For those SEC fans who don’t want to the see their favorite football league adopt a nine-game conference slate, you might want to start pulling for the Pac-12 to change its scheduling format.

CBSSports.com’s Bruce Feldman tweeted word today that the Pac-12′s football coaches will discuss this week the possibility of moving to an eight-game schedule, away from the current nine-game model.  If the Pac-12 were to backtrack, that might alleviate some of the pressure on the Southeastern Conference to go from eight to nine games with its schedule.  A Pac-12 reversal would mean that the majority of major conferences (Pac-12, SEC, and ACC) would use an eight-game plan rather than a nine-game plan (Big Ten and Big XII).

In turn, that might take the strength-of-schedule bullet from the gun of any playoff selection committee member looking for any reason at all to prevent the SEC from getting two (or more) teams into the playoff in a given year.

That said, coaches seldom hold the final cards when it comes to big conference decisions such as scheduling formats.  If they did, you can be sure the SEC would still be playing six conference games and would feature no conference championship game.  But there are larger things at play than one guaranteed patsy win each season, which is what most coaches would prefer.  Dropping the number of conference matchups would give a league fewer A-list games as television inventory, thus costing the Pac-12, in this case, money in the long run.

And television money is what we believe will ultimately drive the SEC to change its own format from eight games to nine.

Still, if you’re an anti-nine-gamer, it can’t hurt to pull for the Pac-12 coaches on this one.

Yesterday the Big Ten officially announced its new divisions, its new division names (thankfully), and its new scheduling plan.  While not perfect — three of the league’s 13 “trophy games” will be lost as annual tilts — Jim Delany’s plan could provide Mike Slive and his conference with one very good idea.

Beginning in 2016, the Big Ten will feature a pair of seven-team divisions under simple East and West banners, just as the SEC currently boasts.  The league will begin playing a nine-game conference schedule as well.  And for those SEC fans who’ve barked about an uneven number of home and road games being the signature feature of a nine-game slate, the Big Ten came up with a pretty straight-forward remedy.  In even-numbered years, teams from the East Division will play five home games and four road games.  In odd-numbered years, all the West Division teams will host five league games and travel to play four.

In other words, no team within a division will hold a home/road advantage over another team in its division.  Ever.

Problem solved.

We believe that a nine-game slate with a 6-1-2 format still is the safest bet for the SEC moving forward.  (Short of that, the league should adopt an eight-game conference schedule without divisions and simply ask the NCAA for a waiver regarding its championship game in Atlanta.)  Currently, no one knows who will be picking the teams for the new College Football Playoff or what criteria they will use to do so.  If schedule strength is as big a component as expected, the question then becomes a matter of personal opinion.  And with just about everyone outside of the SEC footprint completely and totally exhausted by the SEC’s dominance, it’s not hard to imagine Slive’s conference getting the short end of the stick if its teams don’t play each other “enough.”  What “enough” is will depend on those individual voters, of course.

So why not just go ahead and make the move that will someday be required?  Eventually, a nine-game conference schedule will come to pass.  The league will make more money with better inventory on its soon-to-launch network.  Playing another game inside the league will also help negate any possible charges from selection committee members that Big Ten, Pac-12, and Big XII teams play nine conference games while SEC teams play eight and four patsies.  There’s also the added benefit of keeping more SEC rivalries alive.

Some claim that an added SEC game would lead league schools to stop scheduling quality non-conference foes.  Well, if those programs want to be taken seriously, that won’t be the case.  It appears — though we won’t know for sure for a couple more years — that most conferences are planning to have their teams play 10 quality foes per year (nine conference games, one good non-conference game).

But most SEC teams currently play only nine quality games per season (eight league games, one good non-conference foe, and three creampuffs).  The league’s 2013 schedule shows SEC teams squaring off against Georgia State, Chattanooga, Louisiana-Lafayette, Samford, Arkansas State, Western Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Toledo, Georgia Southern, North Texas, Appalachian State, Miami (Ohio), Alabama State, Kent State, Furman, Alcorn State, Troy, Bowling Green, Murray State, Southeast Missouri State, Idaho, Coastal Carolina, Austin Peay, South Alabama, Sam Houston State and UMass.

If you are interested in paying money to see any of those teams play an SEC school then you should look up a famous quote often attributed to PT Barnum.  Keyword: Sucker.

Nine is coming.  Sooner or later.  The new playoff and push toward strength of schedule should allay fears that SEC teams will drop good nonconference foes to make room for the added league game.  And the Big Ten just easily swept aside the overblown argument that some teams would hold an advantage over their division foes when playing five home games in a year.

Next argument?

Eight SEC players were taken in the second round of the NFL draft Friday night.  Another twelve were selected in the third round.  Combined with the 12 players picked in round one, the SEC can claim 32 of the 97 players (includes compensatory picks) taken so far.  That’s basically one out three coming from America’ s best conference.

Here’s how the SEC stacks up to other power conferences.

SEC – 32

ACC – 12

Pac-12 – 11

Big 12 – 8

Big East – 8

Big Ten – 7

Here’s Friday night’s SEC breakdown:

Second Round

TN – Justin Hunter, Tennessee

MSU – Darius Slay, Detroit

MSU -Johnthan Banks, Tampa Bay

LSU – Kevin Minter, Arizona

FL – Jon Bostic, Chicago

USC – D.J. Swearinger, Houston

AL – Eddie Lacy, Green Bay

A&M – Christine Michael, Seattle

Third Round

KY – Larry Warford, Detroit

LSU – Bennie Logan, Philadelphia

LSU – Tyrann Mathieu, Arizona

TN – Dallas Thomas, Miami

A&M – Damontre Moore, New York Giants

GA – John Jenkins, New Orleans

GA – Shawn Williams, Cincinnati

FL – Jordan Reed, Washington

AU – Corey Lemonier, San Francisco

LSU – Sam Montgomery, Houston

ARK – Knile Davis, Kansas City

MO – Zaviar Gooden, Tennessee

* With two players taken in the first round, one in the second and three in the third, LSU now has six players selected in the draft, the most of any SEC team.

* Two of LSU’s selections, linebacker Kevin Minter and defensive back Tyrann Mathieu, are headed to Arizona where they’ll be reunited with former teammate Patrick Peterson. Mathieu and Peterson were roommates in 2010. Mathieu is expected to play safety for the Cardinals.

* Alabama three first-round picks were followed by just one player on Day Two of the draft.  Eddie Lacy, projected by many as a first-round pick, fell to the bottom of the second round.  He wasn’t even the first running back taken.  Three others preceded him in round two.

* Tennessee’s Justin Hunter won’t have far to travel, making the move down Interstate 40 from Knoxville to Nashville. The Titans have made four picks and three of them are on former SEC players.  After taking Alabama’s Chance Warmack in the first round and Hunter in the second, Tennessee used their second of two third-round picks on Missouri linebacker Zaviar Gooden.

* Florida linebacker Jon Bostic is headed to Chicago where he could be asked to fill the shoes of departing Bears star Brian Urlacher.

* Five teams shut out of the first round had players taken Friday night. Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky and South Carolina all had one player drafted while Mississippi State had two with defensive backs Darius Slay and Johnthan Banks.

* Georgia had a defensive back taken Friday night but maybe not the one a lot of people expected.  Safety Shawn Williams is headed to Cincinnati, joining a bevy of former Bulldogs drafted by the Bengals.  Teammate and fellow safety Bacarri Rambo has yet to be taken.

* Of the 14 SEC schools, only two failed to generate a draft pick in the first three rounds- Ole Miss and Vanderbilt.

* Here are a few household name SEC players that have yet to get their ticket punched: quarterbacks Tyler Wilson of Arkansas and Tyler Bray of Tennessee, Alabama center Barrett Jones and who will pull the trigger on South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore?  The draft concludes today with rounds four through seven.

The rumors have been around for years, so why have the SEC and Florida State never been able to strike a deal?  Buried in a long story in the Tallahassee Democrat today about the ACC’s grant of media rights are some insights from FSU president Eric Barron on the topic.

According to the paper, FSU officials never believed the SEC saw a financial advantage in adding the Seminoles. Why?  Because it didn’t add television markets or new recruiting territories.

“If you go look at all the realignments that have occurred, with maybe one exception, (they have) been to add a new state – a new territory. You look at what the SEC did; they go for Missouri and Texas. You look at the Big Ten; they hit Nebraska first, then Maryland and Rutgers in the New Jersey/New York market. So basically, they added contiguous real estate.”

Barron also told the paper he was skeptical of the numbers being bandied about in any SEC deal.

“Typically, when we hear about the SEC’s numbers, it’s every apple and orange (factored) into that pool. And typically, when you hear about ACC numbers, you’re hearing about what people are speculating about the TV contract, the details of which are not public information.”

The ACC came to an agreement Monday that extended the grant of media rights to the league office through 2027, effectively locking the league in place through that time period.

This week, the presidents of the FBS unveiled a good portion of the plan for the new College Football Playoff that will launch after the 2014 regular season.  Those changes — coupled with the end of all existing bowl contracts — provide the SEC with an opportunity to branch out and expand it’s bowl lineup into new areas.

Just don’t expect said branching to be easy on the ol’ noodle.

The SEC has made no secret about its desire to send a team to at least one bowl in Texas.  With the Cotton Bowl’s inclusion in the playoff rotation, the SEC has lost the one Texas bowl with which had been partnered.  In addition, the Chick-fil-A Bowl — which will once again become the Peach Bowl — is a part of the new playoff rotation as well.  For SEC fans, that means this year will be the final year that a league squad will be contracted to spend New Year’s Eve in Atlanta.

There will be other changes to the SEC lineup as well.  Gone is the old two-teams-per-season BCS rule that capped the number of squads from once conference.  With six bowls now part of college football’s New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day party, any number of highly-ranked SEC teams could be invited to take part in the two-bowl playoff or in the overall six-bowl plan in a given year.  The number of invitees will be determined by the yet-to-be-determined football selection committee and their yet-to-be-determined criteria.

In past seasons, the SEC has had 10 bowl tie-ins (including the BCS’ Sugar Bowl) with the opportunity to land an 11th squad in the BCS Championship Game.  When that happened, the last bowl or two in the SEC pecking order — depending on the number of bowl-eligible teams from within the league — would lose their “guaranteed” SEC partner.  Moving forward without a cap, an even greater number of lower-end bowl partners could lose out on SEC teams that are picked for the “big bowls.”

Under the new plan, the SEC champion will now be partnered with the Big XII champion in the new and improved Sugar Bowl.  That is when the SEC and/or Big XII champion are not in the playoffs and when the Sugar Bowl is not hosting a playing game.  So long as the Sugar isn’t a semifinal site, it will always host teams from the SEC and the Big XII, though it might not — and probably won’t be — the two leagues’ champions.

If the SEC champion is not part of the playoff and the Sugar Bowl is in the semifinal rotation — an unlikely scenario — then the SEC champion will be sent to either the Peach, Orange, Fiesta or Cotton bowls.  (The Sugar Bowl is partnered with the Rose Bowl throughout the 12-year rotation.)  With geography a component of the new system, expect an SEC champion not in the playoffs to be sent to Atlanta, Miami or Arlington when the Sugar Bowl is a semifinal site.

Speaking of the Orange Bowl, the SEC has already locked in a slot in that bowl, too.  As is the case with the SEC and Sugar Bowl, the ACC champion is contracted to play in Miami each year… so long as that champ is not in the playoffs and the Orange is not serving as a semifinal site.  In those years that the Orange is not part of the playoff, the bowl will be slotted either an SEC team, a Big Ten team, or Notre Dame.

Follow all that?  Of course not.  It’s ridiculous.

But for the SEC, just know that the new bowl lineup probably won’t look like the old bowl lineup:

Sugar Bowl (New Orleans):  SEC vs BCS at-large

Capital One Bowl (Orlando):  SEC vs Big Ten

Cotton Bowl (Arlington):  SEC vs Big XII

Outback Bowl (Tampa):  SEC vs Big Ten

Chick-fil-A Bowl (Atlanta):  SEC vs ACC

Gator Bowl (Jacksonville):  SEC vs Big Ten

Music City Bowl (Nashville):  SEC vs ACC

Liberty Bowl (Memphis):  SEC vs C-USA

BBVA Compass Bowl (Birmingham):  SEC vs Big East

AdvoCare V100 Bowl (Shreveport):  SEC vs ACC

Before you start trying to figure out if the SEC will say goodbye to any of the above locations — aside from the already out-the-window Arlington and Atlanta, of course — keep in mind that it’s been reported that the SEC, Big XII, ACC and Big Ten have already discussed a scheduling rotation that would land schools from those leagues in the Music City (Nashville), Belk (Charlotte), and Alamo (San Antonio) bowls over a period of time (probably 12 years to match the new playoff contract).  The goal: Lock in and guarantee as many bowl bids as possible for each league, leaving the smaller conferences to duke it out for lesser bowl invites and chump change.

In all honesty, at MrSEC.com we’re for a system that sends SEC teams to new sites to face new, fresh, different opponents.  There are only so many times you can watch the SEC battle the Big Ten or ACC before those games all just run together in a “Didn’t they play last year, too?” mish-mash.

So what exactly is coming next for Mike Slive’s league?

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If you’re wondering about the complaints that will eventually — three, two, one… now — pop-up regarding the new College Football Playoff, there’s one that we’ll list as a 100% guaranteed lock.

Coming soon, fans of other conferences will bemoan the fact that four of the six bowls making up the new semifinal rotation are located in SEC states.  Trust us.  It’s coming.  And the loudest groans will rise up from Big Ten-owned Rust Belt.

For a better understanding of who the new rotation of major bowls will work, let’s look at the first three years of the plan, as sources say it will look:

As you can see, aside from Pasadena (CA) and Glendale (AZ), the majority of the major bowls and semifinals will be played in SEC territory — Arlington (TX), New Orleans (LA), Atlanta (GA), and Miami Gardens (FL).

Now, the college football bowl scene has traditionally been dominated by warm weather cities.  After all, would you rather get in a December or January vacation in the sunshine of Florida or the sleet of Detroit?  But you can unfortunately throw common sense right out the window on this one.  Big Ten fans won’t want to hear it.

There will be plenty of grumbling over the fact that Big Ten teams — and others from non-SEC leagues — will have to travel to Mike Slive’s backyard in two out of every three major games.  There will be cries that SEC teams won’t have to be tested in the elements (as if two teams playing in ideal conditions is a bad thing).  There will be whines that SEC teams involved in the new system will have more fans on hand for their teams’ games.  (While that may be true, tickets will be made readily available to everyone… and we at MrSEC.com would be willing to bet SEC fans will also dominate attendance at the Fiesta Bowl and Rose Bowl when their favorite teams are shipped out to those points.)

But if you’re wondering what the early favorite for “Something To Cry About” is, it’ll be that the new system is designed to feature Eastern (Miami Gardens and Atlanta), Central (Arlington and New Orleans), and Western (Glendale and Pasadena) cities, rather than Southern, Central and Northern cities.  Nevermind the fact that no Northern cities put forth bids for any of the currently slots.

On the bright side, once the FBS presidents decide on a playoff selection panel and its workings, location complaints will quickly fall down the list of things to moan about.

When the smoke cleared following the ACC’s announcement of its new grant of rights agreement, we mentioned that there still be some talk of the Big Ten chasing an SEC team like Kentucky, Missouri or Vanderbilt.  According to The Omaha World-Herald, at least one of those schools was researched by Jim Delany and crew.

Citing sources “from conference offices and major college athletic departments,” The World-Herald’s Lee Barkfknecht says there are a lot of folks who still don’t believe a grant of rights is any more powerful than a regular ol’ exit fee.  He also wrote:

“As a sidenote, two sources have told The World-Herald that the Big Ten has done prior ‘homework’ on Oklahoma, Kansas and Vanderbilt among other schools who might some day be expansion targets.  The Big 12 grant-of-rights deal didn’t stop a look-see for OU and KU.”

MrSEC.com prediction: The big story that will be written and re-written about all summer long — how ironclad are grants of rights?

For those worried about an SEC defection, don’t bet on one.  The league has no official grant-of-rights contract and it also has no exit fee, but there’s a reason.  No school will walk away from the millions upon millions of dollars the conference’s members stand to make with the new SEC Network and the bundling of the league’s television and digital rights with ESPN.

Now here’s something unexpected…

David Glenn of WCMC-FM in Raleigh — that’s not him at left — is reporting today that the schools of the ACC will soon announce a “unanimous 15 school agreement extending” a grant of media rights to the league office.  If/when such a move occurs, it will likely serve as an emergency brake for the runaway train known as conference realignment.

According to Glenn, who is also the publisher of the ACC Sports Journal at ACCSports.com, the deal is expected to run through the conclusion of the current ACC/ESPN television contract in 2027.

ESPN’s Brett McMurphy has confirmed the report through his own ACC sources and David Teel of The Daily Press in Hampton Roads, Virginia has reported that the GOR was distributed to ACC schools three to four weeks ago for their review.

So what does this mean?

* It means John Swofford has solidified his Atlantic Coast Conference.  That was a Herculean task with Jim Delany and the Big Ten bearing down on his league.  Kudos to the ACC commish.

* It means that any school attempting to leave the ACC prior to 2027 would have to forfeit its rights (ie: television money) back to the ACC regardless of what league it wound up in.  Not only would the school lose millions upon millions of dollars, but any league looking to add an ACC school would — theoretically — see no real financial reward from bringing in said school.

* It means the Big Ten, Big XII and SEC won’t be making raids for schools such as Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Duke, NC State, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Florida State, or Miami as many had expected and some had hoped.

And before you start wondering, there are already reports that the ACC plans to stand pat at 15 schools (14 full members plus Notre Dame).

Ironically, the last major conference without an official grant of rights deal is the SEC, though with the league buying back most of its schools’ third-tier media rights and rolling them into the league’s new deal with ESPN, it might as well have such a document.  Also, while the Big XII might eye Arkansas or the Big Ten might consider Kentucky or Vanderbilt or finally Missouri, there’s really very little chance of any SEC school leaving.  As Mike Slive is fond of pointing out, the SEC has no exit fee (because no one would ever want out).

So if the Big Ten truly wants to grow into a 16-school league, UConn and Cincinnati remain available.

If the Big XII wants to expand past 10 schools, BYU, Cincinnati, UConn, or other smaller Midwestern/Western schools (such as Boise State) would appear to be the best bets.

For the SEC, it looks as though the league will remain a 14-school league after all, which is exactly what multiple SEC sources have told us the conference was hoping for lo these many turbulent months.  If the ACC’s grant of rights agreement comes about and it is as ironclad as most lawyers believe these types of agreements to be, any SEC move into Virginia or North Carolina won’t occur on Slive’s watch.

And for the average college sports fan who was just praying for an end to the expansion/realignment madness, this shocker of a move should serve as a belated Christmas present.

Big news.

For the ACC, the best way to achieve stability would be for the league to add Notre Dame as a full member.  Currently the Irish are scheduled to join John Swofford’s conference in 2013-14, but only those sports not using a pigskin will officially join.  The Notre Dame football team will play five ACC opponents each year, but it will maintain it’s independence.

It will also maintain its television contract with NBC.

Yesterday it was announced the school and the network had extended their current contract by another 10 years, running through the 2025 gridiron campaign.  In the past the school and the network had agreed to five-year extensions of the deal that was initially signed back in 1991.

NBC — now merged with Comcast — can offer “additional avenues to expand the breadth of Notre Dame-related sports programming on NBC platforms,” according to Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick.  In other words, expect NBC to continue to air Notre Dame home football games while the new NBC Sports Network (which reaches 80 million homes) will launch specialty programming focused on Notre Dame athletics.  NBC Sports Network will also have access to the school’s other sports and a home football game on occasion.

ESPN owns the rights to Notre Dame road football games played at ACC schools via its contract with that conference.

In a statement, NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus said, “We are particularly excited that this extension offers enhanced rights that allow us to bring Notre Dame Football to fans on more platforms than ever before.”

So why write of this on an SEC-centric website?  Because Notre Dame’s extension with NBC impacts the ACC and the ACC is the conference that’s currently most vulnerable to another league’s raid.

“I think it strengthens us in a lot of different ways,” Swarbrick said yesterday.  “It’s not intended to be a signal about (independence).  Our commitment to it isn’t more today than it was two years ago.  It’s a starting point for our planning what we wanted to achieve.”

Maybe so, but the deal most certainly does button-up Notre Dame as a football independent for the foreseeable future.  With NBC/Comcast cash rolling in, the school can continue along as an adjunct football member of the ACC.  Or another conference.

From an ACC standpoint, Notre Dame won’t be rushing in as a last-minute hero to save the day.  If the Irish had joined the league full-time — and no one really expected that they would — it would have meant four additional ND/ACC football games each season.  That would would have meant more inventory to sell to ESPN and more cash for the league’s schools.  It would also would have meant that “football schools” like Florida State and Clemson would’ve seen Notre Dame more often.  As it stands, 14 ACC schools will be pushing for matchups with Notre Dame but only five per year will get them.

It’s believed that several ACC schools have had discussions with the Big Ten regarding a potential jump to Jim Delany’s league.  Maryland is currently fighting to escape the ACC’s $50 million exit fee by way of the court system.  If that fee is eventually negotiated down — like just about every other exit fee that’s ever been challenged — it’s possible schools like Virginia, Georgia Tech, and/or North Carolina could get invites from the Big Ten.

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There’s an assumption, an expectation, that many folks seem to be jumping to with regards to the soon-to-be-announced SEC Network.  That belief is that the Southeastern Conference and ESPN will split ownership of the new channel.  And, yes, we’ve made that very same assumption.

Well, as Mama always said, “Never assume…”

As we’ve covered on this site before, there are at least three different ownership models open to the SEC when it comes to its new network.

1.  The SEC could follow the path taken by the Big Ten.  Jim Delany’s league owned 51% of its network with the other 49% owned by FOX Entertainment Group, when the network was launched.  (That ownership split flipped in favor of FOX — 51% to the Big Ten’s 49% — some time since 2010.)  By far the most successful of all the conference- or school-specific sports networks, many have jumped to the conclusion that the Southeastern Conference will just copy this set-up.  Again, we were one of those jumpers earlier this week.

2.  The SEC could opt to do what the Pac-12 has done and launch a network all on its own.  The SEC could own it while paying ESPN to run it.  The Pac-12 has a deal in place with Comcast Media Center to help with the production of its national channel and its six regional networks.

3.  Finally, the SEC could follow in the University of Texas’ footsteps and simply take home a fat check from ESPN every year.  The network would own the channel in that scenario, not the conference.  In Texas’ case, the school is set to receive $300 million from ESPN over a 20-year period.

You can likely scratch Option #2 from the list as the SEC certainly won’t want to incur all the start-up costs involved in a network launch.  Long-term, ownership might be a gold mine, but out of the gates it could be a nightmare scenario.

Option #1 — the one most have simply taken for granted will the path most likely to be taken — has its drawbacks, too.  As a co-owner of the network, the SEC’s cash intake would be tied to what the channel is bringing in… and up front, that might not be a whole lot.  Carriage battles with cable and satellite providers could be quite messy.  They have been for everyone else who’s launched a network (the Big Ten, the Pac-12, Texas, the NFL, etc).  Those fights delay a network’s growth and earnings.

Which brings us to Option #3, the Longhorn Network model.  It’s a plan that’s obviously already being used by ESPN, the company that the SEC will work with on its network.  It’s a plan that would guarantee the SEC is making X amount of dollars right from the outset, regardless of whatever struggles ESPN might have in carriage negotiations.

Yesterday a friendly tipster pointed out an additional tidbit to us — the Southeastern Conference owns nothing.  Here’s a breakdown of SEC revenues and expenses as of 2011.  Page down and you’ll find a spreadsheet showing exactly what the league owned through 2007.  If you look under land, building, equipment, other assets… you’ll find zeroes.

Since 1948 the SEC has had its offices in Birmingham.  The city has provided office space to the league in exchange for a $1 per year lease.  When the league moved the SEC Championship Game from Birmingham to Atlanta in 1994 there was some talk of the lease going up, but the city backed down when the SEC let it be known it was willing to pull up stakes and move.  There has been talk of moving the league’s headquarters from time to time since, but the SEC is still currently residing in 30,000-feet worth of leased property.

Add it all up and it seems likely that the SEC will simply allow ESPN to own the network in exchange for a hefty annual check.  Such a set-up would appear to be much more of a win-win for the conference.  The SEC would be guaranteed money up front, regardless of the struggles ESPN might face in launching the channel, getting it carried, and selling advertising for it.  On the back end, built-in escalators in the contract could guarantee that Mike Slive’s league will get even richer if the network outperforms its cash projections.

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