC will actually be a 13-team league next year.  At this point — depending on what Missouri does — we believe it likely will be a 13-team league, but that’s not a guarantee.

After all, it was just a few weeks ago that the SEC presidents said they were happy at 12 schools.

3.  With some Mizzou fans wondering about the bowl tie-ins for the SEC and Big 12, The Columbia Tribune has put together a list right here.  The SEC has lined up nine bowl partners across the Southeast and into Arlington, Texas.  The Big 12 features seven bowl tie-ins with only a bowl at Yankee Stadium in New York residing East of the Mississippi.

The Tigers recruit heavily in Texas — one reason they would want A&M as a permanent opponent or as a divison-mate if they joined the SEC — and they may prefer the location of the Big 12′s games.  But the bet here is that the SEC’s bowl line-up is actually more attractive to Tiger coach Gary Pinkel.  More opportunities, more locations, more money.

4.  Meanwhile, Kevin Scarbinsky of The Birmingham News writes that it’s time for the SEC to add Florida State or “leave the door open for the Seminoles.”

“After swiping two new members from the Big East, the ACC has no legal ground to object should the SEC go after Florida State.  After the ACC added Pitt and Syracuse, Florida State has no logical reason to stay where it is.  It’s time for FSU and the SEC to admit that they’re perfect for each other.  The sooner, the better.”

Why aren’t the two parties dancing?  FSU certainly left its own door open with a non-denial denial from president Eric Barron and a “we’d listen if they called” statement from Andy Haggard, the chairman of the schools board of trustees.

It’s not because of a gentleman’s agreement.  We’ve been told that no such agreement exists — though the rest of the civilized world is passing this around as gospel because one blog floated it.

Also, Florida didn’t get in the way of Roy Kramer making a pitch to FSU in the 90s.  Another SEC ex-commissioner — Harvey Schiller — has told reporters that he remembers Florida actually pushing for Florida State during his tenure.

As Scarbinsky states, legal issues would likely not be a concern, either.  So what’s the hold-up?

Possibly this: The SEC didn’t want to expand in the first place.  The league feels good about its current position.  If it could have stood pat at 12 teams, it would have.  Texas A&M — long on the SEC’s wish list — was simply too good to pass up… even though the Aggies timeline left a little to be desired.

This site has been told by multiple SEC sources that the league has absolutely no interest in going all the way to 16 schools.  That’s an emergency situation only.  The league does not want to be a guinea pig in that area.

Therefore, the league might be worried that by grabbing/accepting FSU from the ACC, it might force that league to add UConn, Rutgers and — at that point — West Virginia.  That 16-team set-up would ensure the ACC’s survival.  It would also likely set off a wave of expansion moves forcing every other major league — including the SEC — to balloon to 16.

Why aren’t the SEC and FSU already in bed together?  That — and FSU’s administration’s love of ACC academics — are our bet.

The University of Missouri board of curators will meet next week in what is believed to be a previously unscheduled get-together.  Since we live in an expansion-crazed world where every board meeting means the potential for decisions and announcements on realignment, this particular meeting is getting play from Mizzou-specific websites and messageboads — such as PowerMizzou.com which is the Rivals site covering the Tigers.

According to that site — behind a paywall, subscribe above — they believe no meeting would have been called if the curators were fully onboard with the chancellor Brady Deaton’s decision to stay in the Big 12.  In the site’s view, the meeting could be a sort of “here’s where we stand” update for the curators.

Also, in the site’s words, “there is no question that the majority of the fanbase and the majority of the on-campus leaders want to go (to the SEC) at this point.”

That much is debatable.  One Missouri-based writer recently posted a poll on Twitter and the vast majority of respondents said they preferred the Big Ten to the SEC.  (And, yes, realize that if there’s anything less accurate than Twitter it’s likely a Twitter poll.  But hey, it’s something.)

While rumors have heated up regarding Louisville — spoke with a source last night who said that’s gained steam for no reason — and West Virginia — if the SEC hasn’t jumped at the Mountaineers, why would they jump at Louisville? — we believe Missouri is currently in the driver’s seat.

If the Big 12 cannot save itself, Mizzou will need a landing spot.  They would appear to have one in the SEC.  Fourteen schools beats 13.  Aside from the regular season scheduling nightmares, just how will postseason tournaments — with 13 teams — be handled?  No, if the SEC could get to 14 and land an AAU university that happens to be a land-grant institution in a state with two Top 40 TV markets and a population of 6 million… yeah, the SEC would do that deal.

But this one sits with the Tigers.  Can Deaton be persuaded by curators and a football coach who clearly want change?  And can Missouri pull out with making it look like the SEC was behind said pull-out… in order to keep Kenneth Starr at bay?

Perhaps we’ll know more after next Tuesday.  But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

1. The upcoming Alabama-Florida game will have an impact on SEC recruiting.

2. Florida State has the top recruiting class in the state of Florida heading into October.

3. Lineman Dalvin Tomlinson didn’t try to commit to Alabama, according to his coach at Henry County HS.

4. Florida DL commit Quinteze Williams explains why he’s still considering Tennessee and Clemson.

5. Click this link to find a video highlight of Auburn commit T.J. Yeldon.

6.  The SEC is a big draw for junior college linebacker Eddie Porter.