Phil Steele is the master of the preseason football guide.  His book is a treasure trove of information, data, facts, figures, stats, comparisons, charts, etc.  It could be this by-the-numbers approach that helps him put out what are considered to be the most accurate football predictions each year.

Today on his website, Steele has taken a by-the-numbers approach to determining which schools have a good shot at this year’s BCS championship.  You won’t be surprised to learn that six of the 14 schools that fit “the mold” for a national champ come from the SEC.  You will be surprised by one of the SEC school’s on that list.

You can check out the categories he used to whittle the entire FBS down to just 14 programs here.  (Be warned: you may have to re-read a few of his category descriptions multiple times.)  When all of his numbers were crunched his list looked as follows:

Alabama — SEC

Florida — SEC

Florida State — ACC

LSU — SEC

Michigan — Big Ten

North Carolina — ACC

Northwestern — Big Ten

Notre Dame — Independent

Ohio State — Big Ten

Oregon — Pac-12

South Carolina — SEC

Stanford — Pac-12

Texas A&M — SEC

Vanderbilt — SEC

Personally, I think James Franklin deserves some sort of raise or bonus for raising Vanderbilt’s program to the point that anyone could possibly list the Dores as national title contenders.

Further, here’s hoping for a Vandy/Northwestern BCS Championship Game in January.  Everyone in attendance should be forced to wear a mortar board.

We’ve been writing it for years.

Coaches would be wise to ban their athletes from Twitter.  If not always, at least during the season.  Though as Johnny Manziel proved this weekend with his “i can’t wait to leave college station” rant, there’s really no good time for tweets.

Yesterday, Al.com’s Kevin Scarbinsky joined the growing chorus of folks wondering why coaches don’t put their foot down on that little blue bird’s neck:

“They call Twitter a social medium, but let’s be honest.  Does one angry man seething into his cell or his table really have any socially redeeming value?

Some thoughts are better left unsaid, especially if they’re going to be shared with the world.  Chances are, if you’re a major college athlete and you say something insulting, demeaning, rude or profane, a lot of people are going to know about it by sundown.”

Bingo.

Scarbinsky goes on to point out that Twitter has zero to do with the First Amendment, a point we made back in November when we last took up the subject.  In that piece, we also included five SEC coaches’ views on Twitter.

Bully for their views, our view remains the same — coaches would be wise to nix Twitter before they’re burned by the loose lips, er, fingers of a teenager.

And as always, be sure to follow MrSEC.com on Twitter where we’ll do our best to hold our angry rants and profane remarks to a minimum.

Last week, The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that the University of Tennessee is hoping to soon tear down the old Stokely Athletic Center to make way for more football practice fields.  According to athletic director Dave Hart, an artist’s renderings of the cleared space reveals “three full practice fields.”  Combine that with UT’s indoor facility and that’s at least four full practice fields for one team.

Will the school keep building until coaches can tell recruits they’ll all get their very own personal practice fields if they sign with the Vols?

Yesterday, Al.com reported that Alabama’s splashy — literally — new locker room will include an actual waterfall.  The water will “flow from a few feet above the hot and cold tubs, which are located near the showers on the new area’s first floor.”

Hey, there’s an arms race in college football — especially among rich athletic departments, like those in the SEC — but at what point has it all gone just a bit too far?  (This video shows that at Kentucky, the facility war crosses over to basketball, too.)

Whether it’s massive meeting rooms, statues, waterfalls, umpteen practice fields or solid gold bidets (just a matter of time), the money being spent on extras in these recruiting wars is ridiculous.

I remember visiting the Vatican some years back.  As I toured St. Peter’s Basilica I was truly moved by the grandeur and majesty — and not to mention the history — of the building.  All of the gold, alabaster and marble created a sense of awe.

But as I walked past treasure after masterwork after treasure I also thought, couldn’t some of this opulence have been snipped to feed the hungry and clothe the poor?

That’s not to pick on the Catholic church.  There are churches and mosques around the globe that are eye-wateringly splendid.  All — one would hope — donate tremendous wealth to the needy.

That said, where do we draw our lines between just right and excess?

When it comes to waterfalls and multiple practice fields, at what point should an athletic department cut back and say, “You know, this money could be better spent elsewhere.”

I don’t live like a monk myself so I’m not suggesting that every dime that everyone makes should be given to the destitute.  But when I see over-spending, I do wonder what else that money could have been used for — a better library on campus?  A few more professors?  Better facilities for some of the non-revenue sports, whose athletes work just as hard as those in the revenue sports?

Again, I’m not saying anyone’s wrong here.  I’m just asking the question: How many practice fields and waterfalls do athletic departments really need?

With summer upon us and fall moving quickly — too quickly — toward us, we’re starting to get plenty of “fall preview” questions when we appear on radio talkshows across the Southeast.  Having answered the question, “What intrigues you about School X” umpteen times already, we thought it might be a good time to put all of the topics that most interest us together in one or two posts.

Yesterday, we shared with you our thoughts on the SEC East.  Today, you’ll find our look at the SEC West and the seven questions — one per team — that we look forward to having answered in the fall.  They’re listed in alphabetical order according to the school below…

Alabama

Can Nick Saban coax the same chemistry and drive from this year’s team?  After Alabama won the BCS championship in 2009, Saban spent his offseason trying to convince his 2010 team that — despite the return of many important players — the new squad wasn’t defending anything.  The 2009 bunch won the title, not the 2010 team.  But that message didn’t get through.  The Tide stumbled to a 9-3 finish.  Since then, Saban has led his 2011 and his 2012 squads to national crowns.  Obviously, the coach knows what it takes to win and what it takes to repeat.  But will this particular group of players heed his warnings of “you ain’t won nothing yet?”

Arkansas

How will Bret Bielema and offensive coordinator Jim Chaney co-exist?  At Wisconsin, Bielema’s teams almost always finished in the bottom-quarter of the Big Ten in pass attempts.  Chaney is known for having an itchy trigger finger when it comes to the passing game.  At Purdue, Drew Brees and Kyle Orton winged it for him.  At Tennessee, Tyler Bray was the gunslinger.  Now the run-first head coach and the pass-first coordinator are teaming up with a first-year starting quarterback and a roster made up of recruits signed to play Bobby Petrino’s pass-heavy style.  This might be the most fascinating mixture to watch in the SEC in 2013.

Auburn

Was Auburn’s 2010 BCS title more a product of Gus Malzahn’s offense or Cam Newton’s amazing talents?  Malzahn — hired to replace old boss Gene Chizik this offseason — has tested his up-tempo offense three times in the SEC.  (And no, we’re not counting the year that he was given little power as Houston Nutt’s offensive coordinator at Arkansas.)  In his season on the Plains with Newton at quarterback, Malzahn’s offense led the league in scoring (40.2 points per game versus SEC foes in 2010).  In the other two seasons without Newton, the Tigers finished fifth (25.0 points per game in 2009) and eighth (20.0 points per game in 2011) in the SEC.  That’s quite a difference.  Now Malzahn returns to AU without a sure-thing at quarterback and a need to focus on both the offense and the defense.  It’s time to for Malzahn to earn the big bucks.

Read the rest of this entry »

SEC Football

1. From CBS Sports: A Texas A&M coach has spoken to Johnny Manziel about his weekend tweet. Manziel “understands the strength of his words.”

2. The Houston Chronicle has complied a list of the top 20 tweets from Manziel.

3. It’s time for Manziel and college athletes everywhere to take a twitter timeout, writes Kevin Scarbinsky.

4. Alabama’s athletic facility will be receiving an upgrade. Among the items on the agenda: a waterfall in the locker room.

5. Rachel Bachman looks at the increase in hotel prices on football weekends vs. non-football weekends in the SEC.

6. Auburn running back Cameron Artis-Payne is among the nation’s top-five newcomers, according to ESPN’s Danny Kanell.

7. There’s a divide among SEC coaches on up-tempo offenses. Should rules be put in place to slow things down?

8. Linebacker Serderius Bryant is the No. 50 most important player for Ole Miss.

9. Manziel and Texas A&M have earned the cover of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine.

10. Florida linebacker Antonio Morrison is out of jail. He faces a misdemeanor charge of simple battery.

11. Like last year, Georgia is dealing with secondary concerns before the season begins.

12. Former Vol quarterback Peyton Manning worked out with Tennessee players on Monday.

13. Missouri has dismissed linebacker Torey Boozer for “undisclosed disciplinary reasons.”

14. Two ESPN writers discussed the recent joke about Alabama from Texas A&M AD Eric Hyman.

SEC Basketball

15. Suspended Florida guard Scotty Wilbekin “has work to do” to return to the team, says coach Billy Donovan.

16. The word is out about Kentucky’s “Wildcat Code.” John Calipari discussed it, sort of.

17. Former UNC Asheville guard Keith Hornsby has decided to transfer to LSU. He’ll sit out the 2013-14 season.

18. Tennessee’s freshmen have been “doing everything together” since they arrived on campus.

Extra

19. Atlanta radio hosts were fired for their bit that made fun of former NFL player Steve Gleason, who’s battling ALS.

20. Julie Hermann has officially taken over as the athletic director at Rutgers.

21. The future is still in question for North Carolina basketball player P.J. Hairston, who was arrested on June 5.

22. Former Oklahoma State quarterback Wes Lunt will transfer to Illinois. He was not released to any SEC schools.

When NCAA President Mark Emmert and the voting body of NCAA presidents passed recruiting reform measures a few months back it was hailed as a long overdue move by fans and many in the media.  Unfortunately, most athletic directors and coaches — at least those not overseeing the richest of rich football programs — felt that the NCAA and its presidents had gone too far, too fast, without consulting any of the people who actually make their living on the front lines, where these rule changes would be felt.

As a result, those pages on recruiting that were ripped from the NCAA rule book — with Emmert playing the role of Mr. Keating from “Dead Poets Society” — were taped right back into the tome just a few months later.

So now Emmert is taking a different approach.  The always-under-fire prez announced this weekend that he will form a council of 10 athletic directors who will meet with him regularly.  Rather than leaving rule book changes to the college presidents, Emmert’s new council of ADs will weigh in and advise as well.

Emmert told The Wall Street Journal:

“It’s clear right now where the association has gone, it’s pushed the pendulum too far in one direction.  And it really has cut athletic directors out of the national discussion.”

That’s probably not a good thing considering the fact that colleges and universities set up the NCAA to govern, ya know, athletics.

Obviously, there will still be checks and balances.  The NCAA won’t — and shouldn’t — allow a pack of athletic directors to undermine overall academic concerns.  Most likely, the presidents will still have the final say on issues, with the new panel of ADs providing advice.

Ah, but the big question is: Which schools’ athletic directors will take part?

The NCAA must govern over — in football — the FBS subdivision, the FCS subdivision, Division II and Division III.  Will all four classifications be represented on Emmert’s panel or will there be a separate panel for each division?

If Emmert sets out to convene people from only the FBS level, smaller-budgeted schools will likely howl in protest.  Obviously, the five richest conferences of the FBS level (ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-12 and SEC) all have their own agendas.  Representative ADs from those leagues would likely push for full-cost-of-tuition scholarships and perhaps an entirely new subdivision at the top end of the Division I, above the FCS and even the FBS.

If Emmert decides to indeed include athletic directors from every level, expect the richest conferences to complain.  “Why should someone from Mount Union have a say in how Alabama, Texas and Ohio State run their programs and spend their money?”

Those scenarios — and there are many more — show once again just how impossible NCAA reform truly is.  And before anyone shouts, “Yeah, down with the NCAA,” please remember that no one’s come up with a better alternative yet.
Conferring with the ADs of the Round Table sounds good, but so did the idea of NCAA reform and wholesale changes to the NCAA’s rule book.  Obviously, the problems lie in the execution of these ideas, not the ideas themselves.
For that reason, we at MrSEC.com will temper our expectations for Emmert’s new team of athletic directors.

Slick ride.  Nice trips.  Pricey tickets to top sporting events.

If your parents have money, it stands to reason that you might have a few more shiny toys and behind-the-red-rope opportunities than the next guy.  And as it turns out, Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel comes from a family with plenty of cash to burn.

When the quarterback’s front-row seats to an NBA game became a national topic of conversation last December, Manziel tweeted that he’s bought himself “a little birthday present” with his own cash.

When it made national news that he was tooling around college station in a Mercedes-Benz back in March, “his folks have cash” was the quick response from Aggie fans.

Manziel’s parents do have cash and Manziel does like to spend it.  Nothing unusual about that.  Not every college kid has family money to blow, but they all like to spend whatever they have.  Hey, I’ve been there.

Manziel’s high-profile, celebrity lifestyle has even forced A&M’s compliance staff to work overtime to make sure their star player isn’t stepping across any NCAA boundaries.  In April, the Heisman-winner sounded altogether sick and tired of having to answer those compliance workers’ questions:

“They keep sending me questionnaires like, ‘How did I got to the Spurs game?’  Even though I’ve been going to Spurs games since I moved to Kerrville when I was in seventh grade.  A good family friend who we’ve known since before I every thought of playing college football has a suite there.  We’re going to go to the suite and we’re just gonna watch the game.  I know (Spurs’ star) Tony Parker on a personal level and if I go down to say hello, I’m not doing anything wrong.

They keep sending me questionnaires asking me who’s funding the trip?  Who’s doing this?  Every time I respond back, ‘ME, ME and ME’ in capital letters.  Hey, I don’t mean to sound rude, but this is stuff I’ve always done, and I know you’re just doing your job, but it gets to you every now and again.”

Enough so that you eventually announce you’re giving up Twitter.  Only to get back on Twitter.  And tweet the following this weekend:

“Bull**** like tonight is a reason why I can’t wait to leave college station…whenever it may be”

From the outside looking in, it appears that Manziel — like all those other college kids out there — has yet to learn that there’s a price for everything.

I got my first job while I was still in school.  I made a whopping $17,000 that year.  Yet I lived rather comfortably thanks to the magic of credit cards.  Eventually, I learned that while money and credit can be thrown around for fun… there will be a price to pay at some point.  Sometimes I’d blow cash on wants and not have enough to pay for my needs.  Then I’d turn to the card, take care of the needs only to have to deal with an ever-growing bill at the first of the next month.

Everything comes with a price.  It can be a monetary price — as I and many young kids have learned — or the price could be a loss of anonymity — as Manziel is finding out.

Not many 20-somethings get invited onto the late-night talkshow circuit, hang with sports stars at ballgames, or pal around with pop icons.  Manziel gets to and, quite naturally, wants to.

But there’s a cost.

Read the rest of this entry »

SEC Football

1. Here’s more on the simple battery charge for Florida linebacker Antonio Morrison, a projected starter.

2. Pat Dooley has seven keys to success for Florida’s football team.

3. In case you missed it: Johnny Manziel tweeted he “can’t wait to leave College Station” during the weekend.

4. South Carolina wide receiver Damiere Byrd is among the nation’s fastest players, writes Chris Huston.

5. Former Vol Eric Berry on Tennessee coach Butch Jones: “He’s trying to do things the right way.”

6. Bruce Feldman discusses Kevin Sumlin’s future at Texas A&M as well as the recruiting surge of Kentucky and Tennessee.

SEC Basketball

7. Florida guard Michael Frazier II is a finalist for the USA 19-under basketball team.

8. So is Tennessee forward Jarnell Stokes, who is among the 16 finalists.

Extra

9. AL.com continues its series on college football hits and safety concerns.

10. Alabama and Georgia picked up quarterback commitments during the weekend.

11. Here’s a national view of the USA 19-under basketball team.

12. Athlon Sports has released its Big Ten All-Conference team.

13. The fallout continues at Penn State following the trial of former coach Jerry Sandusky.

14. The San Antonio Spurs are one win away from winning their fifth NBA title.

15. This Jay-Z commercial during the NBA finals has received a lot of attention.

SEC Football

1. What do you get when you combine NFL tactics with high school recruits?  At Tennessee, it means the green light to hire as many as 18 student workers to help with the recruiting process.

2. Reason for hope at Tennessee in 2013? The offensive line.

3. Kentucky has done better in football against Louisville since Mitch Barnhart arrived than it did before he became the A.D.

4. The investigation into the Howard’s Rock incident at Clemson has South Carolina fans wondering about the motivation. “I hope that true fans can make this a peaceful and respectful rivalry again.”

5. Kevin Sumlins’ father recalls Texas A&M’s victory over Alabama last year.  “You didn’t believe what you had just seen.”

6. Does Georgia have the toughest non-conference schedule in the SEC this year?

7. What impact will sophomore safety Quintavius Burdette have at Ole Miss this year?

College Football

8. College football quietly used a panel last season that reviewed hits to the head and recommended to conferences what punishment should be handed out. Suspension recommended for Quinton Dial hit on Aaron Murray in SEC Championship Game.

9. Proposed college football bowl in Montgomery would be the third for the state of Alabama.

SEC Basketball

10. From Rick Pitino to John Calipari, the focus at Kentucky has shifted from style of play to a players-first program.

11. If a movie about the former Tennessee coach is ever made, what about Seth Rogan in the lead role for the Bruce Pearl story?

Extras

12. Conference confusion.  Did you know Johns Hopkins was a member of the Big Ten (lacrosse only)?

13. Gift or theft? Did Russian President Vladimar Putin steal New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl ring?

1. 5 Years Of Penalties: How Flags Fly In Each SEC Stadium

2. 5 Years Of Penalties: Which Teams Get More Flags On The Road Than At Home?

3. Ole Miss, Mississippi State: Masters Of Cupcakery…Georgia, Vanderbilt: SEC’s Toughest Schedulers

4. SEC Commitment Comparison

5. 6 Of Top 8 Favorites To Win BCS Title Reside In SEC

6. SEC Recruiting Notebook: Academics A Focus Of Nation’s Top Recruit