1. Freeze Takes The High-Road With Mullen

2. Will LSU Have A “Fat Cat” Quarterback In Liggins?

3. Texas A&M Makes Schedule Changes For 2012

4. Clemson A.D. Shoots Down Big 12 Rumors

5. UT’s Rubio No Longer Part Of Football Program

1. Did Nick Saban lobby to get West Virginia into the SEC?   Alabama coach is friends with West Virginia senator.

2. Raises all around for Steve Spurrier and his South Carolina staff.

3. Touring Tennessee’s new $45 million football facilities.

4. Former Tennessee wide receivers coach Charlie Baggett will receive a $425,000 buyout.

5. Ranking the new coaching hires: Urban Meyer No.1, Gus Malzahn No. 4., Hugh Freeze No. 10.

6. Former Alabama safety Mark Barron is recovering from a double hernia surgery - will miss NFL Scouting Combine.

7. Georgia at Mississippi State. A win today by Mississippi State will mean nine of 14 Rick Stansbury team’s in Starkville have won 20 games. The return of Marcus Thornton has given the Bulldogs hope.

8. South Carolina at Arkansas. The end of a brutal stretch for the Gamecocks.

9. Tennessee at Florida. Gators haven’t forgotten their second-half performance in Knoxville. Vols 0-7 on the road this year.

10, NCAA athletes should be careful who picks up the tab for their plane tickets.

11, Alabama at LSU.  Crimson Tide go for fourth straight win  Tony Mitchell remains suspended. Tigers expect full-court pressure.

12. Auburn at Ole Miss.  No more Mr. Nice Guy in practice for Auburn’s Tony Barbee. Struggling Rebels have lost three of four.

13. Kentucky at Vanderbilt. Wildcats to rely on defense. Kevin Stallings on Anthony Davis: “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anybody like him.”

14. John Calipari on UK fans and ESPN’s GameDay at Vandy.  “Don’t ruin it.”

15. Jay Bilas: “It’s sort of like an all-day infomercial for the home team.”

16. Gary Parrish: “John Calipari’s team is going to lose Saturday night at Vanderbilt just like I watched Billy Donovan’s second national championship team at Florida once lose at Vanderbilt.”

Extras

17. “40 Minutes of Hell” documentary debuts tonight.

18. Selection Sunday is a month away.  Here are eight questions for the committee.

19. Former Arkansas quarterback Mitch Mustain considers a career in professional baseball.

20. Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz: “In the last 13 years, nothing has changed as much as the pace of recruiting.”

1.  Selfishness is a good thing for Auburn hoopster Kenny Gabriel.

2. Strong bench play is helping Alabama turn its season around.

3.  Micheal Sanchez’s bum shoulder just means more adversity of the Arkansas basketball team.

4.  This writer finds it ironic that Jordan Jefferson — a player Les Miles was so loyal to — has decided to speak out about poor coaching in the BCS title game.  (Excellent point.)

5.  Jefferson, by the way, has pleaded innocent to charges stemming from an infamous preseason bar fight.

6.  Dee Bost and Arnett Moultrie led MSU to a 70-60 home win over Ole Miss last night.

7.  For the Rebels, the loss was a hit to their slim NCAA Tournament hopes.

8.  For the Bulldogs, it was further evidence that State has a world of potential.

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.

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.)

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.”