When it comes to importance on the 2012 Georgia football team, Seth Emerson of the Macon Telgraph believes there are few players more key to UGA’s success than left tackle Kenarious Gates.  According to Bulldog offensive line coach Will Friend, Gates is the one guy who rose above the pack this spring:

“Nobody’s separated themselves – with the exception of Ken Gates. Right now if you were gonna play a game I know he would be there.” 

With so many new faces on UGA’s line, Gates needs to live up his performance during spring drills.  Emerson believes that if Gates “isn’t up to the job, or at least not on a consistent basis, (then) the Bulldogs are juggling the line on a constant basis.”

The Dawgs will be trying to replace tackles Cordy Glenn and Justin Anderson from last year’s line.  Gates — who started nine games at left guard last season — will be the man trying to fill the void left by Glenn and trying to protect quarterback Aaron Murray’s blind side.

When it comes to recent SEC history, defensive coordinators entering their second year at a school can expect their troops to perform better than in their debut seasons in a new system.  From Nick Saban to Todd Grantham and more, the second year usually shows a nice jump.  That should be reassuring to Florida fans who are wondering what Dan Quinn and Will Muschamp — it’s his system after all — can pull out of their hats this fall.

When it comes to linebacker, Rachel George of The Orlando Sentinel says two players have emerged as “the heart of the group.”  Senior Jonathan Bostic and junior Jelani Jenkins both had solid 2011s and are expected to be as good or better in 2012.

But what about the third starting linebacker and beyond?

“After Bostic and Jenkins, the Gators are slim.  Lerentee McCray earned the starting spot at strongside linebacker last year but missed time because of a shoulder injury. He’ll be one of the players counted on to replace Ronald Powell at the Buck position while he recovers from ACL surgery. Mike Taylor wasn’t as productive as coaches had hoped for last season, and Graham Stewart transferred this month after one season at Florida.”

Florida — like most of the SEC East’s teams beyond Georgia and South Carolina — is a tough squad to read.  There is talent, but much of it is young.  It’s the second year of Muschamp’s reign, but there are still some Urban Meyer guys running around (but hopefully not running amok) on campus.

While the D-line is experienced, question marks remain at quarterback, running back, defensive back and linebacker depth.

If it all comes together, the Gators could surprise.  If not, Muschamp could be looking at a hot-seat year in 2013.

If you’re ESPN and you’ve got contracts with every conference on the planet, at some point someone has to say, “Where we gonna put all these games?”  Answer: CBS.

CBS Sports announced today that it has signed a multi-year agreement with ESPN to eventually air 26 basketball games per year from the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12.  This isn’t new.  ESPN has sold off SEC football games to networks like CSS and Fox Sports Net since signing their contract with Mike Slive’s league.  You can own everything, but you can’t possibly show everything.  (Unless the folks in Bristol finally launch “The Ocho.”)

What this means for the SEC remains to be seen.  By clearing off more games from other leagues from its schedule, is ESPN preparing to carry more SEC contests now that the league has two new hoops squads and additional inventory?

Stay tuned.

It was about 72 hours ago that the world learned of the SEC’s surprising pact with the Big 12.  The champions of the two leagues — if they’re not invited into a new playoff — will meet in an unknown city on New Year’s night in a game run by unknown parties.  It could be an existing bowl like the Sugar.  Or it could be a stand-alone game run by the conferences in Jerry Jones’ Cowboy Stadium, for example.  Either way, the leagues will be keeping more profit from a “bowl” than ever before.

The SEC and Big 12 have also consolidated their power in an “oh, yeah” response to the Big Ten and Pac-12′s ongoing loyalty to the Rose Bowl.  The SEC and Big 12 have sent many more teams to the BCS Championship Game these last 14 years than the Big Ten and Pac-12 have.  ”We’ll see your Pasadena and raise you an Arlington, or New Orleans, or Atlanta,” the SEC and Big 12 seem to be saying.

The response was quick and wild over the weekend with many believing this move to be “The Big One” so long talked about.  For 25 years people have speculated that we would eventually come to the point where four superconferences — and only four — ruled the college football world.

But is this really the San Andreas Fault rattling and rolling?  Is this really Fred Sanford’s chance to join Elizabeth?  And what should Joe Average Football Fan be hoping for?

Monday morning thoughts…

We’ve been hearing for months that Florida State and Clemson fans were ready to bolt from the ACC.  Oddly, their fervor for departure didn’t really kick into hyperdrive until FSU trustee Andy Haggard responded loudly to some misinformation on the internet regarding the ACC’s new television deal with ESPN.  Now social media is blazing with talk of FSU, Clemson, Miami, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Notre Dame possibly/probably jumping to the Big 12.

Some websites even claimed earlier this month that a deal was already done between FSU/Clemson and the Big 12.  The buyouts had already been figured out and it was only a matter of waiting for the new playoff plan to be announced.

That’s news to many people who are actually in the Big 12 it seems.  While some writers say “there is no doubt — none — that the Big 12 wants to get back to a minimum of 12 teams,” others say the league is split on expansion… with four schools for it, four schools on the proverbial fence, one school pushing hard for it (Oklahoma) and one school pushing hard against it (Texas).  Oklahoma State president Burns Hargis is in the go-either-way camp telling The Tulsa World:

“…we were very happy with where we are with 10 teams…

To be honest, I think everybody liked it.  It was a very good number for our league.

I think it was great that everyone played everyone else in football. I think two games against everyone in basketball was a good thing. I know our coaches liked it. Right now, I’d say we’re pretty happy at 10.”

Hargis is the head of the Big 12′s expansion committee, by the way.  While Hargis postures, new reports of FSU moving continue to spew forth.  Yesterday, Ingram Smith of ChuckOliver.net went all in:

“According to two people with the strongest ties possible to Florida State’s Athletic Department, FSU fully plans on exiting the Atlantic Coast Conference. Florida State will begin its transition to the Big 12 Conference beginning this June. One source went as far as to say, ‘at this point the move is inevitable.’

… Florida State leaving the ACC this summer will culminate a process that began with initial talks with an intermediary representing the Big 12 last November. Florida State did not officially reach out to the Big 12 until a week before the ACC’s most recent deal with ESPN was announced. Florida State has long been frustrated with the leadership of its current conference and in the Big 12 believes it has found a partner that is more focused, and in touch with the current economic climate of collegiate athletics.

Florida State will receive substantial financial help from the Big 12 in their exit fee from the ACC. Look for FSU to receive a similar deal that WVU received last year from the Big 12. FSU will be given anywhere from 10 – 14 million dollars towards the 20 million dollar exit fee. Much of this money will come from the exit fees the Big 12 received from Texas A&M and Missouri’s departure. It is very likely that FSU will additionally then be loaned somewhere in the area of 3 – 5 million dollars from the Big 12.  FSU’s AD department will be responsible for the remainder of the costs associated with the departure from the ACC.  FSU has boosters that have already pledged the money towards the remaining fees that are not covered by the Big 12.

Florida State will enter the Big 12 as a full member in their first year.”

That’s an awful lot of detail coming from the FSU side of things.  Smith also writes that “Clemson will almost certainly pair with Florida State as team 11 and 12 for the Big 12.”  In addition, “Georgia Tech is also talking with the Big 12.”

Smith then goes on to blow up the ACC entirely with the usual suspects — Virginia Tech and NC State — landing in the SEC and the Big Ten diving in for the remaining high-minded institutions like Duke, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia.

Miami isn’t mentioned by Smith.  Maybe that’s because Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald wrote the following over the weekend:

“Though a Yahoo story suggested the Big 12 – which has more a lucrative TV deal than the Atlantic Coast Conference – might pursue FSU and UM, two UM Board of Trustee members said it hasn’t been discussed inside UM and they could not envision Miami being interested. One pointed out UM would need to pay more than $15 million in ACC exit fees even if it wanted to move. ”

Well, now, wait a second.  We were told that FSU and Clemson were leaving for the Big 12.  Then word came out that FSU was pushing for Miami rather than Clemson.  Then we were told Miami couldn’t pay its ACC exit fee even if it wanted to go.  And then we’re told the Big 12 will give FSU help with its fee.

If you notice that we’re writing the story in one direction, then zigging from our previous zag, you’re paying good attention.  The point is, no one seems to know what’s really happening.  And anyone who claims after the fact to have seen all this coming — if all this does eventually come to pass — would be akin to the guy who made this film saying he knew man would someday reach the moon via the Apollo space program.

For while one group says the Big 12 has already reached deals with certain schools, arguably the most powerful man in the Big 12 argues in the other direction.  Last week Texas AD DeLoss Dodds said Florida State was far both far from the Big 12 geographically… and far from joining it.  Last night he said the age of the superconference is a long ways off as well:

“I think that’s way, way out there.  The Big Ten likes where they are; they don’t want to change.  The Pac-12′s got all they can get.  I don’t see superconferences for a while.  I think it’d take a crisis for that to happen.”

Interim Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas has said his league hasn’t had any conversations with Florida State.  (Today he told KTXX-FM that an SEC colleague told him not to expand past 12 “because 14 becomes unruly.”)  He also said that he expects Notre Dame to remain independent.  Ah, but that where there’s another break within the Big 12 conference.

Orangebloods.com — the Rivals site that covers Texas and that is viewed by many as a Longhorn propaganda arm — writes that Texas has been “courting Notre Dame carefully since the summer of 2010.”  So at least one school inside the Big 12 must feel the Irish can be had.

Confused yet?

In the end, we tend to agree with the Orangeblood’s Chip Brown’s assessment of all this expansion talk:

“In short, anyone saying Notre Dame, Florida State or Clemson are done deals are talking to people with wishful thinking or relying on second or third-hand information from people with wishful thinking.”

Amen.  But, ironically, many of the folks doing the wishing should actually be wishing for a slow-down, not a speed-up to expansion.  Here’s why:

1.  The Big Ten and Pac-12 are stable as can be.  Due to geography, Larry Scott’s league is practically untouchable by any other raiding party.  The massive TV deal he negotiated for his conference insures that Pac-12 athletic departments will make more money than ever.  That, by the way, is already what’s going on in the Big Ten.  It’s believed that league’s schools will make $24.6 million each when checks are handed out at this year’s league meetings.  Why expand now if you’re the Pac-12 or Big Ten?

2.  The SEC is renegotiating its own television deals with CBS and ESPN and it’s expected Mike Slive’s league will be at or very near the top of the cash heap when the ink on those new contracts dries.  It’s been a backroom fistfight to hammer out the new 14-team SEC football and basketball schedules and that process has stretched all the way to the league’s spring meetings.  If you’re filthy rich and the move to 14 schools has caused some issues already, why rush to 16 (or 18 or 20 teams)?

3.  The Big 12 had lined up new television deals with ESPN and Fox that were — ironically — designed to help hold the league together.  Now they’ve given the Big 12 so much clout that it’s gone from devastation to destination in less than 12 months.  The Big 12 is the Michael Myers of conferences.  But if you’re uber-wealthy and you only have to split your booty among only 10 programs, why expand?  For a conference championship game?  Would the financial rewards of that one game be enough to cancel out the additional splitting of the conference revenue pie with two, four or six new schools?

At this point, the traditionalists better hope everyone decides to cool off for a bit.  The four leagues mentioned above are safe and secure.  They can afford to wait.

For Florida State, Miami, Clemson or anyone else hoping to leave the ACC for better television money, the better goal might be to improve your own football programs first.  John Swofford’s league controls just about every major television market up and down the East Coast.  The only reason his league can’t equal the other leagues in football TV money is the lack of performance by the three schools mentioned above.  If the Noles, Canes and Tigers had just strung together — say — six BCS titles in a row, the ACC would be rolling in mucho dinero.

And speaking of the ACC, their best options for survival appears to be:

1.  Somehow convince Notre Dame to join their league.

2.  Sign a multi-million dollar deal with the Orange Bowl and Notre Dame… right… this… instant.

Either way, Notre Dame appears to be the ACC’s best hope for a dance partner now that the Big Ten and Pac-12, SEC and Big 12 have paired up.

So what’s the takeaway?  Well, this might not be “The Big One” that everyone suspects.  Fans of tradition should pray the four most secure conferences realize that they have the time and money to be patient and make well-reasoned moves regarding expansion.  They should hope the ACC and Notre find a way to navigate through all this by finding a way to work together.

Things don’t have to be as wild and crazy as now they appear to be.

Think of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  If the hawks in the US military and the hardliners in the Soviet Union had had their way back in 1962, none of us might be around today to talk conference expansion.  Instead, the Kennedys were cool, determined to avoid a nuclear war, and Nikita Kruschev gave them a way out with what was believed to be a drunken letter he sent to the US President at the height of the crisis.

If cooler heads prevail now, we might just come out of this without having to go through Expansion War III.  Pray for cooler heads to prevail, folks.  Just don’t count on that happening.

1. Mike Herndon: “This new game will be a good deal for the SEC, which maintains its spot at the forefront of the sport, but the biggest winner is the Big 12.”

2. Sam Mellinger: “The Big 12 just gained a whole lot of credibility, Missouri’s decision to jump to the SEC just became less reasoned and Kansas’ stance on not playing the Border War just did the same.”

3. Big 12 interim commissioner Chuck Neinas: ”We may not be Facebook but the Big 12 Conference would get a strong buy call from Wall Street today.”

4. Florida State and the Big 12.  Best option or only option?

5. Don’t count on Miami having an interest in the Big 12 (last item).

6. Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart:  ”I dont think we can allow conference realignment to eliminate tradition.”

7. Kentucky’s Brian Adams is giving up football to focus on baseball.

8. Salaries for LSU assistant football coaches put them among the nation’s elite.

9. Hugh Freeze and Ole Miss are recruiting nationwide.  246 (and counting) offers out to recruits.

10. Georgia’s most important players? Jarvis Jones comes in at No. 6.

11. Breaking down Florida’s defensive line.

12. Big expectations for an incoming trio of basketball players at Kentucky.

13. Did you know there’s a National Association of Sports Public Address Announcers?

14. Bobby Petrino sells an Arkansas home.

1. Flip-Flop: Swofford Now Says ACC Now Prefers Conference Champ Model For Playoffs

2. UF’s Muschamp Makes A Funny (That A&M Folks Won’t Find Funny)

3. Bama To Face WVU In 2014 Chick-Fil-A Game

4. ESPN Further Proves Its Not A News Organization Anymore

5. Can We Please Stop The “Big Ten Has To Play In Hot Weather At Bowl Time” Nonsense?

SEC/Big 12 Alliance and Conference Re-Alignment

1. Jon Solomon: “The schools are regaining control of the postseason economics. The Fiesta Bowl, which has anchored the Big 12 champion, should be nervous.”

2. Jerome Solomon: “This could be good news for Houston, bad news for the University of Houston.”

3. Stewart Mandel: “Will the SEC and Big 12 push for this new bowl to serve as their designated semifinal host?”

4. Jay Greeson: “The Champions Bowl is less about a power conference and more about a power play.”

5. Gene Frenette: “It’s a certain death notice for Big East football, and the ACC might not survive without convincing Florida State/Miami to stick around and Notre Dame to come on board.”

6. Pete Thamel: “The knee-jerk reaction on Twitter and among other college officials was that this could mean that Florida State winds up in the Big 12.”

7. Bobby Bowden’s message to Florida State boosters: “Do you want to win a National Championship at Florida State?  You’ve got a better chance in the ACC than you have in the Big 12, or even the SEC.”

8. Tony Barnart’s message to Florida State’s representatives:  ”Just shut up. Seriously. You need to shut up.”

SEC Headlines

9. Arkansas AD Jeff Long: “My interest and commitment continues to be providing leadership to the University of Arkansas and to Razorback athletics at this critical time in our program’s history.”

10. Arkansas coach John L. Smith is a man with something left to prove.

11. Georgia’s Damian Swann could have a real impact in the Bulldogs secondary this fall.

12. Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley on recruiting: ”I think it’s important your recruiting office is not tied to coaches,” he explained. “That’s something that we’ve tried to structure because it’s a transient profession and you can’t get held hostage by a coach. In other words, if he leaves, [you can't have] your whole recruiting thing get disrupted.

13. Tony Gilbert is leaving Georgia to join Auburn as a graduate assistant.

14. Why John Calipari and Billy Donovan make sense as candidates to eventually replace Mike Kryzewski as coach of Team USA.

So it’s Friday and I’m at the hospital giving blood.  (Men, as a prostate cancer survivor, let me encourage you to get your PSA checked.  That simple blood test saved my life.)  While sitting and waiting… and waiting… and waiting… the texts began to roll in:  ”New SEC deal with Big 12 to be announced shortly!”

Great.  A lunchtime Friday gift for the media guys hoping to get a jumpstart on the weekend.

After finally having the blood drawn, I zipped home to put together a quick summary for you.  Only I soon realized there is no quick summary for this story.  This story is just part of a much larger, still developing story: the complete and total reshaping of college football as we know it.

For all the details, you can turn to long-time SEC scribe and all-around good guy, Tony Barnhart of CBSSports.com.  But here’s the basic gist:

* The SEC and Big 12 announced today that beginning with the 2014 season (January of 2015, that is), the regular-season champs of those two leagues will meet  in a bowl game that is not a part of what’s expected to be a brand new four-team college football playoff.  Consider it the answer to the Big Ten-Pac-12′s Rose Bowl alliance.

* That’s if the SEC and Big 12 champs aren’t invited to the playoff, of course, and during the BCS era there have only been two occasions in 14 years when either the SEC champ or the Big 12 champ hasn’t made the national title game.  The last time both leagues were shut out was way back in January of 2003.

* If one or both league champions make the playoff field, then league runner-ups would get the nod.

* The site of the game will be determined by a bidding process.  The Sugar Bowl has been the home of the SEC champ since 1976.  The old Big 8 was traditionally tied to the Orange Bowl, but the Big 12 locked in a deal with the Fiesta Bowl.  For now, however, it looks like Jerry Jones and his Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas will be the top competition for the Sugar Bowl crew come auction time.

Now, for some very quick reactions, thoughts, questions, and observations (in no particular order):

1.  This looks to be good news for the Big 12 and bad news for the ACC.  At the moment there appear to be five major  football conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC.  The Big 12 was wobbling just a few months ago after losing four major brand name schools in the span of a couple of summers.  Now the Big 12 appears locked and loaded for the future (if its schools can all continue to play nice together).  The ACC?  Uh, well, not so much.  After delivering yet another punch to the Big East by grabbing Pittsburgh and Syracuse last year, John Swofford’s league now appears to be the odd conference out if we ever find ourselves living in that four super-conference universe that’s so often been discussed.  How can the ACC guarantee its survival as a big-time football league now?  By raiding the Big East for Rutgers and UConn or South Florida?  There are now two power blocs when it comes to future votes on college football matters: Big Ten-Pac-12 and SEC-Big 12.  The ACC doesn’t have a dance partner.

2.  Florida State, you now have another reason to move.  President Eric Barron might not like it and it might not make the most sense to the faculty and staff at FSU, but the Big 12 now looks more secure than the ACC.  The perception of many will be that the SEC chose to partner with the Big 12 because it’s in better shape going forward.  We don’t deny that, but an SEC-ACC bowl could have also yielded rematches thanks to rivalries between Clemson-South Carolina, Florida-Florida State and Georgia-Georgia Tech.  Regardless, many FSU trustees and fans were pushing for a Big 12 move based on perception anyway.  Now the perception of Big 12 > ACC is even greater.

3.  Business rules.  Forget emotions.  Forget one conference grabbing teams from another conference.  Harsh words and threats of lawsuits just don’t matter when it comes to money.  The SEC and Big 12 weren’t the best of chums less than 12 months ago as Texas A&M and Missouri packed their bags and departed the latter league for the former.  Well, the hatchet has apparently been buried.  (You might say the tomahawk — in this case — has been buried in the ACC’s head.)  Dollars rule in college athletics.  Mike Slive and Swofford have had a good working relationship for a while.  But when it came time to toss a rope to one league or the other and help pull them into the boat with the three most stable conferences — SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 — it wasn’t Swofford’s ACC that got the call, it was Chuck Neinas’ Big 12.

4.  Earlier this week we wrote that FSU’s power play could force Swofford to reverse field and join the Pac-12 and Big Ten in pushing for a champs-only or a champs-mostly playoff format.  He did just that in part to exert some pressure on the Seminoles to stay in the ACC, an easier league to win than the Big 12.  But now it appears that the SEC and Big 12 were already planning ahead.  We don’t believe Slive learned of Swofford’s flip-flop and picked up the phone to Neinas and new Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby this week.  Barnhart says the two leagues have been discussing such a plan for years.  But the fact remains, Swofford abandoned the SEC’s push for a 1-2-3-4 playoff system and Slive appears to have had another partner already lined up on that front.

5.  This move seems to guarantee that by the 2014 season the BCS will be gone.  There’s still a lot of work to do before a playoff format is agreed upon and — let’s face it — that whole thing could still blow up in everyone’s faces.  But whether there’s a playoff or not, it looks as if we are definitely heading back to the days of conferences cutting their own bowl deals.  Come 2014 the bowl line-up could look a heckuva lot different for everyone.  (Earlier this week, Big Ten commish Jim Delany said he’d like to see the bowl eligibility standard raised to seven wins and he even suggested his league might go down that road on its own, by choice.)  In just two years, there could be fewer bowls and those bowls could have completely differently conference tie-ins.

6.  Delany also suggested this week that perhaps it’s time for the bowl games to pay less money to the teams they invite… with the caveat being that those games would no longer require schools to buy tickets by the bushel (which leads to most schools losing money on their bowl trips).  At Big12Sports.com today, Neinas mentioned in a video interview the possibility that the new Big 12-SEC game could be run simply by the leagues and not by a bowl at all.  So not only could bowls look different — in number and in tie-ins by 2014 — but they could start to go away altogether, replaced by games run by the conferences.  Or at least that seems to be an idea that more than one commissioner is tossing out for leverage purposes, if nothing else.

7.  As for the Big 12-SEC game, here’s hoping the good people in New Orleans can raise enough cash to outbid Jones and Arlington.  No offense to the Metroplex, but would you rather spend New Year’s in the French Quarter or in chilly mid-Texas?

8.  And before anyone tosses out St. Louis as the perfect fit for the new game, would you rather spend New Year’s in the French Quarter or in even chillier Missouri?

9.  Back to Florida State for a second, does this new power play now guarantee a Seminole move to the Big 12?  Or is there a reason FSU trustees have continually mentioned the SEC as a league they’d like to hear from?  If the SEC wanted to help stabilize the ACC it could have.  Instead, it partnered with the Big 12 and tightened the noose around the ACC’s neck.  If Slive isn’t worried about destabilizing the ACC, then perhaps he knows the age of the super-conference is here — like it or not — and he’s willing to grab FSU his own self.  That’s pure speculation, but what in the past three weeks has not been pure speculation?

10.  What was Slive’s ultimate goal here?  To help stabilize the Big 12 — a league he didn’t intend to destabilize last year — while at the same time partnering with what has been the nation’s second-strongest league during the BCS era?  (Championship game berths by league: SEC – 9, Big 12 – 7, ACC – 3, Big East – 3, Big Ten – 3, Pac-12 – 3.)  Did he want to deal a death blow to the ACC?  Or was he simply looking to do what was best for his own conference, consequences be damned?  Personally, I’ve never heard a peep from anyone at an SEC institution suggesting that Slive would for any reason “attack” Swofford’s ACC.  Therefore, it seems much more likely that this was Slive’s way of saying, “You can have the Rose Bowl, we’ll partner with the Big 12 and recent history says our bowl will feature higher-rated teams than your bowl.”  It’s strictly business.

11.  Though Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick says he doesn’t think the new SEC-Big 12 deal deal will have “significant near-term consequences” for his school, rest assured he’s puckering up a bit more today.  Unless Notre Dame and the ACC can reach an agreement to merge, both bodies will continue to become more and more irrelevant by the hour.

12.  Kudos to Neinas and the Big 12.  Dan Beebe took the fall for a league that was built on a fault line and part of the league’s turnaround can surely be attributed to the fact that its members were looking over the edge of a cliff just a few months ago and that scared them straight (at least straight enough to share their media rights for 13 years).  Still, the Big 12 is a perfect example of how the college football landscape is changing and morphing and shifting day after day.  One day the Big 12 looks doomed.  The next, it looks strong as can be.  Who knows what the future holds?  But Neinas deserves a lot of credit for grabbing the reins of his league’s wild horses, stopping them, and ultimately pulling them and the Big 12′s wagon back from precipice.

So what conclusions can be drawn from all this?

The Big 12 appears stronger.  The ACC appears weaker.  The likelihood of Florida State moving looks somewhat greater.  And the SEC just continues to roll right along with an answer for every problem, a yin for every yang.

Other than those, no one should draw any conclusions.  There’s a battle over a new playoff and what form it will take.  Will it include existing bowls?  Will bowls start to disappear, replaced by conference-owned games?  What about bowl eligibility standards?  Will more schools move from their current leagues?  What about those $2,000 stipends for players?  How can the NCAA preserve a level playing field when the biggest leagues are pushing to give players extra cash while more and more small schools (Old Dominion, Texas-San Antonio, Georgia State, etc, etc) jump to the FBS level?

Think you’ve got a read on what’s coming next?  Think again.  The powers-that-be don’t even know what’s coming next.  There are too many variables in too many equations for anyone to feel confident in their beliefs about the future of college football.

Today’s news?  Yeah, it’s big.  But what it means long-term for all the parties concerned?  That’s anybody’s guess.

Hugh Freeze inherited a mess at Ole Miss.  His team went winless in the SEC last year.  There’s no clear-cut starting quarterback on the roster.  And now he’s losing one the brightest spots from a squad blanketed in darkness.

Nick Brassell — the first Ole Miss player to start on both offense and defense since 1988 — has been declared academically ineligible at UM and will transfer.  The sophomore-to-be was described earlier this spring by Freeze as an NFL-level cornerback.  On offense, he caught 24 passes for 336 yards and two touchdowns last season, adding another 133 yards on the ground via 21 rushing attempts.

“We did all we could do to help Nick, and we wish him the very best,” the coach said in a press release.  With regards to the academic issues faced by a number of the Rebels he inherited, Freeze also threw a little blame in the direction of the recruiting process:

“Unfortunately with these kids today, that personal responsibility is a bit, it’s not comprehended by them.  A lot of kids that are recruited today, not just here.  This whole circus around this recruiting now and this sense of entitlement.  I’m sure some of them come from places where they felt like they were going to get help for that.  And we do have help here, and we utilize all of that. But at the end of the day a kid is going to want to do well.

The ones that did, we had some remarkable turnarounds.  We had kids go from .75s to 2.0 from doing what’s right.  At the end of the day, I think you got to be responsible for yourself.”

Rebel fans — though they’re tired of hearing this every other season — need to have patience.  Re-read the first sentence above again.  Hugh Freeze inherited a mess at Ole Miss.

In fact, we might as well refer to his program as Ole Mess until he turns things around.

The University of Tennessee athletic department has had its share of bungles in recent years.  Mistakes, missteps, mismanagment… name a plague and the Volunteers have managed to find a way to contract it.

But here’s a move by the school that actually looks pretty darn smart.  With a new football complex still under construction on the school’s Knoxville campus, Derek Dooley will take his team to Milligan College in Elizabethton, Tennessee for an NFL-style, away-from-home week of preseason work.

Athletic director Dave Hart’s explanation of the move makes it sound quite wise:

“The decision to train off-campus this year is not only driven by the factor of our move into our new Football Training Center, but also by the opportunity to maximize the ability of our coaching staff to become further acclimated to one another and the team in a very controlled environment.  I support Derek’s decision and feel strongly that we need to make this investment in our football program as we prepare to open our season in Atlanta (against North Carolina State on Aug. 31).

This is a one-time situation, and there are no plans to train off-site at any time in the future.”

Dooley’s team suffered from serious chemistry issues and a lack of leadership in 2012.  On top of cleaning up that mess, he’s having to break in seven new assistants out of a possible nine.  A little bonding session away from the comforts of home might do the coaches and the players some good.

As for why more schools don’t do this type of thing and why Tennessee doesn’t plan to do it in the future — money.  It won’t be cheap to house and feed an entire football team for a full week away from campus.

Still, facing the challenge he’s up against in 2012, Dooley seems to have made a good call on this one… even if it was in part forced by construction work on UT’s campus.