Vanderbilt coach James Franklin opposes potential move to nine-game schedule..
…”If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Tennessee A.D. Dave Hart on coach Butch Jones:  ”I think he’s off to a very, very good start in terms of galvanizing our fan base.”
Alabama coach Nick Saban on preparing for Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel: ”I think that’s an ongoing process around here.”
Saban has recruited or coached 111 NFL players, 33 of them at Alabama
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany on the status of expansion: “Dead is a strong word”
Thanks to U.S. Open tennis shifting to ESPN, possible to see more early SEC games on CBS starting in 2015
Follow SEC news year-round at MrSEC.com and on Twitter at Twitter.com/mrsec

Today the SEC and ESPN will announce their plans for the SEC Network.  When all’s said and done it will be the biggest cash cow this side of a Chick-fil-A television ad.  That’s gotten South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier back behind his pulpit, calling for college athletes to receive some form of payment for their work:

“As the commissioner and the presidents and the athletic directors all say, we are going to make a whole lot more money.  My question is, ‘When are we going to start giving a little big of it to the performers?’  Football and basketball players.  It won’t do any good probably, but I’m going to still keep yelling for them.  They bring in an awful lot of money for all of us.”

Some thoughts on Spurrier’s push:

1.  SEC commissioner Mike Slive has been pushing for athletes to receive a stipend of some sorts and spoke of that topic as recently as this week.  So Spurrier’s preaching to the choir when he mentions the league’s power brokers.

2.  Spurrier mentioned only football and basketball players in his comment.  Apparently he believes that only those players from the two traditional revenue sports should be paid.  That makes sense.  But if he thinks athletes from non-revenue sports won’t have their hands out, too, he’s dreaming.

3.  To “keep yelling for” athletes to get paid can’t hurt Spurrier on the recruiting trail.  He can tell any young man that he’s got the kid’s back and will work to get him a stipend or a salary or — as he once suggested — a few hundred bucks out of his own pocket.

Ironically, while Spurrier is pushing for players to be paid because “they bring in an awful lot of money for all of us,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany is pulling in the other direction.  While discussing the Ed O’Bannon case, Delany was asked about high-profile athletes like Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel not making a penny from sales of replica Manziel jerseys.

“If Johnny Manziel was playing arena football tomorrow, what is his uniform worth?” Delany asked in response.

There’s no question that if Manziel were just as successful at Utah State, there would be nowhere near the jersey sales.  Texas A&M has a long history and a huge fanbase.  His point — if a tad cold — is sound.

But so is Spurrier’s.  Somewhere between Spurrier and Delany the truth lies.  Question is — When will NCAA leaders find common ground to compromise?

According to Jason deBruyn of The Triangle Business Journal — an online site covering business news in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill triangle of North Carolina — UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham is looking for cash.  Lots of cash.  As in 40% more athletic department revenue.

According to deBruyn:

“The Tar Heels operate on just more than $70 million for 28 sports (13 men’s and 15 women’s).  While that’s a nice chuck of change, it’s less than other major universities like Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Ohio State and Texas, all of which, except for Ohio State, offer fewer total sports.

Florida, Ohio State and Texas each count operating expenses north of $100 million, with Texas shelling out $125 million for only 20 total sports, the fewest of all the universities listed above.

Getting UNC-Chapel Hill to $100 million will not be easy, and won’t come from just one magical source, says Cunningham…”

Speaking last Wednesday, Cunningham said reaching the $100 million level will require increased ticket sales, donations, sponsorship deals, and media rights deals.

You think Jim Delany or Mike Slive might point out that conference realignment can serve help to boost athletic department revenues, too?  For that matter, do you think John Swofford’s ears might have perked up when he got wind of those remarks?

That whole Big Ten/Pac-12 football scheduling partnership?  Uh, yeah, not happening.  The two leagues announced today that the agreement died before it ever came into being.  That, my friends, is a small win for the SEC.

As we’ve told you for months, the SEC’s decision not to go to a nine-game schedule left it as the only one of the big five leagues not requiring its members to play at least nine BCS-level foes per year.  Writers and talking heads from California to New York and even Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany have alluded to that fact in the past couple of months.  The SEC’s decision to stick at eight league games was an open invitation for everyone outside the South to say, “Hey, they don’t schedule as well as other leagues.”  With playoff berths set to be determined by a selection committee, that kind of talk could hurt the SEC’s chances of landing more than one team in said postseason tourney.

Not anymore.  While the Pac-12 and ACC and Big 12 all still play nine-game conference schedules, the Big Ten sits at eight.  The Pac-12 agreement would have guaranteed Delany’s schools a ninth big-time game.  But the Pac-12 has cited its own nine-game schedule and “previous non-conference commitments” as reasons to kill the deal.  No wonder.  A Pac-12 school like Southern Cal might have wound up playing 11 or even 12 games against top-level programs in a given year thanks to its existing rivalry with Notre Dame and an upcoming scheduling agreement with Texas.

Just last weekend, the head of the SEC’s transition team — former Mississippi State AD Larry Templeton — suggested that the SEC would once again discuss a nine-game schedule in the future due to the new playoff system.  But as long as the Big Ten doesn’t go to a nine-game league schedule, the SEC appears to have more company in the “We just play eight” boat.  (Of course, the Big Ten was planning to go to a nine-game schedule before striking its deal with the Pac-12, so it’s certainly possible that it could decide to go down that road and once again leave the SEC as the lone eight-gamer in major college football.)

But for now, this is a small victory for the SEC in terms of national perception.  Today there’s one less league and one less group of fans who can accuse Mike Slive’s conference of ducking major out-of-conference competition.

1.  ESPN’s Mark Schlabach breaks down the playoff battle brewing between Jim Delany and Mike Slive.

2.  Could a playoff system really cut the little guys from the little conferences out of the race altogether?

3.  This NBA mock draft has the top three players coming from the SEC.

4.  The manhunt for the alleged shooter at Auburn goes on… after police raided the wrong Alabama house.  (Two arrests have already been made in the case.)

UPDATE — Police now say reports of them raiding the wrong house are inaccurate.

5.  This writer says Gene Chizik is the right man to help lead AU through its current tragic crisis.

6.  Mark Richt’s new contract at Georgia states: “It is expected that the recruitment of junior college student-athletes will be kept to a minimum…”

7.  Andy Staples of SI.com says UGA’s drug policy is noble, but it puts the Dawgs at a disadvantage.

8.  Joker Phillips has ended two long Kentucky streaks for futility, but there are still more streaks to snap.

9.  Tennessee’s Cuonzo Martin is taking his hoops program to children across the Volunteer State.

10.  Vanderbilt’s James Franklin thinks the SEC “is difficult enough” with an eight-game football schedule.

11.  According to The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, Missouri will be an underdog in six of its 12 SEC games this fall.

12.  Sad.  Just a sad day for sports and news coverage.  (Link fixed, sorry.)

1.  The Chronicle of Higher Education says conference-switching can help a school academically (as schools have longed claimed)

2. ESPN’s writers and talking heads have ranked the SEC basketball jobs from best to worst (meaning Kentucky, Florida, Missouri and Tennessee… all the way to MSU, South Carolina, Auburn and Ole Miss).

3.  This writer takes Jim Delany’s “top four teams” comment to mean one thing.  (We believe it could mean something else.)

4.  The SEC has made its tie to the Independence Bowl official.

5. Will Tier III broadcast rights kill the ACC (which would probably lead to further SEC expansion)?

6.  Defensive end Dee Ford is getting some praise at Auburn.

7.  This writer says Arkansas won’t look like your granddaddy’s football team much longer.

8.  Even though it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, some Kentucky fans might be pissed off — you’ll see — by how Louisville coach Charlie Strong is supposedly motivating his team for this year’s game with the Wildcats.

9.  If you’ve got $7,500 lying around to go take part in John Calipari’s UK “fantasy camp,” then your whole like is probably a fantasy camp.

10.  Like Lionel Richie, Calipari can’t slow down.

11.  LSU’s board of supervisors is about to start handing out raises to coaches.

12.  Mississippi State coaches Dan Mullen and Rick Ray are talking about their programs.

13. One-time starting quarterback Zach Stoudt will no longer play football for Ole Miss due to injury.

14.  Texas A&M officials are being welcomed into the SEC today in Atlanta.

15.  Most of Georgia’s freshman football class is already on campus.

16.  Current 19-1 longshot UGA is this handicapper’s pick to win the BCS title.

17.  Tennessee’s competition in the eight-team Puerto Rico Tip-Off tourney has been announced.

18.  Recently booted Vol tight end Cameron Clear will land at Arizona Western (junior) College.

19.  Missouri fans are quite familiar with the SEC’s new (old) bowl partner, the Independence Bowl.

20.  Finally, this gambling site tries to project every SEC football game months in advance, something we tried to do a couple of years ago.  (Here’s hoping they have better luck than we did.)

1.  Anybody up for doing away with “foul outs” in college basketball?  This writer is.

2.  Ah-hah!  Someone else out there picked up on the fact that Jim Delany’s view of “the top four teams” might not mean the four highest-ranked teams.

3.  This writer says another Alabama-LSU BCS title game is a possibility this season.  (How many people outside the South would take up torches and pitchforks if that happened?)

4.  AthlonSports.com ranks LSU as their preseason #2 team in the nation.

5.  Arkansas and Texas A&M pushed a rule through the SEC Meetings in Destin last week allowing an SEC “home team” at a neutral site game to entertain recruits.  But Florida and Georgia have agreed not to do so in their yearly contest at Jacksonville.

6.  UF’s Will Muschamp is more comfortable entering Year Two of his Gator tenure.

7.  As newspaper continue to die away, two longtime Kentucky sports columnists are going from print to television.

8.  Yet another writer believes “the SEC stumbled” in not going to a nine-game football schedule.

9.  One of the assistants Johnny Jones brought with him from North Texas to LSU has stepped down over “personal matters” after just a couple of months on the job.

10.  Hurting for depth at quarterback, Mississippi State has grabbed a last-minute, dual-threat walk-on from Memphis for the 2012 season.

11.  Here’s a tremendous, must-read Destin wrap — filled with great quotes — from Dave Matter of The Columbia (MO) Tribune.

Well, it was only a matter of time.  Yesterday we told you that Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany had said that he doesn’t “have a lot of regard for that team,” when asked about a hypothetical national champ that didn’t win its own division.  ”That team” was an obvious shot at Alabama.

It took a day, but Nick Saban has responded.  Asked yesterday about the Delany’s comment, Bama’s coach said, “Don’t be so self-absorbed,” while not naming Delany directly:

“Too many people are about their own self-preservation rather than doing what’s best for college football.  The whole reason we are talking about doing this is for the fans, and the fans want the four best teams.  To come up with a plan where, instead of having Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 playing but you have Number 1, 3, 6 and 12 or whatever, it doesn’t make any sense.  They don’t do it in basketball, so for once, let’s do what’s best for college football…

A lot of it (in terms of alternate playoff plans) is targeted at our league.  Last year at one point, we had LSU, Arkansas and us ranked 1-2-3 in the BCS.  Two years in a row, we played Florida in the championship game and we were ranked 1-2.  Some people don’t like that.”

No kidding.  SEC fans had better hope that the Mike Slive/John Swofford bloc can hold more sway with small conference commissioners than the Delany/Larry Scott bloc.  If not, we could indeed be looking at a four-team playoff that doesn’t invite the four best teams in the country.  (Only in college football…)

And for those out there who repeatedly tell this writer that conference champs should be given special treatment because we have no way of accurately selecting the four best teams, we also have no way of accurately selecting the four best conference champions.  Under the plans kicked around, those same rankings that would be inaccurate in choosing the top four teams in the country would be used to select which conference champs are in and which are out.

Oops.

It seems Urban Meyer has taken a little something with him from Florida to Ohio State — his recruiting tactics.  Wisconsin’s Bret Bielema and Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio aren’t happy that Meyer broke a Big Ten gentleman’s agreement not to recruit prospects who are already committed to other Big Ten schools.  As you know, nothing close to that type of agreement exists in the no-holds-barred SEC.

Bielema has also hinted that Meyer might be employing other over-the-line tactics, but he wouldn’t go into specifics.  But with regards to trying flip commits, he said:


“I can tell you this, we at the Big Ten don’t want to be like the SEC — in any way, shape or form.”


Fair enough.  Then just keep losing your January bowl games, Bret.

As for Meyer, he doesn’t sound like he’s going to be changing his methods even if Bielema tattles to commissioner Jim Delany.


“If they’re interested, absolutely (you recruit other school’s commits) — especially from your home state.  Is it gratifying to take a guy from another school?  Not at all.”


Did anyone else’s BS alert go off over that last line?

When Mike Slive put forth his “agenda for change” at SEC Media Days last month, football coaches cringed.  The commissioner was raising the possibility of raising standards — academic standards included — for athletes and programs and by definition that will make coaches have to work harder in the future.  If such standard-raisings are actually made.

NCAA president Mark Emmert has told CBSSports.com’s Dennis Dodd that Slive’s proposed move from 2.0 to 2.5 (for incoming athletes’ core GPAs) is already being pushed:


“Many of the issues that Mike and others have described have been works in progress for some time.  Going from 2.0 to 2.5 is an active proposal that is coming out of the committee on academic performance. …

I was delighted that Mike (and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany) and all those putting proposals out there are doing so.  It’s a different day when commissioners are almost in competition to see who can come up with the best reform package.”


Indeed it is.  And with the exception of cost-of-attendance scholarships, most coaches won’t be pleased with the reform ideas being discussed.