SEC Football

1. What stands out on the Tennesse roster?  ”Lack of experience. Only 15 players have started more than 10 games…”

2. Budget for football at Kentucky will increase more than $3 million in the coming year. Big chunk is increased coaching salaries.

3. What’s the word on Ole Miss freshman running back Kailo Moore?  ”Blindingly fast.”

4. What’s the biggest challenge facing first-year Arkansas coach Bret Bielema?  The schedule.

5. Florida quartertback Jeff Driskel surprised to get selected in the MLB draft: “Did not see that coming.”

6. Florida-Georgia on November 2 - “might as well be circled in blood this season.”

7. Kevin Scarbinsky on the Alabama-Auburn rivalry: “In short, for the Tide, the Tigers are a means to an end. For the Tigers, the Tide is the be-all and end-all.”

8. Matt Hayes at The Sporting News says Gus Malzahn one of three coaches who will win immediately in his new job.

9. Looking like the race for quarterback at Auburn is down to four candidates: ”Jason Smith from McGill-Toolen is likely headed to prep school.”

10. Video games mimic real life.  Alabama dominates EA Sports’ NCAA Football 14. One hardcore fan put every rating into a sortable spreadsheet.

11.  Any takers? At just one dollar under a million - a ticket for Alabama/Texas A&M.

SEC Basketball

11. Incoming Florida freshman Chris Walker still has work to do to be eligible for this coming season.

12. That was quick.  Jerome Seagears transferred from Rutgers to Auburn this summer.  Now he’s told coaches he’s leaving to be closer to his family in Maryland.

13. Missouri assistant coach Rick Carter is leaving, reportedly headed to Xavier. Former Missouri coach Quin Snyder joining the staff of the Atlanta Hawks.

14. “The longest-tenured power conference coaches without an NCAA round of 16 appearance are Mississippi’s Andy Kennedy and Arizona State’s Herb Sendek.”

15, Tennessee’s Jeronne Maymon on sitting out last season with a knee injury.  ”You see things differently. Things you don’t see while you’re out there playing, you see.”

16. John Calipari’s advice to young players: “What you should be spending 90 percent of your time on is getting their feel for the ball, bouncing it with their head up…”

College News

17. Goodbye domes prior to college basketball’s Final Four?

18. There are 18 Division I teams banned from postseason.

19. One day after his father said he’d prefer Southern Cal, five-star linebacker Matthew Thomas will end playing at Florida State after all.

20. Former Syracuse basketball assistant coach Bernie Fine reportedly suing ESPN for $11 million.

21. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany signs an extension that will keep him around through June of 2018.

Extras

22. Interested in a college basketball fantasy camp in Las Vegas?  It will set you back $7,500.

23. Marcus Lattimore paid $20,000 to record two ads for the lottery in South Carolina.

24.  If they do this for a victory, what would San Antonio Spurs fan do if they win the series?

25. Major League Baseball opening in Sydney, Australia next year?

Earlier this week we brought you a quick comment from SEC scheduling czar Larry Templeton regarding the issues faced by the league when trying to build a schedule that pleases everyone.  Now commissioner Mike Slive has weighed in on the topic and he, too, makes it clear that scheduling isn’t as easy as most fans and media members believe:

“We try one (scenario), and there’s a knot.  We try another one, and there’s a big knot — whether it’s permanent (games), whether it’s traditional game or whether it’s too many games.  At some point in time, we’re going to have to unravel one of those knots and just make a decision.”

When the knots are unraveled, we expect — as we’ve written for years — that the league will move to a nine-game schedule featuring a 6-1-2 rotation with the league mandating that a 10th game be played against a school from a power conference.

Want to know what a football program must do to score highly on the NCAA’s academic progress reports?  First, get kids to class.  That’s obvious.  Second, make sure those football players get consistent leadership from someone they respect.

The NCAA released the latest round of football APR numbers yesterday — the scores are a four-year rolling average from 2008-09 through 2011-12 — and here’s how the SEC’s schools fared:

1.  Missouri 982 — The league’s newest member lived up to its AAU reputation in Year One.  Gary Pinkel has been at Mizzou for more than a decade.

2.  Alabama 978 — Not bad for a BCS champ, no?  Nick Saban has been coaching (and winning) in Tuscaloosa since 2007.

3.  Vanderbilt 973 — Would you expect anything less from Vandy?  The Commodores had three coaches between 2008 and 2012, but, again, it’s Vanderbilt.

4t.  Florida 968 — Another AAU school.  Very good numbers despite one coaching transition.

4t.  Georgia 968 — Not an AAU member but certainly one of the SEC’s more respected academic institutions.  Also, Mark Richt has been running the UGA program for more than a decade.

6.  Mississippi State 967 — Dan Mullen has been at State since 2009.

7.  South Carolina 966 — Steve Spurrier is entering his ninth season in Columbia.

8.  Texas A&M 954 — One coaching change, outside this window.

9.  Auburn 950 — Another school with a coaching change this past season.

10t.  LSU 944 — Les Miles has been in Baton Rouge for nearly a decade, so this number is a bit surprising.  However, the Tigers have had a large number of NFL early-entrants in recent years.

10t.  Ole Miss 944 — Houston Nutt entered in 2008 and exited after 2011.  That’s basically two coaching changes within this APR window.

12.  Kentucky 943 — Two coaching changes overall including this past offseason.

13.  Arkansas 938 — Bobby Petrino gave way to John L. Smith who’s given way to Bret Bielema his offseason.

14.  Tennessee 924 — Since 2008, UT has been coached by Phillip Fulmer, Lane Kiffin, Derek Dooley and now Butch Jones.  The Volunteers are below the 925 penalty-line, but Jones and the school are already working to improve the program’s academic scores.

Bottom line?  Stability at the top of the program leads to stability throughout the program.  Coaching changes lead to transfers and that impacts APR scores.  It’s no surprise that — for the most part — the programs with the SEC’s highest APR results have had the least amount of coaching turnover.  That works in reverse as well.

On a sidenote, many coaches and athletic directors have APR- or other academic-related bonuses built into their contracts.  Carolina’s Spurrier will get an extra $100,000 for his program’s score.  LSU’s Miles missed out on a $200,000 bonus because of the Tigers’ low number, but he can still earn extra scratch if a good percentage of his players reach a specific GPA level or graduate on time.

Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples has today ranked all of the major conference realignment moves that have taken place in the past three seasons.  The best move?  Texas A&M’s to the SEC.  Among the many reasons the Aggies’ move got an A grade from Staples:

“… this union was a perfect cultural fit.  Fans at other Big 12 schools considered the buzzcut-sporting, whooping Aggies a tad odd.  Most SEC fan bases believe there’s something wrong with a school if its fans aren’t odd.  The Longhorns, who have the quietest 100,000 fans in America on fall Saturdays, look down on the Aggies.  Florida, LSU and Alabama fans just said, ‘Welcome to the Party.’”

But Staples’ take on Missouri — he gave the Tigers’ move a C — is a bit more interesting:

“One bad football season does not make this a terrible move.  Remember, in the preceding five years, Missouri was much better at football than Texas A&M.  The Tigers certainly need to get better on the football field — because their new rivals in the SEC East aren’t getting any worse — but calling this move a mistake because of one lousy football season is premature.  If, in 10 years, Missouri has not moved out of the SEC’s cellar, then feel free to say that the Tigers traded a world of pain for the financial security of the SEC.

As far as the SEC goes, Missouri was the only choice everyone could agree upon in the situation the league faced in 2012.  Some presidents and athletic directors wanted Florida State, but they faced fierce opposition from a bloc led by Florida and Georgia.  The most logical additions would have been Virginia Tech or NC State — which would have been geographic fits that opened new television markets — but neither wanted to leave the ACC.  Missouri was geographically contiguous and added two decent-sized television markets (St. Louis and Kansas City).  It also gave the SEC another AAU member.  Of course, if (former Ohio State president) Gordon Gee is to be believed, the Big Ten will try to snatch Missouri down the road.  That would be interesting, but it seems highly unlikely.”

Technically, Gee said that he would have liked to have added Missouri and Kansas already and that he could see that “potentially” happening in the future.  Gee is also known for making bizarro comments from far out in left field.  We at MrSEC.com don’t believe he was anymore speaking for Jim Delany and the Big Ten with regards to Missouri than he was when he made a poor joke about Catholics.

To a more interesting topic, the SEC’s expansion plans post-A&M were and are still shrouded in mystery.  Word leaked out quickly that Missouri and the SEC were playing footsie (as we had suggested might happen way back in the summer of 2010).  As for all the other schools mentioned, well, that depends on each writer’s sources.

Oklahoma was mentioned as a potential candidate because Mike Slive had spoken with Sooner brass a year earlier.  We don’t believe there was much to that.

Folks close to West Virginia University will tell you that Slive and Mountaineer AD Oliver Luck were secretly hoping Missouri would pass on the SEC and leave the door open for WVU.  The problem there?  If the SEC wanted the Mountaineers why didn’t Slive and company just invite them in the first place?

NC State and Virginia Tech were kicked around by several websites as potential targets should the SEC drive toward 16 schools at some point.  But at MrSEC, we never heard much talk about the two — aside from fan chatter — during the push to 14.

Several sources have said that Slive has longed for North Carolina and Duke for ages.  One ACC source even claimed to The Sporting News that the SEC commissioner had been wooing those schools for several years.  Obviously, if wooing went on, that wooing did not work.

Florida State would have been a brand name “get” — much like the Big Ten’s addition of Nebraska — but the SEC was more interested in growing its footprint in 2011 and adding cable households to its portfolio.  Only this offseason have we learned that FSU officials approached SEC officials — in 2013, according to reports — to see if the league Florida State once spurned might still have an interest in the school.  That answer was no.

The fact of the matter is we’ll likely never know for sure just who the SEC did speak with — either officially or unofficially — during the summer and fall of 2011.  What we do know is that Texas A&M and Missouri were the final choices.  And it will take a number of years to determine whether or not the SEC, A&M and Mizzou are a good match long-term.

The Southeastern Conference has found a new coordinator for its men’s basketball officials and it didn’t have to go too far to find him.  Jake Bell has served as the head of officials for the Atlantic Sun Conference and the Southern Atlantic Association.  Prior to his leap into a supervisory role, Bell served as an official in the SEC.

“To be part of the SEC again is a dream opportunity for me,” Bell said in a conference press release.  “I feel so please to be part of such a great organization.”

Bell will replace Gerald Boudreaux whose contract was not renewed by the league after an eight-season run.

One negative about Bell’s hiring?  He’s from Lexington, Kentucky and received a graduate degree from UK in 2003.  And if you don’t think some conspiracy theorist will bring that up every time a block/charge call favors Kentucky’s favor you’re kidding yourself.

Ah, there’s just nothing like Christmas in Dubai.

It should be obvious to all fans these days that big-time college athletics — at least football and men’s basketball — is all about money, cash, bread, loot, simoleons.  For those few remaining dullards who’ve yet to grasp that fact, a news story from ESPN.com’s Brett McMurphy this morning should help pound the message home.

With a new bowl cycle set to begin next season, the five smallest FBS conferences are looking to create their own new bowl games.  That’s because the five largest FBS conferences are planning to play one another in most of the existing bowls.  And where might these new bowls be located?

According to McMurphy, in Miami, Orlando, Little Rock, Boca Raton, Montgomery, Los Angeles, Ireland, Dubai, and either Toronto or Nassau (the Bahamas).

Miami, Orlando and the LA area already have bowls.  Little Rock, Boca Raton and Montgomery aren’t exactly top o’ mind when it comes to holiday football, but if Shreveport can pull it off, why not those three cities?

As for Ireland, Notre Dame played Navy in Dublin last September.  Toronto hosted the International Bowl from 2007 through 2010.  Nassau would be the first Carribean-based bowl since the Bacardi Bowl was last played in Havana in 1946.

Dubai, well, that’s another story.  The city has become a desert playground for millionaires and billionaires.  One would suspect that the people pouring money into the Dubai’s growth are willing to pour a lot of money into a small conference football game if it means three-plus hours worth of advertising on American television.

Granted, there’s something to be said for the life experience the players would gain from traveling abroad for bowl games.  But how many fans will travel to Dublin or Dubai or Nassau?  This is about cash, pure and simple.  The smaller conferences feel themselves being squeezed further and further out of the football picture by the five ever-growing power conferences.

Further proof that a new line of division between the haves and have-nots is imminent.  Further proof that college athletics is all about the Benjamins.

Let’s start with the obvious: SEC commissioner Mike Slive is one of the most powerful men in college sports.  Along with Big Ten commish Jim Delany, Slive seems to always be a few steps ahead of pack.

An ex-ESPN employee who’s sat in on meetings with a number of conference commissioners recently told MrSEC.com that Slive and Delany are such strategic thinkers that they’re often operating on a completely different level from their counterparts in other leagues.

Slive hasn’t gained his power through bluster.  He works a room, calms conversations, keeps bringing all parties back to the topic at hand, and then manages to build a consensus without anyone realizing how exactly he’s done it.

Put it this way: If you’re traveling with two wanted droids on Tatooine, you want Slive in the brown robe talking to the Stormtroopers.

According to Eric Hyman – who has worked with Slive as AD at South Carolina and now at Texas A&M – it is Slive who makes the Southeastern Conference strong:

“I’ve known him for a long time and he’s a visionary.  He’s brilliant intellectually.  He’s got tremendous political acumen.  He’s adroit in what he does and how he maneuvers things.

He knows where he wants to take the league and he gets a consensus in that direction.  There’s no division.  We all say the things we feel (as individual institutions), but the conference has a bond and is as strong as it is because of Mike Slive.”

While Slive has mastered the role of calm, cool leader, he’s also benefited from the fact that the Southeastern Conference has long been an all-for-one, one-for-all kinda neighborhood, even before his arrival.  If there’s another conference whose member institutions have always marched arm in arm it’s the Big Ten.  So it coincidental that Slive and Delany are the best at what they do?  Obviously not.  Slive and Delany are excellent leaders, but their talents are enhanced by the esprit de corps that exists among those they are leading.

Slive recently had this to say to The San Antonio Express-News:

“One of the hallmarks of this league is the fact that we talk about being a family.  It may sound sort of naïve, but that’s the sense I got out of the (spring meetings).  It’s “This is tough, but we’re going to find a way through it.  We’re going to make a decision – as long as it’s thoughtful, reasonable and with an open dialogue – and, once we make it, we’ll move on.  That’s just the way we’ve always done it.’”

Ah, but here comes the rub.

The bigger conferences become, the more difficult it will be to keep everyone on the same page.  There are more voices in the room, more opinions on every topic.

The math is pretty simple, really.  If you and three friends are going to dinner, reaching a consensus on where to eat is one thing.  If you and 13 friends are going to dinner, good luck getting everyone to agree on a restaurant.

Slive is now 72-years-old.  Delany is about 65.  It won’t be too many years before new leaders have taken over the SEC and Big Ten.  Those leagues will no doubt try to find men – or women – who have just as much foresight and polical savvy as their current commissioners.

But whether those new leaders will have as much success as Slive and Delany will in part be decided by how well 14-school leagues – not 12- or 10-team leagues – can be managed.  The bigger the conferences, the bigger the challenge.

Wanna feel like an old geezer?  Start a sentence with the words “I remember.”

Having said that, I remember when college athletes were just that — college athletes, not CELEBRITIES!  But, oh, how those days have come and gone.  We’re now as likely to get information about college stars from E! or TMZ as we are from Sports Illustrated or The Sporting News.

Example: Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, who has become the 2013 college version of 1960s pro star Joe Namath.  Just be thankful the NCAA doesn’t allow college players to take part in advertising.

You can also throw Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron into the celeb/athlete mix.  The Heisman-hopeful has been dating Auburn grad and former Miss Alabama Katherine Webb for several months now.  Webb came into the public light and had her “career” launched when ESPN broadcasters Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit dared to say she was pretty during coverage of January’s BCS Championship Game (which Bama won, if anyone still cares about that kind of thing).

Well now England’s The Daily Mail — read that again just to make sure you process it — is reporting that McCarron might’ve been a naughty boy back in Alabama while Webb was recently taking part in the Spike TV Guys Choice Awards in LA.  (Webb’s career has included the reality-contest and award-show circuit since Musburger’s cooing.)  According to the rag — I’m sorry – paper, another model named Margaret Wood now claims to have spent the night at McCarron’s house.

Oh, no he di’n't!

You can read the rest of this nonsense here.  We bring it to you only to show how the line between sports star and celebrity has been blurred in this information-overload age.  Hey, with thousands of television and radio networks and millions of websites fighting to fill 24-hours a day with something it was only a matter of time before people started to report on who Timmy Fullback dates and what Charlie Lineman has for dinner.

Social media — where you, too, can be the paparazzi! — has ramped things up even further.

Sorry, but who really gives a damn?

Newsflash: College football players have always dated pretty girls.  But such dating exploits weren’t covered nationally — or internationally, in McCarron’s case — until recently.

Anyone remember reading about the girlfriends of Florida’s Danny Wuerffel or Tennessee’s Peyton Manning?  In basketball, were Shaquille O’Neal’s evening activities broken down and disseminated by the press?  Of course not.

I get it that we’re now living in a different day and age in terms of wall to wall media.  I understand that everyone is now part of the media.  I also grasp the fact that it’s June and a lack of news will lead many a radio host or blogger to seriously discuss McCarron’s love life… Which girl is prettier?  Should Webb dump him?  Do you believe this other model’s claims?

But unless the off-field stuff impacts the on-field stuff, I don’t get the national interest.  Are our own lives so God-awful that we actually have to distract ourselves with gossip about a 20-year-old college quarterback’s social life?

Apparently so.

SEC Football

1. College football expert Phil Steele picks Alabama to win its third straight BCS championship.

2. Cost of tickets/donations was the biggest reason given for fans attending less college football games.

3. First-year Auburn coach Gus Malzahn knows plenty about the Iron Bowl rivalry with Alabama.

4. Tree-poisoner Harvey Updyke has another case in Louisiana to deal with now that he’s out of jail.

5. LSU has the top stadium in the conference, according to Athlon. See the entire SEC list.

6. Which non-conference game among SEC teams will be the biggest this upcoming season?

7. The Texas A&M-UTSA game probably won’t make this list when they play each other in 2016.

8. Former Georgia Bulldog Joe Tereshinski Sr., whose son and grandson played at UGA, has passed away at 89.

9. Georgia has no plans to lessen its tough punishment for positive drug tests.

10. Running back Jabo Lee should be Tennessee’s only casualty from the class of 2013.

11. Tough to argue: Alabama voted to have the best offensive triple threat in the SEC.

SEC Basketball

12. Missouri has released its non-conference schedule for the 2013-14 season.

Extra

13. Former Ole Miss head coach and Tennessee assistant Ed Orgeron keeps it classy on players attending class.

14. Athlon Sports has picked Oregon to edge out Stanford for the Pac-12 championship.

15: Report: Former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow will sign with the New England Patriots today.

16. Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops responds to his critics, which includes some former Sooner players.

17. Georgia Tech’s AD believes the college football selection committee should stay on the smaller side.

Earlier today we looked at which SEC stadiums provided the biggest advantage penalty-wise to their occupants.  You can read the full breakdown here, but here’s a hint: cowbells.

Since we found no real conspiracies in that number-crunching session, we thought we’d now look at each SEC squads penalty numbers at home and on the road.  Below you’ll find each SEC program’s penalty numbers at home from 2008 through 2012.  You’ll also see each program’s road penalty numbers over the period.  Finally, we’ll compare the two numbers.

First, let’s start with the home numbers, from best to worst:

Now, a look at the number of penalties totaled by each squad in road (or neutral site) games from 2008 through 2012, from best to worst:

As was the case with home games, Alabama, Kentucky, Ole Miss and Mississippi State all fair rather well when it comes to road penalties.  And once again, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida and Texas A&M reside at the bottom of the list picking up more than seven flags per road contest.

But which teams see the biggest difference in flags between their home games and their contests away from home?

Read the rest of this entry »