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.

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.)

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.”

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.

2. Derek Dooley on multi-year scholarships: “We forget this is a contract, a two-way street.”

3. And on the season-ending loss at Kentucky: “It eats me alive. I didn’t sleep for a week after that game.”

4. Urban Meyer is doing to the Big Ten what Lane Kiffin did to the SEC.

5.  ”(J)ust admit everyone’s guilty of poaching on some level…”

6. The Darius Philon story will not go away.

7. Neither will the Jarrett Lee BCS championship game saga.

8. Jordan Jefferson leads two scoring drives but the North beats the South in the Players All-Star Classic.

9. Avery Johnson will legally change his last name to Peterson when he arrives on the LSU campus.

10.  A signing day breakdown for the Ole Miss Rebels.

11. And one for Mississippi State.

12. How to work a living room – Kentucky Wildcats style.

13. Alabama 69 – Ole Miss 67 (2 OT).  Key plays by Trevor Releford prove to be  the difference. Ole Miss loses seven-point halftime lead.

14. LSU 71 – Arkansas 65.  Four scorers in double figures for the Tigers. Arkansas still winless on the road.

15. Mississippi State 91 – Auburn 88. Bulldogs connect on 12 3-point shots. Beat Auburn despite Dee Bost fouling out with 3.29 to go.

16. Florida 73 – Vanderbilt 65.  19 straight at  home for the Gators. Press and double teams doom the Commodores.

17. Kentucky 85 – South Carolina 62. 22 points, eight rebounds and eight blocked shots for Anthony Davis in a record-setting game for the freshman. Worst loss in Darrin Horn’s coaching career.

18. The Big Blue Nation Occupy Movement.

19, Tennessee 73 – Georgia 62. Lineup shuffle a winner for the Vols. Georgia coach Mark Fox ejected.

20. Mike Strange: “I pity the teams who have to prepare a scouting report on Tennessee.”

21. Is selfishness killing college basketball?

Extras

22. The NFL wants more Thursday night games.

23. Former Kentucky player Dermontti Dawson elected to Pro Football Hall of Fame.

24. IBM says Twitter prefers Eli.

25. The 21 strangest Super Bowl prop bets.

26. The Super Bow is over when this happens.

2. Mike Bianchi: “He’s not just Urban Liar anymore, he’s Urban Hypocrite as well.”

3. Alabama’s early enrollees spoke on Friday.  You won’t hear them again until 2013.

4. When nobody cares if you flip schools.

5.  A Madden ’12 NFL tournament is part of the team-building process at Tennessee.

6. Cap on signing class comes back to burn the Volunteers.

7. Tennessee  makes the Derrick Ansley hire official on Friday.

8. Adam Henry is the new wide receivers coach at LSU.

9. Steve Spurrier fills the final vacancy in the South Carolina staff.

10. Signing day turns adults into children.

11. Happy 25th birthday - 3-point shot.

12. Arkansas at LSU.  Can the Razorbacks finally deliver a win on the road? Senior LSU forward Malcolm White suspended for today’s game.

13. Auburn at Mississippi State.  Arnett Moultrie’s transer to Mississippi State  is still a sore point with Auburn coach Tony Barbee. Moultrie has NBA potential.

14. Ole Miss at Alabama.  When Alabama scores 70 or more points or when opponents shoot less than 40% - Crimson Tide is almost a lock to win. Rebels should be rested - they’ve had a week off between games.

15. Alabama still controls its tournament destiny.

16. Vanderbilt at Florida.  A battle between two veteran coaches, Billy Donovan and Kevin Stallings have known one another for almost 20 years. With Vandy today and Kentucky on Tuesday, a key stretch for the Gators.

17. Kentucky at South Carolina.  John Calipari hasn’t forgotten the last time a No. 1 ranked Kentucky team played in Columbia.  A brutal first-half SEC schedule for the Gamecocks.

18. Calipari on Darrin Horn: “South Carolina’s hard. Hard deal to get going.”

19. Georgia at Tennessee.  Kentavious Caldwell-Pope hits the freshman wall.   Bulldogs struggling offensively – shooting less than 40% as a team. The Vols’ Cameron Tatum can identify – he’s in a  1-for-21 shooting slump.

20. Jerry Palm and Joe Lunardi agree on five SEC teams that should make the NCAA tournament. They disagree on a possible sixth.

Extra

21. Does the Big Ten have more integrity than the SEC?

22. New York Times rips the NCAA.  NCAA fires back.

“The format will consist of each team playing all six in its division each year, plus its primary crossover partner each year and two rotating opponents from the opposite division.  This six-year cycle allows each team to play each divisional opponent and its primary crossover partner six times (three home and three away) while also playing each rotating crossover opponent two times (one home and one away).

If you read MrSEC.com with any regularity, you know that’s the exact format that we’ve pushed as the SEC’s best method of protecting traditional rivalries and moving forward into a new age.

We still believe that the league will go to such a plan at some point in the future so long as the bowl-eligibility standard isn’t raised to seven wins.

But the SEC’s coaches and athletic directors — for now — are scared to death of a nine-game plan.  They don’t want to give up the cash brought in by an extra home game every year (even though the new TV contracts more than make up for the loss of a home every other season).  They cry that a nine-game schedule would kill the league’s national title hopes (even though just the opposite happened when the league expanded to eight games and added a conference title game).

Barring a nine-game format, we recently pushed this divisionless format… assuming the SEC could convince the NCAA to drop its schedule requirements for a conference championship game.  But even if the SEC moved to an eight-game, non-divisional plan — the best fallback option out there — its coaches and ADs would still have to live with this disappointing fact:

They’re scared of doing what the ACC is planning to do.

Where’s the fearless leadership of Roy Kramer when you need it?  (And don’t think there weren’t shrieks of terror when he added a title game and shifted the league from six to seven to eight contests per year.)

Well, it seems that Vanderbilt’s James Franklin and MSU’s Dan Mullen have some growing up to do, too.  (There may be more across the SEC, but those are the three cases we’ve come across so far.)

In the cutthroat world of recruiting, coaches rise and fall on the commitments and de-commitments of teenage boys.  Naturally, when a coach loses a player, he’s going to be a) ticked and b) hurt.  But as adults representing major universities, they need to show a bit more maturity than the kids doing the flip-flopping.

Especially when coaches have no problem talking recruits into flipping and flopping to their programs.

On Wednesday, Miles questioned the heart and leadership capabilities of quarterback prospect and Notre Dame signee Gunner Kiel.  In contrast, he talked up the “style” of Jeremy Liggins, a Mississippi quarterback who inked a last-minute deal with the Tigers.

Liggins had been a top target of Mullen’s Mississippi State program.  So when he lost out on Liggins, he offered a scholarship to quarterback Nick Schuessler instead.  And here’s what he had to say about that move:

“It was actually funny.  During that whole weekend (leading up to signing day) we were sitting there with Nick, I kind of came to the conclusion Nick was the better quarterback.  Then it kind of became real heavy that he was the much better quarterback.”

Funny how that works.  You study two players for months and target one.  That one decides to go elsewhere and suddenly it’s obvious that he really wasn’t that good after all.  The other guy was “much better.”

How childish and small of Mullen to make a crack like that about a teenager who’s was trying to make the biggest decision of his young life.

But the immaturity and pettiness didn’t stop there.  In Nashville, James Franklin told a group of Vanderbilt backers that players who de-committed from his program were “not men of honor” and “not men of integrity,” according to Jeff Lockridge of The Tennessean via Twitter.

Hmmm.  Could that have been a shot at last minute flip-flopper Josh Dawson, who decided his skills as a defensive end would be better honed at his homestate school of Georgia?  (It should be noted, Dawson called Vandy’s coaches with the news on the night prior to signing day.  Even VU assistant Sean Spencer said “he was a man” about it.)

What’s ironic is that Franklin’s signing class includes a quarterback named Patton Robinette who walked out of orientation at North Carolina to drive to Nashville and join Franklin’s squad at the last possible instant.

I don’t recall Franklin closing his door to Robinette, do you?  I suppose a player isn’t a man of honor or integrity when he’s leaving you for someone else.  If he’s leaving someone else for you, well, that’s a sign of high character.

I get that coaches like players who sign with them and dislike many kids who sign elsewhere.  I understand that coaches need to spin “lesser” signees to the fanbase when they lose a higher-ranked prospect.  I also understand that coaches like to be applauded and there’s no easier way for a coach to gain applause than by acting angry and wronged in front of his fanbase.  Talk about rallying the troops.

But the fact remains, these coaches are dealing with teenagers.  Regardless of how they might feel post-signing day or what they might say behind the closed doors of the football complex, they need to show enough maturity to not insult and belittle young men who are being pulled in a thousand directions by grown men promising them everything from playing time, to jobs, to an education.

Miles questioned a teen’s heart and talent.  Mullen dissed a teen’s abilities.  Franklin questioned at least one teenager’s honor and integrity.

I wonder if there’s anyone at any of those coaches’ institutions who will question the scorned, schoolgirl behavior of their highest-paid employees?

You’re older than the players, guys.  You’re supposed to be more mature.  Act like it.

Next, we examine Quality by comparing the average amount of points awarded to each school’s prospects:

Finally, we look at only the High-End Signees inked by each school.  The more four- and five-star recruits signed, the better a team’s odds of finding some true playmakers:

To arrive at our final MrSEC.com Recruiting Rankings, we tally up the standings from each category and weight them equally… as each — in our view — is important when trying to determine the true strength of a school’s recruiting class.

(Those final rankings were posted while sitting in the very loud waiting room of a doctor’s office.  If there’s a typo in the charts above, it’ll be corrected soon.)

Below you’ll find the 14 SEC programs ranked according to the percentage of homestate signees they inked yesterday.  This can be a little misleading because one school might reach for some lesser-ranked in-state prospects while another school might decide to chase better athletes outside its state’s borders.  Still, it’s interesting for the sake of comparison:

Below is the list of states that produced SEC signees this year, ranked from most to least:

Observations:

* More SEC signees came from Georgia than South Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Kansas, Indiana, Arizona, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Colorado and all of the other zero-signee states combined.

* Expect the number of signees from Texas to increase in 2013.  When coaches were making connections with players this time last year, Texas A&M was still looked like a Big 12 cornerstone.  SEC programs will focus much more on that state this year.  Just as more Texas athletes will pay attention to SEC games on television.

* It was a down year in Louisiana which impacted LSU’s signing class and resulted in the Pelican State producing just one more SEC signee than Tennessee.

* The number one non-SEC state for SEC talent?  North Carolina produced 10 SEC signees in 2012.  Ohio was next with five.

* Year-in, year-out, you can expect the staffs at Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt to do more long-distance recruiting than their SEC brethren.  That doesn’t mean it can’t be done — witness Arkansas and Carolina now, Tennessee until the past decade — but it is a tougher slog.

That’s one reason SEC newcomer Missouri plans to send out mass “propaganda” to SEC-region high schools in “numbers you can’t imagine.”

As usual, we’ll use the star rankings and current signee lists as provided by Rivals.com.

South Carolina

16.0% of class came from within South Carolina.

Here’s how the total numbers for the league’s 14 members have changed overall from 2010 to 2011 to 2012:


2010 total signees: 359 or 25.6 per school

2011 total signees: 342 or 24.4 per school

2012 total signees: 305 or 21.8 per school


Fewer numbers mean longer odds of finding playmakers, but judging by the SEC’s overall national rankings it’s clear the league passed on more two- and three-star players, not four- and five-star guys.  Naturally.

So while some will no doubt point to the decrease in overall numbers and suggest that SEC teams might start to decline, we continue to say — as we have been saying since the new soft cap passed — that due to the SEC’s location in the most fertile recruiting zone in the country, the new rule isn’t likely to put too big a dent in the league’s overall football product.

For now, we wanted to give you a quick look at the numbers for each SEC program:

Kelvin Rainey, TE

Brock Stadnik, OT

Clayton Stadnik, C

Jerrell Adams, TE

TJ Holloman, LB

TJ Gurley, S

Jody Fuller, WR

Rico McWilliams, CB

Chaz Elder, CB

Kendric Salley, RB

Brendan Nosovitch, QB

Nick St. Germain, K

Darius English, DE

Joe Harris, OG

Mason Zandi, OT

Next, a look at the quality of each school’s class:

And now a look at the high-end players only, the four- and five-star prospects:

And finally, we combine the rankings above to come up with our own final pre-signing day MrSEC.com Recruiting Rankings:

* How can the SEC protect the league’s oldest football rivalries and, in doing so, save what’s helped make the league so special — tradition?

* How can the SEC welcome in two new schools without completely destroying its current scheduling structure?

* Can the league accomplish its goals without eventually going to a nine-game conference slate?

The league’s coaches and athletic directors want no part of a nine-game schedule.  Despite the fact that the league kicked things into hyperdrive when it expanded its conference schedule from six to seven to eight contests in the early 90s, the current batch of administrators are scared to death of a move to nine games.  And regardless of the fact that it wasn’t that long ago that teams hosted as few as six home games per year in an 11-game season, most SEC power brokers claim they can’t afford to play fewer than seven home games per year in a 12-game environment.  (Too bad those multi-billion dollar TV contracts don’t cover the costs of a single home game lost every other year, huh?)

We at MrSEC.com still feel a nine-game slate with a 6-1-2 format would protect rivalries and allow cross-divisional teams to face one another on a regular basis.  But if the powers-that-be in college football move the bowl eligibility standard to seven wins, even we will throw in the towel on a nine-game slate.  No way it would happen.  SEC administrators in 2012 aren’t as daring, aren’t as brave, aren’t as visionary as those who made the league tougher and stronger twenty years ago.

If, then, an eight-game schedule is a must, the SEC must attempt to persuade the NCAA to abolish its current requirements for a conference championship game.  At the moment, a league must be divided into two divisions of at last six teams each with each team in a division playing every other team in its division.  Why the NCAA cares about such details is anyone’s guess, but for time being, that’s the rule that’s on the books.

Unfortunately, with an eight-game schedule and round-robin scheduling necessary, the SEC’s options are limited:

* Use a 6-1-1 format which would protect one permanent cross-divisional foe per team and set up a rotation in which one school would face the other six teams in the opposite division just twice every 12 years.  (Currently teams face non-divisional teams twice every five years.)

* Use a 6-2 format which would lessen the timespan between cross-divisional matchups… but would also end three of the SEC’s oldest annual rivalries: Auburn-Georgia, Alabama-Tennessee, Ole Miss-Vanderbilt.  (Sidenote: Just because your school might not have an important cross-divisional foe, that doesn’t mean the three games mentioned above don’t have history worth saving.  Those games are darn important to the schools involved.)

SEC officials have made it clear that the league won’t be moving teams from division to division anytime soon.  So you can hold off on the “move Auburn and Alabama to the East” talk.  That’s not happening in the short-term.  It’s also highly unlikely that games like Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee would be scheduled as non-conference games.  (Frankly, that’s absurd.)

Which brings us back to the following point: The SEC must persuade the NCAA to dump its requirements for a championship game.  If that were to happen, the SEC could go to a divisionless format that would allow the league to protect the conference’s oldest rivalries and keep a good rotation going for non-permanent foes.

Without divisions, the SEC could simply pair the teams with the two best SEC records in its championship game.  Forget the problem of having the two best teams in one division.  Without divisions, the two top teams in the league would always reach Atlanta.

Last week, we showed you how an 18-game schedule without divisions could be used to protect the oldest basketball rivalries in the SEC.  It’s simple, it’s clean, and it works.  And you wouldn’t need Pythagoras to help explain it to the folks at home.  “In even numbered years each team’s tertiary rival would supplant its secondary rival, etc, etc.”  Such mumbo wouldn’t be needed.  Our plan would be as easy as 1-2-3.  You can find that 4-1-8 basketball plan here.

Well, just as we set out to protect the oldest basketball rivalries with that format, we’ve done likewise with football’s most important games below.  It’s a 6-2 plan (six permanent opponents, two rotating foes) without divisions.  Teams would face their non-permanent opponents twice every seven years.  Each team would have four home and four road games per season.  And of the 23 SEC rivalries that have been played at least 60 times, 20 would be protected (and two of those lost aren’t currently being played as annual games anyway).

The set-up below — like the basketball plan mentioned above — would also help to create “local” rivalries for the SEC’s newest members.  Now, by protecting each schools’ oldest rivalries, the schedule is set up in such a way that just about every school would have to play either an SEC newcomer or a team from far across the conference.  Grab a spreadsheet, protect the oldest rivalries, and you’ll see what we mean.  Scheduling is not as easy as most people think.

That said, we think the following 6-2 MrSEC.com Non-Divisional Plan would be both fair and rooted in tradition.  We list each school’s permanent opponents from left to right.  All games played more than 60 times are noted:

The only rivalries played 60+ times that would not be permanent matchups under this plan are: Georgia-Vanderbilt (73), Alabama-Georgia (65) and Ole Miss-Tennessee (64).  Only the Georgia-Vandy game is currently an annual tilt.

And now, here’s what a 6-2, non-divisional plan would do for each program:

Alabama — The Tide would play five of its oldest rivals each year.  Bama would also add newcomer Missouri as a regular foe.

Arkansas – The Razorbacks would protect their oldest rivalry (with Texas A&M) and draw neighboring LSU and Missouri on a yearly basis.  The Hogs would also add Georgia as a regular opponent… which is a tad closer than South Carolina.

Auburn — The Tigers would play their four oldest rivals yearly.  They would also add an annual game with South Carolina.

Florida – The Gators’ three oldest rivalries would be protected.  UF would also add Missouri to its schedule.

Georgia — The Bulldogs would protect their two oldest rivalries plus two other games that have been played 60+ times.  UGA would also add Arkansas as a regular opponent.

Kentucky — The Wildcats would protect four of their oldest rivalry games.  UK would also add border state Missouri.  (UK is one of only three schools whose permanent rivals under this plan would match those in the 2012 divisional plan.)

LSU — Three of the Tigers’ oldest rivalries would be saved and Texas A&M would be added to the mix as well.  (Like Kentucky, LSU’s permanent schedule would remain the same under this format.)

Miss. State — The Bulldogs are a part of four of the SEC’s oldest rivalry games and all four would be protected.  MSU would also add newcomer Texas A&M to its mix.  (State is the third school — along with UK and LSU — that would face the same permanent opponents under our plan.)

Missouri — The Tigers would be given annual games against old Big 12 rival Texas A&M and border state schools Kentucky and Arkansas.  The Tigers would also play Ole Miss on a yearly basis as that is a short distance from Southeast Missouri.  In addition, MU would face Florida from across the league on an annual basis.

Ole Miss — Three of the Rebels’ oldest rivalries would be protected and UM would add both Missouri and Texas A&M to its yearly slate.

S. Carolina – The Gamecocks would protect their oldest rivalry (with Georgia) and continue to face all of their current division foes.  Auburn would be added to USC’s schedule as a replacement for Arkansas.

Tennessee – The Volunteers would have three of their most-played games saved.  They would lose Florida — which is basically a 20-year-old rivalry — but add newcomer Texas A&M as an annual foe.

Texas A&M –  The Aggies would protect their oldest rivalry (with Arkansas) and they would gain games LSU and old Big 12 combatant Missouri.  A&M would also add Tennessee to its schedule (which might give the Aggies a new orange-and-white “UT” to hate).

Vanderbilt – The Commodores would have four of their oldest rivalry games protected.  After a lengthy layoff, Alabama would return to VU’s schedule as an yearly foe, too.

Is this plan perfect?  No.  But it’s probably as close as one can come to protecting the SEC’s most historically significant rivalries while also maintaining competitive balance and manageable travel.

If the SEC wants to make an eight-game schedule work, the 6-2 MrSEC.com Non-Divisional Plan is almost a must.  Which means Mike Slive and his league leaders must work to convince the NCAA to drop its totally unnecessary scheduling requirements for conference championship games.

Any other plan would nix too much tradition… and tradition is something the SEC should fight at all costs to defend as it ushers in a new 14-school future.

So how does the homcourt advantage in basketball compare to the homefield advantage in SEC football?  This past season — excluding the neutral site game between Florida and Georgia played in Jacksonville — the home team won 28 of 47 football games.  That 28-19 record equals a 59.5 winning percentage.

In basketball, the home team wins more than seven out of every 10 games played.  in football, the home team wins a hair less than six out of 10.

Why?

Road teams in both sports have their routines shaken up.  And road teams in both sports might tire from travel.

But we believe there are two factors that play a big role in making hoops tougher than football on visitors:


1.  Shooting backgrounds and rims — Shooters have different sight lines and get different bounces off stiffer/softer rims than they are used to in their own arenas.

2.  The crowd is right on top of the action — Both players and officials can feed off of the energy in a building.  It’s human nature to want to feel support.  For players, their effort levels almost always go up at home.  Officials are human, too.  Start noticing how much more demonstrative many refs become when they call a block or a charge against a visitor while smack in the middle of a home team run. 


In football, a stadium is a stadium.  A different “passing backdrop” won’t influence a quarterback, a receiver or a defensive back.

Also, the fans are further away from the action.  The crowd is bigger and louder, but there’s a lot more space between the guy in Section X and the player (or the official) way down on the field of play.

Whatever the reason, there’s no debating the facts.  It’s a lot harder to win an SEC road game in basketball than it is in football.  And it’s not easy in football.

2. Lane Kiffin and the lost recruiting class at Tennessee.

3. John Adams: “The player attrition — resulting, in part, from two head-coaching changes — has been stunning.”

4. A hard 25-man signing cap could mean  an “absolute public relations nightmare” on signing day.

5. “Between now and sign­ing day, nobody has more to gain than Florida, Au­burn, FSU and Georgia,” said ESPN’s Tom Luginbill.

6. Could be a dramatic signing day at Georgia. Here’s what could be the most pivotal piece of the Bulldogs class.

7. “A perfect storm of events” for the class at LSU.

8. Vanderbilt forced to play defense. Team focuses on keeping existing commitments.

9. National signing day and ESPNU.  “This has become a bit of a Christmas morning type of day for college football fans.”

10. Get ready to crank up the fax machines and remember those 900-number recruiting hotlines?

11. Wednesday’s signing day doesn’t mean the process is over for some players.

12. Razorbacks’ Joe Adams named South MVP but North wins Senior Bowl 23-13.

13. Georgia’s Brandon Boykin leaves with an injured leg.

14. “On the Gulf Coast, whether you’re a big football fan or not, you know that the most important event on the social calendar between the end of college bowl season and the beginning of Mardi Gras is the Senior Bowl.”

15. More than 49-million people attended college football games in 2011 - a new record.

16. Auburn long-snapper Josh Harris is a NFL prospect.

Extras

17. Recalling the day the New England Patriots played a home game – at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama.

18. The outsized influence of quarterbacks on the NFL game.

2. PA announcer: “Arkansas coach Mike Davis.”

3. Florida 69 – Mississippi State 57.  Gators make 11 3-point shots. Bulldogs commit 15 turnovers as Florida pulls away late.

4. The under-appreciated Billy Donovan. “There were empty seats scattered throughout the upper levels of the O’Connell Center on Saturday.”

5. Kentucky 74- LSU 50.  Season-high 27 points for Terrance Jones.

6. “If LSU had tackled in BCS game like they have in this one,” tweeted someone named @crtree, “they would have won.”

7. Scott Rabalais: “Things seem to eventually find their own level in the Southeastern Conference when it comes to its two most historically dominant football and basketball powers.”

8. C.M. Newton: ”We’re creating the passive spectator. I don’t know when enough is enough when you’re televising every game, which our coaches want.”

9. Vanderbilt 84 – Middle Tennessee State 77.  Game-high 26 points for John Jenkins.First round NCAA Tournament feel to the game.

10. Ole Miss 66 – South Carolina 62.  14 points and 11 rebounds for Murphy Holloway against his former teammates. Terrance Henry seals the win with 3-point bucket.

11. Tennessee 64 – Auburn 49. Vols have more rebounds than Tigers have points. Tennesee misses 38 shots- Auburn 39. “Stay ugly.”

2. Recruiting Rankings Do Matter…If You Know How To Look At Them

3. If Bowl Eligibility Standards Are Raised, The Impact On The SEC Will Be Big

4. Virginia Tech And NC State To The SEC?  Prepare For Some Political Battles

5. SEC Commitment Comparison

2. Tennessee confirms the hiring of its new special teams/tight ends coach.

3. Georgia’s recruitment of two high-profile tailbacks means Isaiah Crowell will face competition in the fall.

4. Sporting News ranks the recruiting classes.

5. One of the top defensive line recruits in the country has already enrolled at Mississippi State.

6. Has former Florida Gator Janoris Jenkins really changed?  NFL teams are hoping to find out.

7. Mel Kiper thinks former Gator Chris Rainey has a shot at landing in the first round of the NFL draft.

8. Former Alabama center William Vlachos is the smallest offensive lineman at the Senior Bowl but he’s had an edge in practice this week.

9. Several former SEC stars will be on display this afternoon.

10. Jon Solomon: “Recruiting rankings matter. Until they don’t.”

11. Arkansas at Alabama.  One of these streaks ends today:  Arkansas is 0-5 away from Bud Walton Arena; Alabama has lost four in a row.

12. “Anthony Grant and Mike Anderson are near mirror images of one another when it comes to style of play, in particular on defense. ”

13. David Knox: “Odds favor the Crimson Tide.”

14. Middle Tennessee State at Vanderbilt.  Surprising Blue Raiders are 20-2 on the season.

15. Mississippi State at Florida.  Bulldogs know they have a battle against the nation’s top three-point shooting team. Even with his ankle healing, Patric Young may still come off the bench as the schedule for the Gators gets tougher.

16. Kentucky at LSU.  Tigers guard and 2011 Kentucky Mr. Basketball Anthony Hickey gets the chance to perform against his homestate team. “I know I’m going to be a little hyper.”

17. LSU is 3-14 all-time against No. 1 ranked teams.

18. Why is Kentucky basketball always on TV?  John Calipari: “We rate the highest in the country. … Everybody wants to see us.”

19. South Carolina at Ole Miss. Murphy Holloway gets to play against his former teammates. ”We became best friends,” says South Carolina’s Bruce Ellington.

20.  Auburn at Tennessee.  Volunteers need a win to avoid going to the bottom of the SEC. A lot has changed since these two teams have met. Tigers have lost seven straight in Knoxville.

Extras

21. Mark Bradley: “The Manning era in Indy isn’t just at an end — it’s at a bad end.” Peyton Manning and the Houston Texans?

22. Tebowmania.  How much of a role did ESPN play in spreading the craze?

23. Why Craig James is the most hated man in West Texas.

24. Joe Nocera: “(E)ven mighty Harvard won’t stand up to the N.C.A.A.”

These are some of the topics being kicked around by the SEC’s transition committee regarding the league’s basketball schedules for 2013-14 and beyond.  The chair of the committee — former MSU AD Larry Templeton — and others around the league have already confirmed that next year’s transitional slate will feature 18 games without divisions.  But what about the long-range plan?

In our view, an 18-game slate is the best model for the league moving forward as well.

Below, you’ll see an example of what we call the 4-1-8 plan for SEC scheduling.  This layout would give each SEC school four permanent home/away rivals (meaning two games per season against each), one rotating home/away rival (meaning that eventually, everyone would have a season featuring two games against top draw Kentucky, for example), and one game against each of the remaining eight league teams.

There would be no divisions.  Each team would play nine home games and nine road games.  If structured correctly, most of the oldest basketball rivalries in the league would be protected and the newest members of the SEC would be given more games against nearby schools in order to develop rivalries.

Keep in mind, nothing is fair.  Unless all 13 teams play each other twice, someone will always think that his school is getting it rougher than another school.  Also, success is cyclical.  Twenty-five years ago, who would have projected that Florida would become a two-time national champ in basketball?  Ten years ago, who would’ve predicted Tennessee’s fast rise and subsequent fall?  Complaining about a schedule being too easy or too difficult makes little sense long-term.  Give it time and things change, just as the power has shifted from the SEC East to the SEC West and back over time.

With all that in mind, we created a schedule to show you exactly how a 4-1-8 rotation might look.  We’ve attempted first and foremost to protect the league’s most-played rivalries.  In fact, each current league member has been given its two oldest rivals as permanent home/away foes each season.  In some cases, we were able to protect three or even four of a school’s oldest rivalries.

We knew that Arkansas, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Missouri — having less history in the league — would be difficult to schedule for, but in the end we think all four schools would be happy with the set-up we’ve designed.

So let’s get into it…

It’s our belief that the following year-in, year-out, home/away rivalries for each school should be protected (or in some cases created) as Permanent Foes.  The number beside each foe is the number of times two current members of the SEC had played against one another entering this season:

Now here’s what such an unbalanced plan would do for each program:

Alabama — protects four of five most-played rivalries

Arkansas — protects two most-played rivalries and provides two games each year against bordering Missouri and old SWC rival Texas A&M

Auburn — protects three of four most-played rivalries

Florida — protects three of five most-played rivalries

Georgia — protects three most-played rivalries

Kentucky — protects two most-played rivalries and provides two games each year against bordering Missouri

LSU — protects two most-played rivalries and provides two games each year against Arkansas and Texas A&M

Miss. State — protects three most-played rivalries

Missouri — provides two games each year against bordering Arkansas and bordering Kentucky, plus two against Big 12 rival Texas A&M, and two per year against MSU (a five-hour drive from Southeast Missouri)

Ole Miss — protects three most-played rivalries

S. Carolina — protects four of five most-played rivalries

Tennessee — protects four of five most-played rivalries

Texas A&M — provides two games each year against Big 12 rival Missouri, old SWC rival Arkansas, and LSU.

Vanderbilt — protects two most-played rivalries

Now, let’s say for 2013-14, the following schools are Rotational Foes for home/away games:

Alabama — LSU

Auburn — Miss. State

Arkansas — Tennessee

Florida — Kentucky

Georgia — Vanderbilt

Missouri — Ole Miss

S. Carolina — Texas A&M

Using the 4-1-8 MrSEC.com Plan for 2013-14, the home/away league rivals would be as follows (with the other eight SEC teams to be faced once at home or on the road):

Alabama:  Miss State, Ole Miss, Auburn, Tennessee and LSU + 8 others

Arkansas:  Ole Miss, LSU, Texas A&M, Missouri and Tennessee + 8 others

Auburn:  Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas A&M and Miss. State + 8 others

Florida:  Georgia, Auburn, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, and Kentucky + 8 others

Georgia:  Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, South Carolina and Vanderbilt + 8 others

Kentucky:  Tennessee, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Missouri and Florida + 8 others

LSU:  Ole Miss, Miss. State, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Alabama + 8 others

Miss. State:  Ole Miss, LSU, Alabama, Missouri and Auburn + 8 others

Missouri:  Texas A&M, Kentucky, Arkansas, Miss. State and Ole Miss + 8 others

Ole Miss:  Miss. State, LSU, Alabama, Arkansas and Missouri + 8 others

S. Carolina:  Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M + 8 others

Tennessee:  Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas + 8 others

Texas A&M:  Missouri, Arkansas, LSU, Auburn and South Carolina + 8 others

Vanderbilt:  Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina and Georgia + 8 others

Now that’s a lot of typing and despite our double-checks and triple-checks, there might be a typo or two in there.  If so, we hope you’ll chalk it up to a mistype rather than to a conspiracy against your favorite school.

A 4-1-8 format like this or close to this would enable the league to move forward while also preserving its history.  And while a “balanced” schedule is a myth, the one we’ve put forth above would be about as close as one could get to a fair schedule based on league history.