Steve Spurrier and a group of South Carolina fans have found a friend outside the Palmetto State. LSU head coach Les Miles told a group in Birmingham today that he’s in favor of the SEC’s divisional champs being decided by division games only:
“I want the schedule to be fair and I want it to give everybody the same opportunity. I’m for the Western Division deciding the Western Division champion and the Eastern Division deciding the Eastern Division champion.”
And there you have it — two SEC coaches are now in favor of making cross-divisional SEC games meaningless. Totally meaningless. Exhibitions actually.
Miles says he wants the schedules to be fair. Well, then he should be in favor of a 13-game round-robin format in which every SEC team plays every other SEC team. That or he should favor just going back to the six-game schedule of old with only games against division foes on the docket. (In reality, those scenarios wouldn’t be fair either because some teams would play at home and some on the road and some would meet pre-injuries, some post-injuries, etc.)
Personally, I’m tired of writing about this subject because it’s so utterly ridiculous.
If the SEC wants to become the only major league — college or pro — in America to not count all its games, fine. Might as well. I’m already on record as saying the SEC is being flat-out cowardly when it comes to avoiding a ninth conference game. What’s a little more nonsense?
If Mike Slive and his presidents are content to let the league’s athletic directors do what’s best for themselves rather than what’s best for the league as a whole, then why not add more cupcakes to the nonconference portion of the schedule and stop counting or even playing cross-divisional league games? Hell, perhaps they can get the folks with the BCS computers and the poll voters not to count those games, either.
“Loss? What loss? That exhibition with Alabama didn’t count in the SEC standings so it shouldn’t count in the BCS rankings!”
Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News was on hand for Miles’ engagement today and he has more on the ongoing soap opera that is the SEC’s struggle to put together a new schedule format. An SEC vote at the end of the month can’t get here soon enough for this writer. Time for this story to be put to bed. Regardless of the final decisions.
SIDENOTE — Miles also managed to chuck a little warning in the direction of SEC newcomers Missouri and Texas A&M, today: “I would say strap it up. They’re going to really not enjoy their welcoming to this conference.”
