Longtime readers of this site know that we first mentioned the possibility that the league could still start its own network — despite its 2008 contracts with CBS and ESPN — a little more than two years ago.  Readers this week also know that the SEC is indeed engaged in talks with the four-letter network regarding some form of co-owned channel.

Revenue estimates for such a network have ranged anywhere from $500,000 million to $1 billion to even more depending on the source you read and the data they use.

David Climer of The Tennessean goes the simple route in explaining why an SEC Network should be worth more than the already highly successful Big Ten Network and the start-up Pac-12 Networks (there will be six channels focusing on two member schools each):

“Getting toeholds in Texas and Missouri pushes the total population in the SEC’s 11-state footprint to 91 million, according to the latest census figures. Compare this to the Big Ten (69.5 million) and the Pac-12 (62.8 million).

That means if Slive, who is in his 11th year as commissioner, can strike an agreement that would put the SEC Network into every cable and satellite subscriber’s house, it should eclipse the revenue of the Big Ten and Pac-12 TV deals.”

This is nothing new to our readers who’ve seen our “reason for expansion” pieces over the years.  It does, however, further explain why Missouri got an SEC invite over West Virginia, a fine athletic department that just happens to be located in a tiny state.  Many Mountaineer fans took it as an insult when we tried to explain that dynamic a year ago.

As expansion talk continues to roil, maybe it will become more and more clear to those few holdouts who don’t quite get it — television is driving this bus.

Let’s start with the expansion stuff, shall we?  (And beware… some of this stuff might be behind paywalls.)

1.  Clemson AD Terry Don Phillips says there’s “no substance with regard to a report” from Orangebloods.com that there’s been informal contact between the Big 12, Clemson, Florida State, Virginia Tech and Miami.

2.  Here’s the original Orangebloods piece claiming that one Big 12 source puts the odds of expansion at “55 to 60 percent.”

3.  Today that site claims that Georgia Tech “has also put out informal feelers to the Big 12.”

SIDENOTE — “Informal feelers” could mean a single rogue booster who wants his school to move has put in a call to someone he knows at a Big 12 school.  Either way, it seems that reports of a “done deal” for FSU and Clemson to join the Big 12 were exaggerated.

4.  Texas AD DeLoss Dodds told CBSSports.com yesterday that he’s against expansion and that he thinks the new playoff system will make league’s playing championship games think twice… but he also says he’s been courting Notre Dame for a while.  (Of course he’s against expansion.  The more schools that join the Big 12, the more Texas’ power and revenue share will decrease.)

5.  ESPN’s Chris Low said on The Paul Finebaum Show yesterday that he believes more expansion is coming and “I can tell you that the SEC has their eyes on Virginia Tech.”

6.  At about the same time, the athletic directors at Virginia Tech and Virginia were saying they don’t feel there is “a serious threat of someone leaving the ACC.”

SECOND SIDENOTE — We’ll have more on the Virginia Tech talk a little later today.

7.  Here’s a graphic look – literally — at what expansion and realignment has meant for basketball.

8.  This writer says college football needs an early signing period.

9.  The season-opener between Alabama and Michigan in Arlington, Texas will — no surprise — kick off at 8pm ET on ABC.

10.  Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson has been pleasantly surprised by how quickly he’s developed a relationship with new offensive coordinator Paul Petrino.

11.  LSU’s football players are eager to get the “taste” of defeat out of their mouths.

12.  Transferring Texas A&M hoopster Naji Hibbert says he can be better on and off the court at Gardner-Webb.

13.  The Aggies come to the SEC with some peculiarities, says this writer.

14.  Will Muschamp believes his young Florida offense will grow up.  (Yeah, but how quickly?)

15.  Freshman Georgia placekicker Marshall Morgan will need to quickly do some growing up, too.

16.  Six Kentucky basketballers have been invited to the NBA’s draft combine.

17.  Tennessee coach Derek Dooley said of the felony theft arrest of tight end Cameron Clear: “I am aware of the situation but I can’t comment and won’t comment till I get all the details.”

18.  When Dooley was initially asked about rumors that Clear had stolen items from athletes on campus back, he said on May 7th: “I’ll classify it as messageboard journalism, like a lot of things that come through.”)

19.  Finally, here’s another writer’s look at the most important transfers in college basketball (and three are coming to an SEC arena near you).

THIRD AND FINAL SIDENOTE — If I open one more website and see Mia Hamm pop up in a video ad I’m going to punch something.

Will Muschamp isn’t moaning about the permanent cross-divisional rival he inherited when he arrived at Florida.  The second-year coach told The Orlando Sentinel that he enjoys squaring off will fellow juggernaut LSU on an annual basis:

“I like the every year playing LSU.  I think that’s good. I think that’s good for the league.  It’s two national programs with the recent success we’ve both had.  As far as how they rotate the other Western Division opponent, that’s up to (commissioner) Mike Slive and our athletic directors.  I’m just in favor of still playing eight as far as SEC games.”

No surprise on that last part.  Just as SEC coaches feared going from six SEC games to seven and then to eight and then adding a conference championship game 20 years ago, today’s coaches are in lockstep in their desire to avoid a nine-game league schedule.

“I think there’s enough good teams in our league right now,” Muschamp said. “It doesn’t really matter.  There’s going to be great matchups week in and week out in our league.”

For the past couple of weeks, the University of Tennessee athletic department has been denying reports from WVLZ-AM and nixing questions asked by WNML-AM/FM in Knoxville regarding Volunteer tight end Cameron Clear.  Word had leaked out that Clear had been caught stealing property from his teammates and other athletes.  A UT spokesperson even told at least one reporter that Derek Dooley was quite unhappy that such claims would ever be made in public.

Well, fast forward to yesterday when Clear was indeed arrested on a felony theft charge.  The Knoxville News Sentinel reports the sophomore was still in jail this morning needing $2,500 bond to get out.  (Charged with theft of more than $1,000, too bad he couldn’t barter his way out.)

Clear was caught by police after using the stolen Mac laptop of Tennessee baseball player Brandon Zajac.  There have been reports that Vol football players have found Clear in possession of their belongings, too.

The same UT spokesman who’d been denying that Clear had stolen anything from his teammates had this to say yesterday: “We are aware of an incident involving Cameron and are in the process of gathering the facts.”

Clear caught only one pass last year but he was a 4-star signee in Tennessee’s class of 2011.

Dooley was in Atlanta last night speaking to a Vol booster club.

The news on Clear certainly shines new light on Dooley’s decision to sign 4-star defensive back Deion Bonner this past February.  Bonner, you might recall, was one of three recruits arrested during a 2010 recruiting trip in Athens for stealing iPods and iPhones out of Georgia’s locker room.

After signing Bonner, Dooley told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“We do a lot of diligence when we recruit, and we certainly recognize that there are no perfect players and we all make mistakes as young people…

“He kept a great attitude and a great outlook, and I saw someone who made a bad mistake and appears willing to learn from it and to let it make him a better person. So we were willing to take a chance on Deion. Part of character is not saying ‘I only want perfect people.’ We’re all flawed and we all make mistakes. The question is: Do you have the character to learn from it and get it right?”

Readers of this site know that yours truly is big on second and third and fourth chances (in life, if not on sports teams).  And here’s hoping Clear is either cleared of these charges or turns his life around as a result of them.

That said, what does it say about the character of UT’s football coach and his spokespeople when they choose to mislead the press — and therefore their own fanbase — when confronted with questions about things they know to be true?

An on a sidenote to Dooley: If Clear returns to Tennessee’s team, it might be best if he and Bonner not room together.

Yesterday it was reported by The SportsBusiness Journal that the SEC is once again considering the launch of its own television network as part of its ongoing contract negotiations with ESPN.  It was also revealed the CBS is “balking” at making any significant increase in pay to the conference just because it’s added Missouri and Texas A&M in the past few months.

That’s all part of the negotiating process.  Not to be lost in all of this, however, is the possibility/likelihood that both CBS and ESPN would like to see the SEC adopt a nine-game schedule for football.  More “SEC versus SEC” inventory would be easier to sell for both networks than “SEC versus Jacksonville State” or “SEC versus Troy” type games.

The question is — how much is it worth to those networks?

If CBS, for example, says it won’t provide a significant bump in pay unless there are better games to choose from, that might encourage Mike Slive and the league’s presidents to overrule the conference’s athletic directors and football coaches next week in Destin… in what would be a very surprising move.  The same could be true if ESPN showed that having more SEC in-league games on the schedule would help gain a new SEC Network placement on more cable systems.  (For that very reason, ESPN is currently trying to land more Big 12 games on the schedule of the Longhorn Network it co-owns with Texas.)

The SEC is already working to improve the quality of its late-season schedule at the behest of its TV partners.  On the basketball front, one need only remember how the SEC yielded to ESPN over those Thursday-Saturday turnarounds that became quite controversial among fans and some coaches last winter.  Time and again Slive’s league has wisely shown a willingness to give and take when it comes to working happily with its big-spending television partners.

So if CBS and ESPN play hardball with the SEC while at the same time offering to open their wallets a bit wider in exchange for a nine-game conference slate, it’s at least possible that a nine-game schedule isn’t completely dead and buried just yet.

If those networks make it worth the league’s while.  Big if.

When a new athletic director arrives on campus, coaches tend to pucker up a bit.  That’s because ADs — like most new bosses — often like to put their own people in place around them.  In the case of Derek Dooley at Tennessee, it would seem he’d have plenty of reasons to worry about the intentions of his new boss, Dave Hart.

Speak to those close to the Tennessee program and you’ll soon learn that even the assistant coaches believe Dooley’s job won’t be safe unless he wins eight football games this fall.  Coming off a 5-7 season, a streak-ending loss to Kentucky, and facing a further decline in season-ticket sales, Dooley’s seat is warm to say the least.

Couple that with the fact that Hart — who came from Alabama (no banjo on his knee, though) — has close ties to new Tennessee defensive coordinator Sal Sunseri and is rumored to be tight with Alabama defensive coordinator/up-and-coming coaching prospect Kirby Smart and you might expect Dooley to be looking over his shoulder these days.

Not so.  At least not according to the coach:

“Dave has had a real re-energizing effect on me in a positive way.  He, of course, has a great background of understanding big-time college athletics.  He was the son of a coach, so he gets coaching.  He gets the day-to-day problems that come with coaching, and he’s just been incredibly supportive of everything we’re doing.

We have a lot of dialogue.  We talk at least every week, and he’s very much in tune with our issues.  My only hope is that we allow Dave to do his job, and that’s the only hope I have.  If Dave’s allowed to do his job, then we’re going to have success as a department…

I think we’re on the same page (regarding expectations), and I think what I appreciate about Dave is that he also understands the world of coaching.  He understands that (there’s) things you can control, and certainly we need to show significant improvement on that. He understands things you can’t control that you have to learn to manage day to day.

We’re on the same page, and I’m appreciative of Dave’s kind of taking on this role.  I think he’s going to be great for Tennessee.”

Sounds good.  But Dooley better get off to a good start this fall and provide proof of progress if his relationship with his new boss is to remain positive.

As for the coach’s odd comment regarding Hart being allowed to do his job, rest assured that some UT fans will wonder if Dooley might be targeting Tennessee chancellor Jimmy Cheek with that remark.

1.  We’ve received a lot of emails over the past few weeks asking about the SEC’s stance on Florida State.  It certainly seems to us that FSU had its chance, passed, and isn’t likely to get another.  Now, from a pair of Seminole trustees talking about the SEC to the school forming its own expansion committee last fall as the SEC was in the process of adding Texas A&M and Missouri, it appears that some in Tallahassee would just love to get a call from Mike Slive.  In September of last year, we posted the following info regarding the SEC’s unofficial invitation to FSU in 1990.  A lot has changed since that post went up — namely, FSU has gone from apparently not wanting Texas in the ACC to wanting to join Texas in the Big 12.  Go figure.  But for those interested in the history of FSU’s relations with the SEC and why a few old-timers in the league still hold a bit of grudge, this is still an interesting history lesson.

2.  This writer says the SEC-Big 12 bowl deal shows that the ACC and Big East should have been angling for an eight-team playoff.

3.  This national writer looks at the eight most important basketball newcomers to the SEC next season.  (Not surprisingly, three will dress in Kentucky blue.)

4.  The Alabama fan charged with committing sexual battery on an unconscious LSU fan after the BCS title game pled not guilty yesterday.

5.  Arkansas has named six captains for this year’s football squad.

6.  Crews have started work on the new $4.6 million HD video screen at Razorback Stadium.

7.  Will Muschamp says having two quarterbacks push one another will be good Florida’s offense.  (Sounds nice, but he’d better hope one of them separates himself from the other.)

8.  Meet Georgia cornerback Damian Swann… the Dawgs’ fourth most important player in 2012.

9.  John Calipari tweeted some photos from inside Kentucky’s new Wildcat Coal Lodge.  (And, yes, the big booster behind the new digs is a coal magnate.)

10.  This writer believes further conference realignment could help UK while hurting in-state rival Louisville.

11.  AthlonSports.com previews South Carolina, their preseason #10 team.

12.  The Tennessee football team made big improvements in the classroom from last fall to this spring.

13.  ESPN lists the top 10 football players in the SEC.

14.  Conference commissioners are hoping to agree upon a new playoff format by July 4th, but a lot of people are still on completely different pages.

Clemson athletic director Terry Don Phillips took part in a Q&A yesterday afternoon with TigerNet.com.  During the back and forth — which can be read in its entirety here – Clemson’s AD revealed that:

* 80% of the revenue generated by the ACC’s new ESPN deal is tied to football.

* The league has “look-ins” at five-year intervals that would allow the conference to renegotiate for more money if the conference’s level of play in football were to improve.  (In other words, if Florida State, Clemson, Miami or others started competing for national titles, the league could earn more cash.)

* The ACC used some of the same consultants for negotiations that other leagues have hired to aid in their own ESPN negotiations.  In other words, it wasn’t the negotiations that hurt the ACC… it was the lack of high-end football.

* There have been no discussions between Clemson and the Big 12, but “it’s such a moving target,” that Phillips would rule nothing in or out.

Asked whether or not the ACC needed to expand to add more football powers (preferably in good TV markets with plenty of recruits near by) — good luck finding those at the moment — Phillips had this to say:

“I’m at a juncture to where you don’t rule anything out anymore.  You simply can’t rule it out.  The irony of it is that as I look backwards, I can still remember when I was at Arkansas when we went to the SEC and the consternation of us leaving the old Southwest Conference at that time.  That was traumatic because of the ties that we had.  Then I go to the Big XII when they expanded.  I guess that should’ve been a signal that this is the times that we live in.  I do believe that it’s going to continue.  I do know this — football has got to be very strong because that is driving these contracts.  At the ACC meetings, we had an interesting presentation that was in regard to basketball and football with regard to the public.  Basketball is a great sport and has a great following, but over the last 10-15 years, where at one time basketball was up as a sport in this part of the country and football was lower and now it has changed places. That in and of itself tells you that football is what the public wants.  They want a playoff.  They want a championship game that’s not contrived, but one that pretty well matches up the two best teams at the end of the day.  That’s what the public wants and conferences have got to position themselves to where their members have an opportunity to get there.

One of the things that (Clemson football coach) Dabo (Swinney) did a very good job of talking about at the conference level was about the concern that one of the (SEC) teams will start off ranked higher and they have a tendency to stay up there and Dabo said, ‘Well, this past year was a great example that that is not true. If you base it on performance and who you are playing.’  We start off 8-0 and we go from being unranked to fifth in the BCS and had we finished out — fortunately we were able to come back and beat Wake Forest to get in the championship and then we beat a good, solid Virginia Tech team in the ACC Championship.  But had we finished out the year the way we did those first eight games, we could’ve been playing for the national championship and that’s going from being unranked.  That’s based on performance.  I thought Dabo’s point was very good.  This year showed what can happen and unfortunately, we were very grateful that our kids played well in the championship game and we won that against a good, solid Virginia Tech team, but our losses occurred at the end of the year which dropped us out of the BCS opportunity, but at one time we were sitting there pretty doggone good.”

This is further proof that the anti-SEC push of “their teams just start out more highly ranked in the polls” is poppycock.  Yeah, I said it… poppycock.  Balderdash, too, for that matter.

Phillips’ statement also shows that the powers-that-be in college athletics are now seriously paying attention to the fans.  In part, that’s because social media and the internet and talk radio — all of which have boomed in the last 25 years — have given fans more outlets with which to voice their opinions.  But playing just as big a role is the fact that fans aren’t spending as many dollars on tickets as they have in years past.  They aren’t watching the BCS bowl games on television like they have in years past.

College athletics’ power brokers have finally realized that they can no longer hand fans a peanut butter sandwich and charge them for steak.

If we were having a conversation about conference expansion and I uttered the word “location,” you might roll your eyes.  ”If San Diego State can land in the Big East and Florida State and West Virginia could land in the Big 12, location is irrelevant,” you might counter.

Ah, but proximity to current schools in a conference is probably the least important aspect of location during short-term feeding frenzies (long-term, proximity does seem to matter and we’ll have more on that later) .  No, location matters in terms of a school’s nearest television market, it’s state’s population (for cable household purposes), and it’s recruiting grounds.

In 2010, we took a numbers-based look at possible SEC expansion.  You can read that here.  Last fall, we updated our data and took another look-see.  You can start reading that series here.  The final part of that series as well as links to all the parts in between can be found right here.

Today, Tony Barnhart of CBSSports.com examines many of those small programs that are announcing — daily it seems — that they’re planning a jump to the FBS level of the football world.  Specifically, he looks at Charlotte, Georgia State, Old Dominion, Texas-San Antonio and Appalachian State (an FCS school that wants to follow those others up the ladder).  What he found was that location, location, location matters more than just about anything else.

As Barnhart points out:

* Charlotte won’t play its first football game at any level until 2013.  By 2015, it’s already set to join Conference USA.  Why?  Charlotte is located in he 25th biggest television market in the country.

* Georgia State will be playing its third season of football this fall and it will jump to the FBS level and join the Sun Belt Conference.  Why?  Because Georgia State is located in the Atlanta television market as well as the recruiting hotbed of Georgia.

* Old Dominion has been playing football for just three seasons, but it will be joining Charlotte in Conference USA in 2015.  Why?  ODU is located in a Top 50 television market (Norfolk) and the Tidewater section of Virginia is rich in high school talent.

* Texas-San Antonio played its first season of college football last year.  It will play in the WAC this season before moving — sign of the times — to Conference USA in 2013.  Why?  San Antonio is the 36th biggest TV market in the country and I think we all know just how many recruits there are in Texas.

Sure they’re fledgling programs, but conferences are ready to snap them up because they provide inroads into good recruiting territory, populous areas, and sizeable television markets.

But then there’s Appalachian State.  Located in tiny Boone, North Carolina — population: 14,138 — the Mountaineers will mark their 85th year of football this year.  From 2005 through 2007, ASU won three straight FCS national titles.  They knocked off Michigan in Ann Arbor in ’07.  They led all FCS-level schools in attendance last season.  And they’ve made it know that they want to take a step up in class.

Only no one’s called them.  Conference USA and the Sun Belt would rather have the deep recruiting zones and television viewers provided by newborn programs than the proven football school located in a small, mountainous region of the Tarheel State.

As Barnhart points out, Appy State might still eventually land an invite into either C-USA or the Sun Belt, but as of now, those leagues are more interested in location than they are on-field proof of performance.

A year ago, we were bombarded with emails from West Virginia fans who were angry that we suggest WVU’s location wasn’t likely good enough to provide the SEC — or as it turns out the ACC — with what those conferences were looking for in terms of recruiting zones, total population, and television eyeballs.    That wasn’t a knock on WVU’s program which landed safely in the more distant, but once again strong Big 12.  It was simply a statement of fact.

And the fact is… location, location, location matters when it comes to conference expansion.  Whether that’s at the top of the food chain or the bottom of the food chain, as Barnhart points out in his latest column.

Way back in the summer of 2008, when the SEC inked twin contracts with ESPN and CBS, it was noted that as part of those deals the conference had agreed not to start its own television network.  At the time, the Big Ten was having issues getting its channel off the ground (but then came a partnership with Fox that turned the network from loser to big, big winner practically overnight).

But while most dismissed an SEC network as an impossibility at that point, we wrote way back on May 19th of 2010 that Mike Slive’s league could still launch a new network if it expanded and added new inventory (meaning games).  Well, that expansion has now come to pass.  The new inventory will come into existence this fall.  And now an SEC Newtork is once again being discussed by the Southeastern Conference.

According to The SportsBusiness Journal, the SEC is not only trying to get more money from ESPN and CBS but it’s also discussing the launch of a cable channel by the fall of 2014.  Naturally, ESPN — which owns the majority of SEC programming and is already a co-owner of the University of Texas’ Longhorn Network — is in negotiations to partner onthe  potential channel.

The Journal reports:

“It remains to be seen if the SEC will be an equity partner in the channel, like the Big Ten, or if the conference will simply sell the rights to ESPN for an additional fee.

There are several different paths the SEC could take on a channel. It could follow the Big Ten model, where the conference is a 49 percent owner of Big Ten Network with Fox and shares in its revenue. Or it could go the Pac-12 route, which owns all of its regional networks. Texas, on the other hand, sold its rights to ESPN for a fee and ESPN owns all of the Longhorn Network.

All of those models are believed to be in play for the SEC, but any channel couldn’t be launched until 2014 at the earliest, when ESPN gets back syndication rights it sublicensed to regional sports networks operated by Fox Sports and Comcast. A decision on whether to go forward with a new SEC-focused network would be made by the SEC-member university presidents and ESPN. A final decision on a network will be made by ESPN in conjunction with SEC Commissioner Mike Slive and the presidents.”

The magazine’s sources believe the SEC’s new rights agreement with CBS will be finished up more quickly than the one with ESPN.  That makes sense… CBS pays less money for fewer games.  Those games are the best of games of the week, in most cases, however.

The Journal claims CBS “has balked at paying any type of significant increase,” saying that the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M does not change their original agreement with the SEC.  The network claims that Mizzou and A&M aren’t the television draws that Alabama, Florida and LSU are.

While that’s true, the same could be said for Ole Miss, Kentucky or any number of other SEC schools in football at the present time.

You can bet that Slive’s counterpoint in negotiations has been that ratings for SEC games in top television markets like St. Louis, Kansas City, Dallas, Houston, and even Austin will go up with the Aggies and Tigers now in the league.  Increased ratings mean increased advertising revenue for CBS and its affiliates.

Also, The Journal believes that the SEC can argue that “the collegiate market has been reset” since it first negotiated its own bar-raising contracts in ’08.

But make no mistake, the big money is in the network.

Someone recently sent me an email claiming that Slive and the SEC had erred in their initial deals with CBS and ESPN.  Instead of selling their own “widgets,” they cut a deal with “Wal-Mart” to distribute their widgets for them.  Jim Delany and the Big Ten had wisely found a way to sell their own widgets.

Well, sort of.

While the Big Ten’s model is now being copied elsewhere because its clearly worth a lot of money, the Big Ten did not get national exposure for darn never every game played by every league member.  Yes, Delany sells his own widgets, but his sales are for the most part limited to the Midwest.

Slive partnering with Wal-Mart — that would be CBS and ESPN, by the way — allowed him to take his product nationwide.  The result: Texas A&M and Missouri will play more nationally-televised games this fall than just about any Big Ten schools not named Ohio State or Michigan.

With the addition of an ESPN-partnered network, Slive and the SEC can have the best of both worlds.  One, most of the league’s games will continue to be broadcast nationally rather than on regional sports networks.  But two, the league would also have a means of printing its own money a la the Big Ten Network.

So even if the SEC’s negotiations with CBS result in a minimal increase in payout, the launch of a network — aided by grabbing major brand name schools in states featuring millions of cable households — should result in a windfall of cash.  Not to mention continued national exposure greater than that received by any other conference.

You might remember our expansion coverage back on May 28th of 2010 in which we looked at numerous factors driving expansion and actually pushed Missouri as a possible SEC candidate because of — wait for it — the St. Louis and Kansas City television markets (as well as proximity).  Television has been at the heart of Slive’s actions since the first shot in this realignment warfare was fired.  This summer, all of those moves should come to fruition in the form of increased funds for the league with continued massive exposure. Exposure that could include a joint venture network with ESPN.

A network we told you was still a possibility more than two years ago.

Next week in Destin, the SEC’s coaches, athletic directors and presidents will tackle the issue of football scheduling.  Basketball scheduling, too.  The word “expansion” — at least as it relates to the overall college landscape — will certainly be heard.  There will also be the annual collection of checks from the league office.

But you can expect to the new playoff system to take up a good deal of discussion time as well.  The who, the when, and the where will all likely be debated.  According to SEC associate commissioner and chief PR guru Charles Bloom (speaking to The Chattanooga Times Free Press):

“What’s going to take the day is discussion on the conference’s position on the four-team playoff.  The commissioners were charged with going back to their conferences, with each conference stating a position on their preference.  There will be a lot of discussion on that…

“The devil is in the details.  How do you fill it?  Who’s hosting it?  Is it inside the current BCS structure, or will it be separate bowls?  Is it a neutral-site bid or campus sites?  Is it conference champions only? All those items are up for discussion.”

Earlier this month the president at Nebraska suggested his fellow Big Ten and Pac-12 presidents might scuttle playoff talk altogether and instead vote in favor of a pure Plus-One game to be tacked on after the bowls.

Just last week, the SEC and Big 12 announced a partnership on a new bowl that — if nothing else — guarantees that the old BCS system will die by the 2014 season.  So even if the presidents hijack playoff plane, there will be no move back to the system Roy Kramer created.

Now there’s speculation that the big four leagues — and that’s currently the SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and the recently revived Big 12 — might have just set up their own mini-playoff system.  That option is one of dozens now available, though it’s hard to imagine schools like Notre Dame and conferences like the ACC going being cast aside without a fight from lawyers and politicians.

Currently, we could wind up with…

* A four-team playoff featuring any conference champions ranked in the top five or six slots in the final poll (or whatever ranking system is used).

* A four-team playoff featuring the three highest-rated conference champions and a wild card team (if the top four aren’t all conference champs).

* A true Plus-One game that would just match the top-ranked teams after the bowls.

* A return to the old way of settling a champion — the polls.  If no one can reach a consensus and the BCS is dead, then it’s possible we could return to the days when conference champions and top-ranked teams just went to different bowls in different parts of the country.

We at MrSEC.com are in favor of a seeded Plus-One system that would use the existing bowls as semifinal games.  This would be a “plus one” because only one game would be added to the season, but it would still have a 1 versus 4 and 2 versus 3 set-up.  (If you read this site, you also know we’re in favor of just taking the four highest-rated teams in the nation… because eventually ratings will be used to determine the highest-ranked conference champions anyway.  If rankings must be used, they should be used to assign the top four teams their seeds.)

We do not believe a true Plus-One — just adding a game after the bowl — solves anything.  An unbeaten team might win its bowl and be rewarded by having to play a team with one loss.  After the bowls, if you’r the only unbeaten team, you should win the crown.  Also, what if three teams from three bowl all end their seasons undefeated.  Welcome to the BCS Part II.  Two spots, three teams, voters and computers give one team the shaft.

And we don’t believe — at least not yet — that the new Big 12-SEC alliance will help form a members-only playoff.  According to that theory, the Big 12 would add two more teams in order to hold a conference championship game.  The championship games of the Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC would serve as de facto quarterfinals.  Then the Pac-12 and Big Ten champs would meet in the Rose Bowl (making it a national semifinal) while the winners of the SEC and Big 12 would do likewise in their own “Champions Bowl” (another semifinal).  At that point, the winners of the Rose and Champions would meet in a title game.

Hey, that sounds good.  But good luck getting that past the supporters of every non-SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, and Pac-12 school in the country.  The threat of lawsuits and Congressional hearings would most definitely become reality under such a plan.

As you can see, there’s no easy answer.  So it’s probably wise for the SEC to block out plenty of time to debate this issue.  It likely won’t be settled for months, regardless of the June and July timelines that are currently being kicked around the internet.

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.