SEC football coaches aren’t the only ones looking forward to using the SEC Network as a recruiting tool.  SEC basketball coaches are also anxiously awaiting the August 2014 debut of the network.  In a wide-ranging interview at the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri basketball coach Frank Haith sounded euphoric about the partnership between the SEC and ESPN.

“It’s huge. We’re going to still get on our national TV stuff, but I think the fact that you’ve got ESPN tied to the network … I mean, there’s other networks out there, but none of them have ESPN tied into it, and I think from a recruiting standpoint, we recruit nationally anyway, but now you’ve got this extra piece saying, “Hey, regardless of where we go recruit your kid, you’re going to see them play on TV. You’re going to see pretty much every one of their games.” I think that’s a huge, huge thing. I’m always thinking recruiting. I think it’s a huge, huge plus for us.”

Haith also opened up on a variety of other topics:

* Is he preparing for his June meeting with the NCAA?

“I’m not preparing for that. There’s nothing to prepare for.”

* Earlier start to practice in the fall.

“I applaud the NCAA. They’ve made some really good (changes).”

* The number of transfers and the culture of college basketball today.

“We live in a microwave society in general. Everybody wants things quick. But in college basketball it’s at another level, and you see kids moving all the time”

* Difference in style of play between Big 12 and SEC

“Our league was way more physical than our league was in the Big 12. Way more physical.”

Asked about a disappointing second season in Columbia after a thirty-win first year at Mizzou, Haith said, “This team personnel-wise could have been better.”  He said it wasn’t though, citing things like inconsistent play, injuries, toughness, chemistry and defense.  ”That’s a challenge for us as a coaching staff, holding guys accountable. It all starts out front. If we don’t have great consistency guarding the ball out front, we’re going to get broken down in the paint. And that’s what happened with this team. We weren’t consistent in guarding the ball out front, and that really hurt our defense.”

This fall, South Carolina will open the 2013 football season against North Carolina in Columbia.  The two teams will also meet to open up the 2015 season, but that game will take on a more special feel.

The Charlotte Observer reports that the Gamecocks and Tar Heels will butt heads in Charlotte at the NFL Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium.  An official announcement is expected to come tomorrow.

The explosion in the number of neutral site games across the college football landscape is something we discussed way back in July of 2009.  In a piece focusing on the future of the SEC, we sat down with a sports marketing expert and tried to imagine what might come next in the world of college sports.  “Keeping The SEC On Top: What’s The Next Big Thing” provides a snapshot into a world when the SEC’s twin TV deals were still wowing folks and the overall US economy was still frightening them.

Now four years on, it’s a pretty interesting read.

Granted, we’re a little late on this story.  Hopefully you’ll cut us some slack for that since we were the cause of this story.

Back on Sunday, when the final NFL draft tallies were in, we posted a note on the site and on Twitter stating that the “SEC had 63 picks and ACC was second with 31.  Greatest gap ever.”

That nugget was retweeted by uber-reporter Tony Barnhart (Mr. College Football).  A follower of Barnhart’s Twitter feed — which focuses a great deal on the SEC and the ACC — happens to be associate Clemson athletic director and sports information director Tim Bourret.  He obviously he didn’t like what he read and tweeted a response:

“@MrCFB 5 years after Espn tv contract gives sec huge advantage.  The numbers and $ add up.”

The feeling outside the SEC is that ESPN’s television contract with the league — there’s also the CBS contract, of course — has provided the SEC with the cash necessary to create an advantage in terms of facilities, recruiting budgets, weight rooms, etc.

It has.

It should be pointed out, however, that the SEC had already begun its streak of seven consecutive BCS championships before its new TV deals even kicked in.  But the goal of those contracts was to keep the league’s programs at or near the top of the money tree and they have.  Today the SEC will announce its plans for the SEC Network, an even larger money-making partnership with the four-letter network.

What’s interesting is that Bourret took the time to tweet about the cash discrepancy between the SEC and ACC right after his league had just inked a new grant of rights agreement.  Either his comment can be taken as a sign that he believes the ACC will now start to catch up on the money front with its own TV package… or as a sign that there are still some ACC’ers who aren’t happy about the gap between their league and the SEC.

And this time we’re talking about the financial gap, not the NFL draft pick gap.  Which, as we noted on Sunday, was the “greatest gap ever.”

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.

Just a taste of some of the reaction from around the ACC regarding yesterday’s surprise announcement of a grant of rights agreement that most expect to halt runaway realignment among the major conferences:

“This announcement further highlights the continued solidarity and commitment by our member institutions.  The Council of Presidents has shown tremendous leadership in insuring the ACC is extremely well positioned with unlimited potential.

The Acc has long been a leader in intercollegiate athletics, both academically and athletically.  Collectively, we all agree the grant of rights further positions the ACC and its current and future members as one of the nation’s premier conferences.”

– ACC commissioner John Swofford

“I think very significant in the whole process is the nearly complete negotiations with ESPN which involve a proposed significant increase in our TV revenues and also a path forward with an ACC Network.  I think the revenues are extremely important to us, and one of the key elements of that negotiation is the desire from ESPN as well as the ACC presidents that we increase the stability of the power conferences in the country.  So all of these things go hand in hand…

All of the discussions about who is going where, most of it just made up, has gotten the attention of every single president out there because it gets to the point where it actually starts to harm the ability to attract resources.  I think this is a case in point there.  The stability is generating a lot more resources and a lot more opportunity.”

– Florida State president Eric Barron

“I am thrilled with today’s announcement by the Atlantic Coast Conference.  It is one of the great days in the history of our conference as it shows the highest level of commitment — not by words, but by actions.  With all the uncertainty regarding conference affiliations the past several years in college athletics, this announcement, coupled with our media rights deal with the world’s best sports broadcasting network secures the ACC’s future, and thus Duke’s, for years to come.”

– Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski

Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is an outspoken critic of the realignment and expansion underway in college sports.  When his Duke team meets Louisville on the basketball court today, it will do so as NCAA Tournament rivals battling it out to go to the Final Four.  But when the Cardinals move to the ACC in 2014, these two teams will meet regularly as conference rivals.  He was asked about the changes at a Saturday news conference.

For all these schools that have joined, it makes us the most powerful basketball conference, I think, ever.  And I hope our league is able to understand the assets that we’ve accumulated and what it does to the assets we already have. I think if positioned properly, it sets us apart from anybody.  And we shouldn’t look at where football is or whatever.  We have the best assets as a result of Louisville, Syracuse, Pitt, Notre Dame, and the assets we have — we’re joining together.  I mean, we better know how to make use of it.

In a follow-up question, Krzyzewski showed he’s not only a coach, but thinking more like a conference commissioner. In a football-first world, he’s putting the focus on the marketing of college basketball.

Does our conference develop its own TV network? Where we play the tournament — when do we play the tournament?  How do we position our regular season?  How do we have the teams play schedules that are worthy of being considered for NCAA consideration? In other words, (we need) to take a real close look at our league with the new members and say: Why are we different, why are we better, and how can we be the top league?

In addition to the schools scheduled to join the ACC, the conference is losing Maryland to the Big Ten.  However, as we told you this week, Maryland’s move is being held up in court.

Florida State is smack-dab at the center of the current conference realignment rush.  FSU is a member of the ACC, located close to the SEC, reported to be desired by the Big XII, and possibly desirous of a spot in the Big Ten.

In many ways, Tallahassee, Florida is located right on the fault line of college athletics’ shaky landscape.

Yesterday, FSU athletic director Randy Spetman talked rather openly about the future with ESPN’s “Nole Nation” website.  Certainly he was more open than he or most other ADs have chosen to be in the past.

“It’s not done,” Spetman said regarding realignment.  “I watch it every day, reading something about it every day, trying to get a sense and calling my counterparts and seeing where they’re really at.”  He also said that FSU brass have “had conversations at the senior level about what we should consider.”  He added: “There will be more of those conversations — they’ll continue.  It’s an evolution every day.”

ACC commissioner John Swofford must love reading that.  Ditto those ACC fans who continue to whistle past the graveyard and claim that all’s well within their favorite league.

Of the Seminoles’ current home, Nole Nation reports that Spetman “said he’s confident that the ACC is moving in the right direction, and the Noles staying remains the most appealing solution.”

But.

While discussing the key factor in all of these realignment moves — revenue — Spetman mentioned one conference by name:

“Unless you bring in a revenue for them so that they don’t reduce their conference distribution to themselves, they aren’t going to bring you in.  That’s what I don’t think people evaluate as much.  It would be great to be in the SEC with our radius of schools and the way our fans travel and their fans travel, but if they bring Florida State into the SEC, I’m trying to see, how do we sell that we bring them enough additional revenue that we pay for ourselves and they make more money off of us?  They have Florida just two hours away that has the TV market here.”

A little more than 20 years ago Florida State passed on an opportunity to join the SEC.  Then-football coach Bobby Bowden has admitted that he felt his teams could do more winning in the ACC than in the rough-and-tumble SEC.  The Seminoles did win early and they did win a lot in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

But FSU’s fears in the late-80s and early-90s have haunted them for the past half-decade.

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First, a hat tip to the ever-excellent Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News who drove across Jefferson County to take in a Mike Slive speaking engagement in Trussville, Alabama yesterday.  After the event, Solomon was able to collect some quotes from the SEC commissioner on a wide range of topics.

Slive’s comments — and our thoughts on those quotations — are below…

Slive On conference realignment:

“One thing I can’t do is speak for anybody else.  I can only speak for us.  As I look ahead and prepare agendas for some of our meetings in the future, that is not an agenda item, at least for us, at the moment.”

Our take:  “At the moment” is the standout phrase, obviously.  You’d better believe there is back-channel communication going on between multiple schools and multiple conferences these days.  The SEC is involved in some of that, too.  Slive is way too shrewd to sit back and watch without preparing for future shake-ups.

Asked if any schools had contacted the SEC about joining, Slive said, “You know, I’m not going to tell you… all due respect.”

Slive on the SEC’s television plans:

“We think we’re getting closer and closer to doing what we want to do in the long-term future of our television package.  Hopefully, within the relatively near future, we’ll be able to tell you something publicly.”

Our take:  It’s kind of hard to finalize television deals when no one knows what schools will be in which conferences moving forward.  The SEC itself could expand which would likely change the league’s geographic footprint, its sphere of media influence, and the amount of money its content is worth (depending on the brands added and the locations involved).  There’s also the matter of what other leagues will look like and how much their media rights will be worth… which could/should impact SEC negotiations.  If the SEC announces new TV deals anytime soon, it will likely be announcing what are in fact place-holder deals.

Slive on the number of conference games his league will play:

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Big XII commissioner Bob Bowlsby opened up this week about all manner of college football issues, from conference championship games to the new playoff that’s coming in 2014.  SEC fans should take note.

Regarding the playoff selection committee, Bowlsby said:

“It will have a composition that includes people that are not on campuses or in conference offices.  There will be people with solid football backgrounds. How big it will be, it could be 16, it could be 18, it could be 24. We haven’t refined it to that point yet.

We have begun working around the metrics with which we’ll arm the members of that committee. It will be a lot more, obviously, than just taking the six or eight polls that are available to them and regurgitating what those things have to say. We need to work hard on formulating tools that will allow us to differentiate one good team from another good team.  It’s a process that cries out for the best thinkers we can get.”

What it means for the SEC:  Prepare yourself now for a major paradigm shift.  Bowlsby revealed nothing new in his statement, but it’s our belief a lot of football fans will still be surprised/outraged in 2014 if the top four ranked teams in the country aren’t invited into the new playoff.  The NCAA Tournament selection committee rendered college basketball’s polls moot many years ago, but football has been poll-centric since the first AP poll came out in 1934.  While computer formulas were added to the mix in 1998, human polls still carried much more weight in the BCS system.  That’s about to change.

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“What are you hearing about conference expansion?”

“Any news on Florida State?”

“Would the SEC really prefer North Carolina and Duke over Virginia Tech and NC State?”

“They’re saying on Twitter that an announcement from the Big Ten could come today… you hearing that?”

If you ever wanted an idea of what kinds of emails arrive at the MrSEC.com inbox each day (aside from the obligatory hate mail), now you know.  Expansion, expansion, expansion.  What are you hearing?  When will it happen?  Who’ll move where?

Day after day, we get mostly the same questions.  Which is fine, I try to answer them all.  But on Thursday a fresh query arrived:  “Regardless of what some people say about the Big Ten getting ahead of the SEC, don’t you think, too, that Mike Slive knows exactly how to work around Jim Delany?”

That’s a good one.  But unfortunately, I don’t share the emailer’s pro-SEC enthusiasm.  The reason?  When it comes to the next round of conference expansion and realignment, Delany’s sales pitch will have two advantages over Slive’s.  From how I look at it, the Big Ten will likely be the “winner” in all this mess.  But that depends on how you define “winner,” of course.  More on that in a minute.  First, those two face cards that Delany currently holds…

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