There’s an old adage in college football that’s been passed down in pregame talk after pregame talk, decade after decade.  Different coaches have phrased it differently, but the central message conveyed has remained the same since the days of leather helmets.

“The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.”

When it comes to football in the Southeastern Conference — a league known for its superior defenses — that one simple sentence is all a fan needs to know.  At the stadium or watching in HD from home, fans can begin every ballgame with the knowledge that the more their team’s turnover count rises, the more their team’s chances of winning decline.

That might not sound like much of a revelation, but six years worth of numbers pound home the fact that nothing — absolutely nothing — has as much bearing on the outcome of an SEC football game as turnovers.  You can set aside quarterback comparisons and coaching matchups.  You don’t need to break down two schools’ special teams units.  When asked who’ll win the next big SEC football game, just respond: “The team that wins the turnover battle.”

Regular readers of this site — as opposed to you irregular readers — know that we like to provide you with an annual examination of the SEC’s turnover statistics.  This year is no exception and below you’ll find the numbers for the 2012 season, the league’s first with 14 teams and a 57-game league schedule (including the SEC Championship Game).  We’ll also show you the updated six-year tally of turnover data.

But first, for the sake of comparison, we want you to see the impact fumbles and interceptions have had on the SEC standings over the past five years.

Below are the turnover numbers from 2007 through 2011.  We’ve included only conference games, SEC versus SEC.  In a 12-school league that equaled 49 games per year counting the SEC title game in Atlanta.  Therefore, the tables below contains 245 games worth of data.

In the first chart, we show you how teams fared when they turned the ball over zero times, once, twice, thrice, or four or more times in an SEC contest.  In the second chart you’ll see — in games where one team held a turnover advantage over another — how those teams on the positive side of the turnover battle fared record-wise.  (A tip for the mathematically-challenged: Reverse the numbers in the bottom chart and you can quickly figure out the records for teams that finished on the negative side of the turnover battle, too.)

2007-2011 SEC Games

As you can see, over the span of 245 SEC contests it’s abundantly clear that turnovers play an enormous role in who wins and who loses.  In fact, over the final five years of the 12-school SEC, teams that did not turn the ball over in a game won 75% of the time.

Think about that: Not turning the ball over = 75% chance of winning an SEC football game.

The chart showing turnover margins is even more telling.  If a team finished plus-one in turnover margin, it had a 71% chance of winning its game.  Finish plus-two and the number jumped to an 80% chance of victory.  Plus-three teams won an astounding 90% of the time.

See why we say you can toss all the other comparisons and breakdowns?

Now let’s look at last year, the 2012 season.  The SEC expanded by two teams which added eight more games to the overall conference slate.  Did we see much difference in a 57-game SEC season?

Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter lit up with photos of shiny, flashy rings yesterday.  Auburn fans, you might want to look away.

The BCS championship rings presented to Alabama’s football players are now on display (you can see other angles here).  You’ll note the traditional Alabama “A” is topped off by three footballs, one for each of Crimson Tide national crown in the last four years.

Alabama’s 13-1 record is featured on the side of the ring as is the final score from the Tide’s 42-14 win over Notre Dame in January’s BCS title game.

Out with the old.  In with the new.

With the SEC/Big East Challenge dying — right along with the Big East as we knew it — the Southeastern Conference has found a new league to play against in the early part of each basketball season.  The SEC confirmed today what had been rumored for months — the Big XII/SEC Challenge will begin play in 2013-14.

The two leagues also recently partnered in taking control of the Sugar Bowl, which should turn into a fast-flowing revenue stream for both conferences.

Naturally, ESPN is behind the new hoops challenge.  All 10 Big XII teams will take part, while only 10 of the SEC’s 14 schools get to participate (for obvious reasons).  Like the old Big East challenge, the title of the series will flip-flop each year with the SEC getting top billing next season.

“The ability to showcase SEC basketball in this kind of conference competition makes this a unique and exciting event for our coaches, student-athletes and fans,” SEC commissioner Mike Slive said via press release.  “We are pleased to be able to work with the Big XII and ESPN to highlight the sport of men’s basketball.”

Here are the matchups for Year One of the Big XII/SEC Challenge.  (Arkansas, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee are the SEC squads not taking part.)

Thursday, November 14th — Texas Tech at Alabama

Monday, December 2nd — Vanderbilt at Texas, Auburn at Iowa State

Thursday, December 5th — Ole Miss at Kansas State, West Virginia at Missouri, TCU at Mississippi State

Friday, December 6th — South Carolina at Oklahoma State, Kentucky vs. Baylor (at Arlington, Texas)

Tuesday, December 10th — Kansas at Florida

Saturday, December 21st — Texas A&M vs. Oklahoma (at Houston, Texas)

In its first year this new challenge might have already equaled the number of interesting matchups created in six years of the SEC/Big East challenge.

Future schedules will be put together with input from ESPN, the SEC and the Big XII.  With the Big XII having a say, it will be interesting to see if Texas and Kansas ever OK a games with Texas A&M and Missouri, respectively.  Obviously, that won’t be happening this year.

We’ve gone down this road ourselves a time or two (or three) over the years, but it’s good to see others are in agreement: Good football coaches are worth the millions they are paid.

When it comes to football coaching salaries, yes, they may be too high in the grand scheme of things.  In a perfect world — at least in our view — educators and ministers and social workers and others who dedicate their lives to the well-being and growth of others should be paid more than a guy who draws Xs and Ox on a chalkboard.  But we don’t live in a perfect world.  We live in a world where colleges depend on multi-million dollar football programs for cash and exposure.  Because of that, successful college coaches aren’t overpaid at all.

Tom Van Riper of Forbes Magazine made that case yesterday when writing of Alabama’s Nick Saban:

“If you think that a top college football coach earning seven figures is overpaid, think again.  To appreciate just how modest Saban’s $5.3 million salary is, take a wider look around campus.  Since 2007, Tuscaloosa has swelled its undergraduate ranks by 33% to over 28,000 students.  Faculty count has kept pace: up 400 since 2007 to over 1,700.  But it’s more than growth — it’s where the growth is coming from.  According to the school, less than a third of the 2007 freshman class of 4,538 students hailed from out of state.  By the fall of 2012, more than half (52%) of a freshman class of 6,397 students did.  Various data from US News and The New York Times shows that the school’s out-of-state tuition cost — nearly three times higher than the rate for in-state students — rose from $18,000 to $22,950 a year during that period.

Add it up — more students from outside Alabama paying ever-increasing premium tuition bills — and the school realized $50 million more in out-of-state tuition revenue for last fall’s incoming class than it did for the same class in 2007 ($76 million vs. $26 million).  Kick in the additional $8.5 million in in-state tuition, which rose to $9,200 a year from $6,400 over the same period, and overall tuition revenue rose to $104 million from $46 million for the respective 2012 and 2007 freshman classes.  And to boot, the school’s most recent capital campaign (i.e. donations from alumni and others) raised $600 million for scholarship and facilities, the most ever.”

One can debate whether a school’s mission should be to educate the people of its area or to make more cash by luring in students from elsewhere.  One can also debate how much focus a school should place on athletics.

What’s not up for debate is the fact that successful coaches bring in more money — through increased ticket sales, increased merchandise sales, donations, exposure on national television, etc — than they are paid out.

That’s not just true of football coaches.  While the guys on the gridiron typically earn more, winning basketball coaches like Kentucky’s John Calipari can also up a school’s revenues.  And while a monocled professor of advanced themodynamics or Sanskrit might argue, those increased revenues do aid the school as a whole… not just its athletic department.

With athletics serving as the best advertisement for a school, hiring and paying a successful football or basketball coach is nothing more than an investment of the university’s funds.  Officials at Alabama and Kentucky can tell you that sometimes a big investment can result in big rewards.

SEC Football

1. Auburn was “a lot better than a three-win team” last year, according to defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson.

2. Nick Saban is bringing out-of-states students to Alabama, which is helping generate millions of dollars.

3. LSU defensive coordinator John Chavis is confident in his defense. “The thing we’ve got to do is build that depth.”

4. Joe Schad reports Tennessee is in the running for transfer QB Wes Lunt. UT should make a run at Lunt, writes Barrett Sallee.

5. From yesterday: Kansas coach Charlie Weis backed Bob Stoops’ recent criticism of the SEC.

6. Florida coach Will Muschamp is a popular man with fans following a successful season in 2012.

7. Georgia’s offensive line can be one of the greatest lines in school history, says lineman Chris Burnette.

8. Jacquese Kirk, who recently transferred from Vanderbilt, admitted to stabbing an ex-teammate in April.

SEC Basketball

9. Swingman DeVon Walker had a change of heart and will return to Florida for his sophomore season.

10. Star prospect Andrew Wiggins will announce his decision today at 12:15 ET. Kentucky is an underdog in the race.

11. Analysts from around the nation weighed in on Wiggins’ pending decision and his potential impact in college.

Extra

12. Auburn president Jay Gogue wrote a letter to fans following an evaluation of Auburn Athletics.

13. Southern Cal coach Lane Kiffin discussed the idea of one day coaching high school football.

14. Matt Hayes writes that Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher shouldn’t release Matthew Thomas without consequence.

Bob Stoops coached in the SEC many moons ago, when the league was dominated annually by Florida and Tennessee.  So last week when he said the SEC’s repuation as a strong league was a product of “propaganda,” it was easy to say he didn’t know what he was talking about.

But Charlie Weis coached in the SEC in 2011.  He knows the current slobber-knockin’ SEC.  And the Kansas head coach — who like Stoops served as an assistant at Florida — agrees that the SEC ain’t all it’s cracked up to be:

“Do you know the stats?  In the SEC, the record of the good guys and the bad guys?

… I’m just sayin’, you look at the bottom of our league and the bottom of their league, just going based off the numbers, there’s validity in what he said.  I’m just going based off the numbers, I mean, I’m a numbers guy.  Just based off the numbers, you’d have to say (Stoops) has got a point.”

Apparently the argument that the good guys and bad guys are worlds apart is based on the fact that the top six teams in the SEC went 30-0 against the bottom eight teams in the league last year.  And, yep, that’s a pretty ugly nugget for the bottom eight teams to have to swallow.

But in how many leagues can you talk about a “top six?”

The Big Ten over the past decade has basically had Ohio State on top.  Southern Cal and Oregon have owned the Pac-12.  In the Big XII, the league title has gone to Texas or Oklahoma every year since 2004.  By comparison, the SEC hasn’t had a repeat champion since 1998.

Just last season the SEC finished the year with five teams ranked in the top 10 of the AP Poll.  The Pac-12 had two teams.  The Big Ten had one.  The ACC had one.  Notre Dame was also in the top 10.  No Big XII team finished in the AP top 10.

In the Big XII’s case, was that a product of uber-parity or the lack of nationally-strong teams up top?  In the SEC’s case, was the domination at the top due to a weak bottom of the league or superior talent among the frontrunners?  Seven consecutive BCS championships would suggest it had more to do with the strength at the top than weakness at the bottom.

A quick scan of both leagues’ records against the remaining “big five” conferences (plus Notre Dame) shows that Big XII teams went 9-5 against the big boys in 2012 for a .642 winning percentage.  The SEC went 13-6 against teams from the ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, and Pac-12 (plus Notre Dame) for a winning percentage of .684.

But this argument isn’t about numbers.  It’s about SEC fatigue.  Everyone outside the SEC is tired of hearing how strong the conference is – they probably shouldn’t listen to NFL GMs — and they’ll look for any possible excuse to run down the league that’s run up seven BCS titles in a row.

Even if it means coaches from a two-team league attacking a conference that’s only six teams deep.

Get used to it.  As long as the SEC is winning, this talk will continue.  And once the SEC finally loses a national championship game, the “I told ya so” chorus will be deafening.  Be prepared.

The new SEC Network is in for a fight.  Actually, it’s in for several fights.

As we’ve explained over the past several weeks, cable and satellite providers don’t like adding new channels.  That’s because they have to pay fees to new networks in order to carry (and re-sell) their programming.  Inevitably, the more they pay and the more channels they add, the higher your monthly bill rises.  The provider’s costs are passed along to its viewers.

Cable and satellite companies have tried to protect themselves from a large-scale subscriber revolt by bundling similar channels together.  Want premium movie channels?  You pay extra.  Want sports channels?  You pay extra.

More importantly, the family that doesn’t want extra movie or sports channels doesn’t have to pay any increased monthly fees.

But with so many channels now available, viewers are now growing tired of bundling, too.  A person might be willing to pay for the NFL Network and some extra regional sports networks, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be charged for the bull-riding or soccer channels.  Or vice versa.  A la carte programming is a desire shared by many.

On top of the “bundling versus a la carte” debate, many viewers are now choosing to get programming from a specific network by subscribing to that channel — or another provider — online.  More and more families are bringing content into their televisions via the internet with special TV hookups, video game consoles, or other devices/services.

Into all of that upheaval… enter the SEC Network.

Yesterday, Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News provided a broad overview of the current programming landscape and how the SEC Network might fit into it.  We linked you to it in our Sunday headlines, but in case you missed it, we wanted to push it again.  You should read it.

The more we as a society get used to instant answers to our questions — thanks, World Wide Web — the more we expect simple answers.  “When will I get the SEC Network?”  “How much will I pay for the network?”  “Can I just sign up for the network and nothing else?”

Unfortunately, as we’ve mentioned before, there are no simple answers on the SEC Network front.  Everything comes down to you where you live, your cable or satellite provider, and that provider’s willingness to cut a deal with ESPN/SEC.  Solomon’s column simply hammers home the point that how we view television is changing and that will impact the SEC’s new channel.

If you want simple, you’re outta luck.  The process by which providers add networks more often than not gets messy.  And the current television landscape — cable, satellite, bundling, a la carte, online, on-demand — is messier still.

Into all of that upheaval… enter the SEC Network.

The channel will make money and eventually you should be able to see it.  But you’d best be ready for a long, hard slog.  The Pac-12 Network, for example, launched last August and it’s still not on DirecTV.

How patient will SEC fans be?  Probably not very.  The thought of missing three football games every Saturday will likely lead some to pull their hair out, which is exactly what ESPN and the SEC are counting on.  The angrier you become, the more likely you’ll be to call your cable or satellite provider and demand the channel, thus upping the pressure on that provider to yield to ESPN and the SEC’s price demands (which will then be passed back to you).

What’s ironic is that before 2009 and the SEC’s twin contracts with ESPN and CBS, many SEC games weren’t on television.  After four years of nearly every SEC game getting national coverage, there’s now an expectation that any SEC game you want to see will be available.  Come next August, for some, that will no longer be the case.

For a quarter of a century, sports fans and media members have chattered about colleges and universities breaking away from the NCAA to form a new organization with a new governing body.  But since this site launched in May 2008 we’ve said there will not be a full-scale secession.

The reason?  There is no way 65-80 rich schools with different interests from different parts of the country could agree upon a new rule book, a new org chart, or very much of anything else.

Consider the Confederate States of America.  Once the Southern states broke away, their governments fought hard to avoid giving CSA president Jefferson Davis any real centralized power.  After all, it was the centralized power of the federal government that had led them to secede.  But without strong centralized power in the Confederacy, you had the governor of North Carolina hoarding uniforms from needy troops of other states.  You had the governor of Georgia threatening to secede again, this time from the CSA.  It was an experiment doomed to fail.  As Davis himself said, “If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.”

Well, theoretically, a new body to replace the NCAA sounds well in good.  But it couldn’t be created and even if it could, it would wind up having many of the same problems of college sports’ current governing body.

In fact, a confederacy of conferences is more likely than a brand new “NCAA II.”  Imagine five or six separate conferences, all with their own rule books, agreeing on occasion to meet in bowl games.  Even something that nonsensical is more likely to occur than everyone agreeing on a grand new sporting government.

Today, Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com tackles the recent shootdown of the NCAA’s proposed changes to its rule book.  You know, the much-discussed alterations that would have erased entire pages of recruiting regulations from the NCAA’s current tome of laws.

Pay attention to Dodd’s words:

“Twenty-five pages.  They couldn’t even agree on that.

That’s what would have been cut out of the 426-page NCAA Manual if everything proposed by the Rules Working Group for football had gotten through last week.  Twenty-five pages or 5.8 percent.  And they couldn’t even agree on that.

They can’t agree on much of anything these days as the NCAA attempts to rewire itself.  Rewiring is more commonly called reform and it has been going on forever.  It is needed because that manual is 426 pages.  We can thank every coach/booster/player who ever though of a new and devious way to cheat for the book’s thickness.”

Now, the rest of Dodd’s piece is interesting, but for our purposes you’ve seen enough.  If NCAA leadership, presidents and athletic directors can’t get on the same page regarding a few edits to the existing rule book, what makes anyone think that these same presidents and athletic directors could find enough middle ground to form a whole new organization from scratch?

Look, the next time you read something about schools breaking away from the NCAA, just roll your eyes.  It is not going to happen.

What is going to happen — and what’s already happening — is the richest football-playing schools will break away from the poorest football-playing schools and carve out a new fifth division at the top of the NCAA food chain.  That snow ball is already rolling downhill and picking up momentum as it goes.

A new super-division, not a new NCAA.

On that everyone should be able to agree.

It was the kind of decision that typically winds up permanently affixed to a coach’s bio.  Like Tom Osborne’s decision to go for two — and the win — against Miami (FL) in the Orange Bowl in January of ’84.  Like Les Miles’ decision to eschew a field goal, risk the clock running out and throw for the end zone against Auburn in 2007.

Faced with a bang-bang decision and a clock quickly working its way down to double zeroes in last December’s SEC Championship Game, Georgia coaches elected not to spike the football to stop the clock.  Instead Aaron Murray completed a pass short of the goal line on the game’s final play and Alabama secured the SEC title and a berth in the BCS Championship Game by protecting the final five yards of Georgia Dome turf.

Five months later, UGA offensive coordinator Mike Bobo now says the Dawgs were ready with one more call had the final seconds not evaporated.  Interestingly, that play would have come from Urban Meyer’s old playbook and not Georgia’s:

“We had actually gone back to, I don’t know what it was, it was one of the Florida-Alabama games, where Alabama had given up three red zone scores to Florida (2008 SEC Championship Game).  It was a play that Florida had actually ran against Alabama.  It was an empty set, and had two primary frontside, and a double-slant backside.  It was something from ’08 or ’09 that Tebow had completed against them.  Because I remember after that game, (Alabama defensive coordinator) Kirby (Smart) was talking about how, ‘We just couldn’t stop them in the red zone.’  So we just studied that hard…

We had some plans, we just didn’t have a chance to call those plays.”

Bobo, saying his team will have to learn to live with the end of the 2012 SEC title game, admitted that “I don’t think we’re ever gonna get over that game.”

You can find highlights of that game below:

SEC Football

1. The case of Georgia offensive lineman Kolton Houston is becoming a national story.

2. High expectations have arrived quickly at Texas A&M. Kevin Sumlin better be ready, writes Barrett Sallee.

3. Alabama’s current dynasty is the fourth best of the AP era, according to Braden Gall. Here are the top 25.

4. From Athlon Sports: Will LSU or Texas A&M finisher higher in the SEC West?

5. Tennessee’s recent hires show the importance of “familiarity and trust” for the program.

6. Georgia safety Tray Matthews is one of ten early enrollees to watch this fall.

SEC Basketball

7. Here’s an early projection for the upcoming SEC basketball season. (Andrew Wiggins’ decision pending)

SEC in the NFL

8. “The sky’s the limit” for Cam Newton with the Carolina Panthers, according to offensive coordinator coach Mike Shula.

9. Former Alabama offensive tackle D.J. Fluker is trying to embrace a leadership role with the San Diego Chargers.

10. Former SEC players Sam Montgomery and D.J. Swearinger are reunited in Houston after playing together in high school.

11. Tyler Bray is happy to have a shot with Kansas City after making “a lot of mistakes” during his time at Tennessee.

Extra

12. What if there were an NFL team made up of former Alabama and LSU players? Let’s look.

13. Let this be a lesson to other young players: former NFL WR Titus Young was arrested for the third time in a week.