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.

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.

SEC Football

1. What if the SEC and the rest of the power conferences only played each other?  ”If the big boys played only the big boys…it would send dominoes falling in every direction.”

2. Former Penn State quarterback Steven Bench will visit Mississippi State on May 20 and 21.

3. Georgia suspended offensive lineman Kolton Houston speaks publicly about steroids. NCAA should make ”a special case for me.”

4. Does new Kentucky coach Mark Stoops deserve a first-year pass?

5. What Stoops and the other new coaches in the SEC have accomplished this spring.

6. Auburn coach Gus Malzahn had to chase down Dameyune Craig twice before hiring him. Now Craig’s recruiting efforts are paying big dividends for the Tigers. (Another recruit committed Sunday morning.)

7. Auburn defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson on his linebacking corps: ”My linebacker depth chart in total is very fluid right now.”

8. If an NFL team was made up of only Alabama and LSU players – how good would it be?

SEC Basketball

9. With Jarnell Stokes and Jordan McRae back but Trae Golden gone, what’s the future look like at Tennessee?

10. The future at Kentucky could be altered on Tuesday.  That’s when super prospect Andrew Wiggins could reportedly make his decision.

11. Here’s one area where Kentucky and Louisville could work together for the benefit of both.

Media

12. Jon Solomon: “It’s estimated that more than half of viewers’ monthly cable TV costs are due to sports programming.”

Extras

13. Les Miles’ son throws a no-hitter. Second no-hitter of the season for Manny Miles.

14. Les can watch his son play but former Georgia coach Vince Dooley couldn’t watch son Derek play high school football back in the 1980′s- it was against NCAA rules at the time.

15. Happy Mother’s Day!  Bear Bryant: “Have You Called Your Mama Today?” (H/T Tony Barnhart)

SEC football coaches aren’t the only ones looking forward to using the SEC Network as a recruiting tool.  SEC basketball coaches are also anxiously awaiting the August 2014 debut of the network.  In a wide-ranging interview at the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri basketball coach Frank Haith sounded euphoric about the partnership between the SEC and ESPN.

“It’s huge. We’re going to still get on our national TV stuff, but I think the fact that you’ve got ESPN tied to the network … I mean, there’s other networks out there, but none of them have ESPN tied into it, and I think from a recruiting standpoint, we recruit nationally anyway, but now you’ve got this extra piece saying, “Hey, regardless of where we go recruit your kid, you’re going to see them play on TV. You’re going to see pretty much every one of their games.” I think that’s a huge, huge thing. I’m always thinking recruiting. I think it’s a huge, huge plus for us.”

Haith also opened up on a variety of other topics:

* Is he preparing for his June meeting with the NCAA?

“I’m not preparing for that. There’s nothing to prepare for.”

* Earlier start to practice in the fall.

“I applaud the NCAA. They’ve made some really good (changes).”

* The number of transfers and the culture of college basketball today.

“We live in a microwave society in general. Everybody wants things quick. But in college basketball it’s at another level, and you see kids moving all the time”

* Difference in style of play between Big 12 and SEC

“Our league was way more physical than our league was in the Big 12. Way more physical.”

Asked about a disappointing second season in Columbia after a thirty-win first year at Mizzou, Haith said, “This team personnel-wise could have been better.”  He said it wasn’t though, citing things like inconsistent play, injuries, toughness, chemistry and defense.  ”That’s a challenge for us as a coaching staff, holding guys accountable. It all starts out front. If we don’t have great consistency guarding the ball out front, we’re going to get broken down in the paint. And that’s what happened with this team. We weren’t consistent in guarding the ball out front, and that really hurt our defense.”

1. ACC Schools Were Wise To Stick Together And Not Jump To Big XII

2. SEC Commitment Comparison

3. LSU, Florida…Just Man Up And Stop Whining

4. Breaking Down School-By-School SEC Cash Flow And Subsidies

5. Sooner’s Stoops: What’s The Bottom Of The SEC Done? (Also See Saban Responds and Someone Alert OU’s Stoops)

6. Let The Conspiracy Theories Begin: ESPN, SEC Partnership Raising Eyebrows

7. SEC Recruiting Notebook: Auburn Lands A Big One

SEC Football

1. Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace ran the ball 143 times last year.  “I’m going to have to change the way I play.”

2. Reasons not to be optimistic about the future of Jeremy Hill at LSU.

3. Kentucky safety Ashely Lowery released from hospital.  Spent several days in intensive care following car wreck last weekend.

4. Auburn coach Gus Malzahn on his offensive coordinator: “I feel blessed to have Rhett Lashlee with me.”

5. Status of position battles at Auburn - Mike  linebacker and left guard.

6. Missouri leads the SEC  - in arrests.  That’s according to an unofficial tally from the  New Orleans Times-Picayune going back to 2010.

SEC Basketball

7. Missouri basketball coach Frank Haith went to court to find if his bank account was illegally accessed.  The petition was denied by a judge.

8. Haith faces June hearing on the NCAA’s “failure to monitor” charge.