Tonight when Florida faces Stetson, Gator coach Billy Donovan will be going for the 400th victory of his career.  The 46-year-old coach has been a head coach since 1994 and has served in Gainesville since 1996.  It’s hard to believe that Donovan has been in the SEC that long.

In 16 years at Florida he’s won two national titles, been to three Final Fours and cranked out eight NBA first-round draft picks. 

For comparison’s sake, Mike Krzyzewski is now the game’s all-time winningest coach with 907 wins at the age of 64.  If Donovan continues to coach into his 60s and continues to enjoy his current level of success, it’s likely he’ll finish his career ranked among the top four or five winningest college basketball coaches ever.

Good luck to Donovan tonight.

The possibility of a Kentucky exit from the SEC continued to get play today as a reporter asked Joker Phillips during his Monday presser if the Cats should bail on their longtime home.


“I don’t think it’s… it’s not my job or my deal to be thinking about, but I think we are in a good situation right here were we are.”


Seven NCAA Tournament championships, 14 Final Fours and some people actually believe Kentucky would be better off moving to a tougher basketball league in order to aide a football program that’s less important to Wildcat fans in the first place?

Don’t underestimate this angle of the ACC talk, folks — by pointing out just how futile UK’s hopes are in football, reporters are able to twist the knife a bit deeper into Phillips’ back.  Every time he has to answer a question regarding the weakness of his program, Phillips is further painted as incompetent. 

And that’s a little rough on a guy who’s just 17 games into his job.

The rich are getting richer in college sports.

In a move that will cause seismic quakes across the landscape of college athletics (and future conference expansion plans), the University of Texas and ESPN have finally reached an agreement in their efforts to build a television network geared exclusively toward Longhorn sports.

Texas will make $300 million over the course of its 20-year deal with ESPN and its new Longhorn Network will be the first of its kind.  Think Big Ten Network (which is a partnership between that conference and Fox) but with one school earning all the proceeds.

Texas is an IMG school and once that group’s multimedia rights fees are sliced out, the Longhorns should receive about $15 million per year in new revenue.  That’s on top of its existing “biggest piece of the pie” cut from Big 12 revenues.  Which has already helped Texas fund the biggest sports budget in the country for 2010-11.

With this kind of financial advantage — plus a great recruiting base, tremendous facilities, and a history of winning — SEC fans had better get used to seeing Texas in BCS bowls and Final Fours.  The Longhorns are about to become uber-rich… which should help them to become even stronger in athletics.  If that’s possible.

On another front, Texas was very much at the heart of 2010′s conference expansion talks.  The Big 12 nearly broke apart because the have-nots in that league were sick of being controlled (and out-spent) by the one very big have down in the Lone Star State.

The Pac-10 almost expanded to 16 teams in order to land the Horns.  The Big Ten also flirted with Bevo and company.  This summer was all about Texas.  And now Texas has even more power.

At some point the Big 12 will finally come apart.  When that happens, every league out there will race to land the Longhorns.  But Texas will have the power to demand whatever it likes from its new partners, thus setting up a new conference that will face the same revenue-sharing issues that have plagued the Big 12.

In other words, everyone will want Texas because they’re so rich and powerful.  But landing Texas might actually be a bad thing in the long haul… because they’re so rich and powerful.