1.  Billy Donovan wants Florida’s 3-point defense to improve.

2.  With a win over Tennessee tomorrow, the Gators will post their 14th consecutive 20-win season.

3.  When Kentucky visits Vanderbilt tomorrow, the game will likely hinge on the Anthony Davis-Festus Ezeli matchup.

4.  UK officials want fans to stop selling a popular poster of Davis.

5.  South Carolina AD Eric Hyman says he can’t imagine the USC-Clemson rivalry coming to an end.

6.  Steve Spurrier is expected to get a pay bump to $3.3 million today.

7.  New Tennessee O-line coach Sam Pittman likes all the returning starters in his camp.

8.  Freshman Jarnell Stokes’ banged-up hand remains a concern for UT hoops.

9.  With Kentucky and ESPN “Gameday” coming to town, Vandy basketball is going to get an all-day commercial tomorrow.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve received an email or two asking if the SEC would move to 16 schools once Clemson and Florida State joined the Big 12. As if such a move were a done deal.

We laughed off the rumors and went on about our business.

But apparently those rumors spread far enough through the Carolinas to spur TigerNet.com to ask Clemson AD Terry Don Phillips if there was any meat on them bones:

“There is no substance to that.  None.  The Big 12 has a committee formed — I guess you would call it an expansion committee — to look at the future of the Big 12 conference.  I would suspect without knowing that part of the charge of that particular committee would be to look at continual expansion because they are no longer the Big 12.  They have lost their championship game and so I would suspect they are looking at it.  But in regard to Clemson or Florida State — of course I can’t speak for Florida State but I do have a pretty good feel for that part of the country — but I don’t feel like they have talked with anyone and I can say for sure with Clemson there is no substance to that.”

Asked if anyone from the Big 12 had contacted Clemson officials, Phillips said, “No.”

When Oklahoma AD Joe Costiglione said last month that the Big 12 would look at expanding at some point in the future, it was only a matter of time before far-fetched rumors began to zip through cyberspace.  That’s happened.  And naturally, those rumors have kicked up questions about the SEC’s plans.  But until there is a major change to the college football landscape, we firmly believe that the Southeastern Conference will remain a 14-school league.

Add another name to the list.  This time, the name of a quarterback who looked incredibly limited during LSU’s loss to Alabama in the BCS Championship Game.

Jordan Jefferson told WCNN-AM in Altanta yesterday that he, too, was unhappy with the Tigers plan of attack in the big game:

“I think we should’ve spread them out a little bit more, put the ball in different passing areas, use our talent on the receiving side,” Jefferson said. “We had that in as far as play-calling, we just didn’t get to it.

We have great guys in those areas and sometimes we just wonder why we don’t use those guys. But we’re not the one calling the plays. We still have to go out and execute what the coaches and coordinators are calling. We can’t complain as players, but sometimes we do question that…

I definitely didn’t expect for it to play (out) like that.  Alabama was a little bit more prepared than us. There was a lot of things that we should’ve did different to catch a rhythm on offense. To win a type of game like that, you’ve got to win all three phases – offense, defense and special teams – and we just didn’t get over that hump to winning those phases. We kind of fell short in that game.”

Tiger fans will love the part about Alabama being a little bit more prepared.  I’m sure that won’t be used against Les Miles on pro-Tiger messageboards.

While Jefferson shot down “many rumors that are not true,” he did confirm that LSU practiced one plan and then called another on gameday.  The ex-Tiger said that his team had studied Utah’s 2007 Sugar Bowl victory over Bama before this year’s BCS title game, but to no avail.

“We were going to spread out our guys to make sure we’d get them the ball.  But once we got in the game, it wasn’t how we practiced.”

The biggest question now?  When are players and ex-players going to stop talking about what went wrong that night in New Orleans?

Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity opened up yesterday regarding the SEC’s soon-to-be sorted out football scheduling format.  Unfortunately, he offered nothing new.

First, don’t expect the SEC to go to nine games in 2013:

“The general feeling is we want to stay with eight.  But we have not sat down as a group of ADs to talk about 2012 and beyond.  We just had to get 2012 solved to move forward.  So who knows what 2013 through either a two-year or six-year rotation.  But that’s what we’re going to meet to (talk about) and dedicate a whole day to (during the SEC’s women’s basketball tournament).”

The fears of a nine-game slate are the same — you can’t schedule as many patsies:

“Nine games, and Georgia Tech, that makes 10 games.   If you ever wanted to schedule Clemson or Ohio State, like we have, then that only leaves one guarantee game.  That’s a pretty tough schedule.  Fans would love it.  But I don’t know if your coaches or players (would).  That’s strapping it up 11 of 12 weeks there.  You have to have some time where some players play who never get a chance to be on the field.”

The ACC has announced that it will go to a nine-game conference slate when Pittsburgh and Syracuse begin league play.  The Big Ten and Pac-12 will engage in a yearly conference-versus-conference agreement that will guarantee that both leagues’ teams will face at least nine BCS opponents per year.  In addition, the ADs at Iowa and Michigan have already stated that facing nine BCS teams per season won’t lead them to end their annual series with Iowa State and Notre Dame, respectively.

In other words, only the SEC is scared of guaranteeing nine to 10 games per year against BCS competition.

Clearly, the goal of most SEC athletic directors is to keep more teams bowl eligible via laughable non-conference schedules.  We find that to be embarrassing and we believe it will eventually bit the league right in the polls.  But then again, it’s you the fan who gets to pay 50+ bucks a seat to watch Jackson State come to town… just so you can then travel to Memphis to watch your 6-6 SEC squad play in the Liberty Bowl against a Conference USA team.  Fun, no?

Additionally, McGarity makes it clear that some of the league’s oldest, most-stories, most-important rivalries could still go away:

“I think if you ask Alabama and Tennessee, like us and Auburn, we’d like to retain the (permanent cross-divisional) games.  But does that work?  What do the other 10 schools think?  Those four schools like having those games but there’s no other East-West match-up that has that piece of history to it.  So I don’t (know) where that fits in.”

A history lesson for Mr. McGarity: Ole Miss and Vanderbilt have played 86 times.  That’s one of the 10 most played rivalries in SEC history.  If the SEC is about everyone being equal, then that rivalry means something, too.

Also, you can bet Missouri likes keeping its toes dipped in the deep recruiting waters of Texas thanks to its cross-divisional partnership with Texas A&M.

But in the end, Georgia’s AD is right about one thing:

“With 14 teams, not everybody will be happy.  Some will have a problem with everything.  But we’ll make decisions based on the best situation of the league.”

Well, there’s nothing better for the league than protecting the very thing that made it great — long-time, heated, tradition-rich rivalries.

The best way to do that is to go to a nine-game conference slate or somehow convince the NCAA to dump its requirements for conference championship games.

1.  Florida will try to bounce back from a clubbing at Kentucky when they host Tennessee this weekend.

2.  Georgia put a whoopin’ on Arkansas to climb out of the SEC cellar.

3.  This writer believes John Calipari has his best shot at a national title with this year’s Kentucky team.

4.  South Carolina has now lost 10 basketball games in a row to Tennessee.

5.  The Vol football team will be a lot more multiple on defense next season.

6.  Meanwhile, assistant coach Darin Hinshaw wants more production from his receiving corps.

7.  After a sluggish first half, Vanderbilt dropped 49 on LSU in final stanza to win 76-61.  (Up next: VU hosts top-ranked Kentucky and the Dores have toppled the last four #1 teams to visit the West End.)

Would the real Gene Chizik please stand up?  Is the guy who won five games in two years at Iowa State?  Is he the man who’s led Auburn to two 8-5 campaigns in three years?  Or is he multi-millionaire, top o’ the line coach who led the Tigers to their first national crown in decades?

That’s what many Auburn and SEC fans would like to know following last year’s post-Cam Newton season.  But Auburn AD Jay Jacobs isn’t reading too much into last season because he says he and Chizik knew early on what was coming:

“2010 was a magical year for us.  Back when I interviewed Gene in December ’08, we knew that 2011, as far as the number of players, was going to be challenging.  I couldn’t be more proud of how the guys played.  There was only one institution that played more freshmen than we did this past season.  I’m proud of how hard they worked and how they stayed to the task at hand and continued to build this foundation that’s going to take us back to an SEC championship.”

Sounds good.  And we believe it’s too soon for anyone to start writing Chizik off as a one-year wonder.  But…

For Jacobs to have known back in 2008 that the roster would be so full of holes in 2011, he would have to have foreseen some real problems coming with Chizik’s first two signing classes.  After all, 43% of the players from Auburn’s ’09 and ’10 classes aren’t at Auburn or never arrived.

For that reason — while we say it’s way too soon to panic on the Plains — we also aren’t buying Jacobs’ “we knew it was coming” message.

Texas A&M is trying to hurriedly put together its 2012 non-conference football schedule and three changes were announced yesterday:


1.  The Aggies opener on September 1st with McNeese State has been dumped and A&M is paying $200,000 to cancel it.

2.  A&M will instead open the season in Shreveport, Louisiana against Louisiana Tech on Thursday, August 30th.

3.  South Carolina State will visit Kyle Field on September 22nd.


A&M still has one more non-conference slot to fill for November 17th.

The switch from McNeese State at home to Louisiana Tech at Shreveport insures that the Aggies first-ever SEC contest — against Florida on September 8th — will also be the school’s home opener.

The SEC’s 2012 tally board now reads: SEC Home Teams 41, SEC Road Teams 13.

Three more home teams won — and won big — last night.  That’s a 76% clip for teams in their own arenas.  If you’d bet a buddy $10 straight up on the home team to win in every SEC game this year, you’d be plus $280 over your pal right now.  If you’d been sharp enough to take Kentucky in their road games — and the Cats are the only team to take on the road — you’d be at plus $330.

Just saying.


Tennessee 69, South Carolina 57

As the Gamecocks continue to sink into the quicksand at the bottom of the SEC standings board (they’re now 1-8 in league play), the Vols appear to have found a new offensive weapon.  Long-range shooter Skylar McBee made his first start of the year on Saturday and tallied 10 points.  Making his second start last night, he led the Volunteers with 18 on 4-of-7 shooting from the 3-point line.  If McBee could average 14 points per game as a starter, even the defense-first Cuonzo Martin would likely take it.

Struggling Carolina was outrebounded 32-25 and couldn’t muster any consistent offense in the paint.


Vanderbilt 76, LSU 61

The Commodores snapped a two-game losing streak behind a 21-point effort from Festus Ezeli in Nashville.  John Jenkins added 20.  Jeffery Taylor poured in 19 more.  But it was Ezeli who helped give Vandy a 38-22 edge down low and that proved to be the difference in the ballgame.

After a solid start in SEC play, the Tigers have now lost four out of five to fall to 3-6 in league play.  The temperature of Trent Johnson’s seat is once again starting to warm.

The Commodores will host #1 Kentucky — the SEC only unbeaten road team — Saturday night at Memorial Gym.


Georgia 81, Arkansas 59

The road woes continue for Mike Anderson’s team.  Unbeaten at home, the Razorbacks remain winless away from Fayetteville after getting trounced in Athens.  For Georgia, it was just the second SEC win of season.

Gerald Robinson scored a career-high 27 and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope contributed 18.  The Dawgs had a 15-0 run in the first half and a 12-0 run in the second to put the Hogs away.

UGA also crushed Arkansas on the glass, 44 rebounds to 21.

The Big Ten has a four-team plan with the national semifinals being played in on-campus stadiums.  Georgia president Michael Adams says an eight-team playoff might be in the offing.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive says… slow down.

Speaking in Nashville yesterday, Slive went in 180 degrees the opposite direction of UGA’s prez when he said:


“Really a lot of this discussion is premature, and I want to respect the process that we’re in… What would (a new system) look like and whether it’s actually going to happen, all of that is premature.  I think we need the time to sit down and analyze it.  We need time to take ideas back to our respective conferences and… a decision to be made sometime later this year as we being to talk about the… next format.”


As we noted earlier today, we believe there will be resistance to a no-playoff to eight-team-playoff jump.  It’s far more likely — at least in our view — that a four-team, seeded Plus One will be the answer.

Consider the Big Ten and Pac-12.  The idea to bid out the championship game site each year protects the tradition of the Rose Bowl.  It would not be part of a rotation which would cast one or both leagues out once every four years (as is currently the case).

How would those leagues feel about an eight-team playoff that might invite two schools (or maybe even three) from those leagues… thus leaving the Rose Bowl as Pac-12 #2 versus Big Ten #3 or even #4?

The safe money is on a four-game plan.  Even though Slive would probably say that we’re jumping the gun by going that far.


On a sidenote, the commissioner confirmed what we’ve been saying for a while: The SEC isn’t looking to go to 16 schools anytime soon.

“We’re at 14,” Slive said.  “It’s going to take us time to absorb.  I don’t know if you realize how difficult it is to take two institutions and move them into 12 other institutions whether it’s scheduling or the way we’re working together.  So we have our hands full for now.”

At least until the landscape changes elsewhere.

Missouri’s Gary Pinkel has taken a moribund football program and make it competitive on the national scene.  Competitive in the rankings (the Tigers reached #1 in the nation in 2007) and on the recruiting trail (Mizzou has inroads into Texas and outdueled Arkansas for star receiver prospect Dorial Green-Beckham).

He’s accomplished much, but now Pinkel is determined to break new barriers:

“We’re getting our brand name down in Atlanta.  We’re in South Florida, Tampa, Jacksonville, Orlando.  But we’re back to like we were when we first went into Texas.  You have to sell yourself.  They have a great pride in the SEC down there and you’re welcome down there.  But it’s just like when we first went into Texas, and the coaches would tell us, ‘Okay, these (five-star) guys are going to Texas, Oklahoma and A&M.  You can’t talk to them.  But you can look at these guys.’  Well, they don’t do that in Texas anymore.  They say, ‘These are our best guys, go recruit them.’  Well, now when we go into SEC territory to recruit, we hear, ‘Well, these guys are going to Alabama or Auburn.  But you can talk to these guys.’”

The coach told The St. Louis Dispatch that his program is ready for the challenge of its new home.  “That’s all we’ve been talking about to our football team,” Pinkel said.  “That’s what it’s all about.  Proving ourselves.  No one knows us in the SEC.  We have to earn their respect, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

University of Georgia president Michael Adams is one of the most vocal university presidents in the country when it comes to academics.  You know those guys that everyone goes to for a quote when there’s some debate about whether players are Students or Athletes?  Adams is one of those guys.  Heck, he’s the president of the Knight Commission, an organization that “has worked to ensure that intercollegiate athletics programs operate within the educational mission of their colleges and universities.

So when Michael Adams says this:

“My best guess is we’re going to end up with either a four- or eight-team playoff by the time we get to ’14,”

We listen.

Now, it’s no surprise that a playoff-scenario is in the works.  At this site, we suggested in December that Alabama and LSU — two teams from the same (hated) conference  – reaching the BCS title game might be enough to spur the other BCS leagues into action.  The day we wrote that, Big 12 interim commissioner Chuck Neinas came out and said a “Plus One” format should be discussed.

It was bad enough that the SEC was winning the national crown every year, but when they were then facing themselves in the title game?  Other leagues couldn’t abide with that.

In the past month, many ADs and presidents and commissions have mentioned a four-team, seeded Plus One as the most likely end result of this year’s BCS discussions.  Even NCAA president Mark Emmert has said that such a “Football Final Four” seems like a solid idea.  And by now you know what kind of money such a plan would generate.  What kind of television ratings it would grab.  All that’s been written and re-written, postulated and re-postulated ad nauseum.

In the last week, the Big Ten let word leak out that it, too, might be in favor of a Plus One.  That was big news in itself as commissioner Jim Delany has long been against any type of playoff.  Additionally, the league’s plan tossed out the idea of the two highest-seeded teams hosting the “semifinals” on their own campuses.

Adams has taken all that a step further.  He has thrown an eight-team format into the discussion.  That’s not new on websites and blogs and messageboards, but it is a first in terms of real discussion.

According to Adams — who was speaking to the University of Georgia Athletic Association board yesterday — the Big Ten and Pac-12 have been the leagues most opposed to a playoff in past years.  Mike Slive pushed a Plus One idea several years ago and ACC commish John Swofford has also backed such a plan.  When Adams previously suggested an eight-team plan in 2008, it was dead on arrival.  But Delany’s change of heart on the subject is a “very significant development,” in Adams’ words.

According to The Athens Banner-Herald, Adams also said:

“The conference commissioners are finally coming together on that point.  There’s been great division among the commissioners the last six or eight years. The change in the conference realignments, the fact that most of the media contracts are up in either ’13 or ’14 are creating a situation. If there’s going to be a change, this is probably the natural time to do it…

I don’t say this about very much, but I think we were at the front of the train on that issue.  I could see it down the track and I think we will end up with something that I think the fans feel better about. We may never get anything that the fans feel perfectly happy about.  

One of my major concerns all along has been that I didn’t think we were paying enough attention to the fans who foot the bills for all this. I think that realization is beginning to come home.”

Back in December of 2008, we at MrSEC.com put together our own “perfect” college football plan.  Eight teams.  First-round games hosted on campus sites.  It’s not far from what’s being discussed by Delany to the north and Adams to the south this week.

You can read the plan in full right here.  (And, yes, I’m sure there are some uncorrected typos in that piece somewhere.)

Once we put our playoff system together, we brought in one of the top sports business wheeler-dealers in the country to tear it to shreds.  Anyone can come up with a playoff plan.  We wanted to come up with a playoff plan that would pass muster with everyone from the TV executives to advertisers t0 university presidents.  So we asked Bill Schmidt — the former sports marketing head of Gatorade and someone who’s been called in to broker advertising deals between professional teams and mega-brands — to nitpick our idea.

He did.

The issue of venues became the Snake Canyon we could not jump over.  If you play with eight teams (seven games) at bowl sites, no fans are going to travel to three different locations to follow their teams.  Plus, moving 85 student-athletes from site to site isn’t near as easy as moving 10-15 student-athletes from site to site during a basketball tournament.

So we suggested the first round be played on campuses.  Schools would love a shot at extra gate, parking and concession revenue.  But what of the four teams having to travel to on-campus sites?  As Schmidt reminded us, schools like to use bowl trips — even crummy ones — as a reward to boosters.  In return, they hope to draw more cash out of their biggest backers for future years.  Would a booster enjoy a trip to Lubbock, Texas or Boise, Idaho if his school lost?  Where’s the day at the beach or in the casino?

Again, read the above piece and you’ll see our arguments for an eight-team playoff and you’ll also see a sports marketing guru’s pooh-poohing of said plan.  We’re surprised that things have come as far as they have on the playoff from since that piece was posted in 2008.  But who foresaw a season in which the BCS Championship Game would feature two teams from the same conference?  And that’s really what’s made everything else suddenly feasible.

In our view, a seeded Plus One system remains the most likely scenario to come of this year’s discussion.  For traditionalists, it would be easier to go from zero to four than it would from zero all the way to eight.  We also expect that the three games involved will be sold off to the highest bidder.  For travel purposes and fan ease, one site might get all three games.  For the sake of pulling in more cash, the semifinals might be given to one city while the finals are handed to a even higher bidder.

Whatever the format, the end of the college football season is about to change.  If that gives us a truer national champion, restores meaning to New Year’s Day, pushes the smaller bowls back into December, and stops the creep of games into mid-January… then we’re all for it.

Each day, we get up and try to bring you all the news from around the league as well as some — when we have time for it — research pieces.  Today, we posted the number of players from each state’s Top 20 prospects who signed with a particular school.

The goal was just to see how much talent leaves a state.

We always try to use one baseline so as to prevent arguing.  In this case, player ratings, not star rankings, according to Rivals.com.

But more than 100 angry emails later, they’ve been taken down. 

Why do you use Rivals, not Scout?  Not ESPN?  Not 247?  (All because those rankings favor the writer’s favorite school.)

Why do you list players by rating and not star ranking… and not by the individual state rankings from various publications?  (Mainly because not all sites have the same rankings.)

Why do you list jucos?  Why do you list players by their high school and not by their birthplace?  Why do you list juco players by their junior colleges and not their high schools?

Why do you hate my school?

Now that’s par for the course and it shows plenty of people are reading.  And it’s not like we’re having to mine coal around here.  Things are quite cushy, actually. 

That’s thanks 100% to you, and it’s appreciated.

But there are days when the battles and insults just get old.  And as someone who went through cancer last summer, I can promise you that life is way too short to deal with that much negativity.

So we’ll be back at it with plenty o’ news tomorrow.