Sooner or later, the Southeastern Conference will go to a nine-game conference schedule.  It’s easy to see why.  Creating better content for the SEC Network and the league’s broadcast partners (ESPN and CBS) will result in more cash for the league.  And if cash is a strong enough motivator to drive schools to new conferences and away from old rivals, it’s certainly a powerful enough motivator to push through an extra league game per season for each football program.

But getting from A to B could be tricky.  Or so it’s been said.

Before we look at the SEC’s schedule rotation, let’s tackle some fears that are being drummed up at the moment.

“If the SEC goes to a nine-game league schedule, schools will stop playing good non-conference opponents.”

The four SEC schools with annual games against in-state rivals (Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina) have made it clear that they would probably nix a quality non-conference game if the league goes to a nine-game schedule.  The reality is that two factors will still play a role in scheduling: the new College Football Playoff and money.

If it becomes clear that teams in other leagues are scheduling 11 big-conference teams per year (nine in conference, two out of conference), then the SEC teams hoping to reach the playoff will have to follow suit.  Strength of schedule is expected to be a key element in picking teams for the four-team playoff.  SEC squads will either do what everyone does or cross their fingers and hope that selection committee members see a nine-game SEC slate as being tougher than other leagues’ nine-game conference schedules.  That’s possible, but with SEC fatigue having already helped push America to a playoff, would the league’s teams want to risk it?

As for money, if the folks at Cowboys Stadium or the new downtown Atlanta stadium guarantee an SEC team a hefty payout to come in and play a good non-conference foe, it’s doubtful that that SEC squad would pass up the opportunity.

The idea that you’ll never see another good non-conference game on your team’s schedule has been overblown.  Most league schools play one good non-conference opponent and three cupcakes now.  If anything — and UGA president Michael Adams recently said this — fans have shown they’re tired of paying to see creampuff games.  It’s likely then that the extra SEC game created by a nine-game schedule would replace a game against an FCS-type foe rather than a game against a decent draw.

“Florida and Georgia could face a year where they have only five home games.”

If you’re going to make an omelette, you’re going to have to break some eggs.  Either a) Florida and Georgia exercise the outs they had to have worked into their contracts with the city of Jacksonville or b) they play at EverBank Field every other year.  That one neutral site game is the most complicating issue of moving to a nine-game schedule.  But we’ll have more on that below.  Suffice it to say, neither Florida nor Georgia would be forced into a five-game home schedule just by shifting to a nine-game conference schedule.

“With a nine-game schedule, some schools will host five games while others host just four… giving those schools with more home games an advantage.”

The Big Ten just adopted a nine-game schedule for its 14-school league and nixed this argument in the process.  Under the new Big Ten plan, all of the schools in one division will play the same number of home games in a given year.  If East teams play five home games this year and West teams play four, next year the West’s teams would play five home games and the East’s four.

As we’ll show below, the transition to such a schedule would not be as difficult as you might think.

Let’s keep a couple of other points in mind, too.  First, thanks to the SEC Network, the league office will have to somehow get more involved in scheduling.  There is no way the league office wants to see a repeat of last November 17th’s “Pay-Per-View Day!”

On that Saturday, Arkansas played Mississippi State, Ole Miss played LSU, Tennessee played Vanderbilt and Missouri hosted Syracuse.  The rest of the schedule looked like this: Alabama A&M at Auburn, Western Carolina at Alabama, Jacksonville State at Florida, Georgia Southern at Georgia, Samford at Kentucky, Wofford at South Carolina and Sam Houston State at Texas A&M.

How much the league will get involved and in what way is anyone’s guess, but that kind of a lineup won’t help get a new television channel off the ground.  So like it or not, the SEC is about to start providing scheduling “tips.”

Second, the new money coming in from the network, the playoff, the new league-owned Sugar Bowl, and a new bowl lineup will more than make up for the lost revenue from a home game every other season.  Pre-2000s, before the NCAA allowed schools to play a 12-game schedule, schools played six to seven home games per year anyway.  That would be the case once more, only with millions of extra dollars from new revenue streams pouring into each school’s coffers.

Finally, those schools with in-state, non-conference rivals would certainly be more limited in their scheduling options.  But that’s the case with an eight-game conference schedule, too.

Trust us not that much would have to change in a nine-game universe.  If the SEC adopted our plan…

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By now you know that the SEC owned last week’s NFL draft.  You’ve seen those numbers.  A record 63 players picked.  No other conference could match the number of prospects produced by the SEC East or SEC West divisions, much less the whole conference.

Of all 250+ players selected, right at 25% came from the Southeastern Conference.  Crazy.

But what did those 63 drafted players look like as recruits coming out of the high school and junior college ranks?  We’ve done the research for you and below you’ll find a couple of different tables.

The first is simply an alphabetical listing of all the SEC players selected last week.  Beside their names, positions, and schools we’ve listed the rounds in which they were chosen.  To the right of that you’ll find their high school class — or a “Juco” designation in some cases — and the number of star ratings they were given by Rivals.com as prospects:

So what does that tell us?  It tells us that 4- and 5-star recruits do indeed have a better chance of being drafted into the NFL than 2- or 3-star recruits.  Seems obvious, but many still dismiss recruiting rankings entirely.  At MrSEC.com, we believe they should be viewed as a compass, but not as a GPS.  Those rankings can give you an idea of in what direction a prospect is going, but they can’t provide a completely accurate picture of how his college trip will turn out.

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Alabama will host Maryland in a third-round NIT game on Tuesday night
Video has now surfaced of Ole Miss G Marshall Henderson making obscene hand gestures toward the crowd after his team lost to LaSalle in the NCAA Tournament
Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin says QB Johnny Manziel’s push of a graduate assistant during a recent practice has been overblown
Georgia WR Malcolm Mitchell expects to “make a jump” this year because he won’t be asked to spend time in the UGA secondary
New Tennessee running backs coach Robert Gillispie will make $300,000 this year
Follow the SEC every day on MrSEC.com and at twitter.com/mrsec

Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity has made it clear that he’s not a fan of some of the NCAA rule changes scheduled to take effect this summer.  After meeting with his fellow SEC ADs last Friday, he “got that sense everyone was on the same page.”

He also seems to believe the changes could be tweaked or ixnayed altogether before a potential vote to override on March 20th:

“There could be modifications, or it may not even reach the override vote because there may be enough discussion between now and that period of time, to where they may be some adjustments to amendments, or withdrawals, or what have you.  I think there are a lot of options that will be discussed by the membership in the next three weeks.”

McGarity also touched on a topic that we brought up on the site yesterday – what happens to all the folks already hired to be extra recruiters if the rules are changed?  Just as soon as the presidents said an unlimited number of support personnel could call/text/mail recruits, schools like Alabama began adding additional staffers.  So what will those new aides do if things are reversed as expected?

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One of the nation’s top five offensive lineman has picked Clemson over Georgia.  Tyrone Crowder said he’d had a longer relationship with Clemson’s coaching staff.  He also said that UGA “fell off a little bit” on the contact front.

Despite all the Georgia losses that have piled up throughout the day, the Bulldogs will still probably finish with a top 10 recruiting class.

Outside linebacker Matthew Thomas has picked Florida State over Alabama, Georgia and a number of non-SEC schools.  The Florida native was rated as either the #1 or #2 outside linebacker in the country, depending on the service you read.

Georgia 57 — Auburn 49. Video Highlights

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope scored 20 of Georgia’s 57 points in leading the Dawgs to third win in their last four SEC games.

Mark Fox: “That was an SEC dogfight.  It was an ugly game.  It really was.”

In losing its fifth-straight game Auburn shot 28% from the floor, 20% from three-point range, and just 55% from the free throw stripe.  Yeesh.

Tony Barbee:  “Anemic, is what offense was tonight.”

Florida 75 — South Carolina 36. Video Highlights

Florida won its ninth in a row in smothering Carolina…

With a defense that’s absolutely wicked.  The Gamecocks, for example, were held to their lowest point total ever in an SEC game.

Frank Martin: “I don’t think you guys need me to explain that we took an absolute ass-whoopin’.”  (Behind paywall)

With 12:32 to play in the game, the Gators led the Gamecocks 55-15.

LSU 73 — Missouri 70. Video Highlights

LSU built a 16-point lead and then withstood a number Missouri runs to upset the nation’s #17 team.

Andre Stringer: “We’ve been in a lot of tight games and we were finally able to put things together and pull one out.”

Laurence Bowers was back for Mizzou but the Tigers’ road woes “are too big to be fixed by one man.”

In losing to the SEC’s last-place team, Missouri showed “no toughness in the first half; we have no resolve.”

Texas A&M 55 — Mississippi State 49 (OT). Video Highlights

Texas A&M rallied from a 14-point deficit to snap a four-game losing streak with an overtime road win.

MSU’s Jalen Steele on A&M’s Elston Turner: “One he gets going, he gets going.  I was putting pressure on him time after time after time.”

Despite a stronger performance, Mississippi State’s five-game losing streak continues.

The “ugly game” included 46 turnovers versus just 41 field goals.

Shaq Wiggins plans to cancel his remaining official visits and sign with Georgia on signing day on Feb. 6.

The cornerback from Sandy Creek High School in Tyrone, Ga., made that decision after an in-home visit from Georgia coach Mark Richt on Wednesday night.

“I am about to cut off all my official visits,” Wiggins told ESPN RecruitingNation. “Richt says no more.”

Wiggins, who visited South Carolina last weekend, had considered taking trips to Mississippi State and Texas A&M despite an 11-month long commitment to Georgia. But Wiggins decided to solidify his commitment to the Bulldogs by shutting down the recruiting process.

“I just feel like leading other schools on would hurt the chances of another recruit getting that scholarship,” Wiggins said, “so I just had a real conversation with my parents and decided to make my decision. I am 100 percent committed to UGA and I just feel like UGA is the place for me.”

We’ll make this one short and sweet.  Hindsight is obviously 20/20 and if Georgia had scored a touchdown (a la LSU versus Auburn in 2007 at the 8:25 mark of this clip), no one would have said a word about the decision by UGA’s coaching staff not to spike the ball with seconds remaining in Saturday night’s 32-28 loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

But Mark Richt doesn’t have Les Miles’ kind of luck.  Miles basically did exactly what Richt did on Saturday night and it helped him win the ’07 BCS championship.  Maybe Richt needs to start wearing a hat.

Deciding to go for it rather than stop the clock, Georgia threw a (tipped) completed pass short of the end zone that allowed the clock to run out on its attempt at a miracle comeback.  And now there’s video evidence — at the 1:40 mark of the clip below — of Murray looking to the Dawgs sideline to see if his coaches wanted him to spike the ball:

For the record, anyone who watched that entire game — the full back-and-forth, blow-by-blow nature of it — and came to the conclusion that Richt or Murray can’t win “the big one” is flat-out goofy in our book.  UGA gave Bama everything the Tide wanted and then some.

But that won’t stop the talk of spiking the football.  Especially not now that video evidence of Murray gesturing for that very option has hit the interweb.

Oh, for a little of the Mad Hatter’s luck, eh, Dawg fans?

I’m starting to get the feeling that Mark Richt has been telling his team that they have zero reason to be in awe of Alabama.  Before you say, “of course,” keep in mind that Alabama’s been so dominant in recent years that Richt may want to make sure that his guys know Nick Saban’s players put their pants on one leg at a time, too.

Why do I think Richt has been beating this particular drum?  Because players tend to repeat to the media what their coaches tell them behind closed doors.  And Georgia’s players are flapping their gums without end regarding Bama.

Bulldog safety Bacarri Rambo was the first to pop off:

“I feel like we’re more talented.  We have better players at each position, across the board, especially on defense.  It’s going to be a great challenge for us.  I know it’s going to be a battle.  It’s going to come down to who has the best defense and who makes more turnovers.  It’s going to be a battle of the defenses.”

UGA corner Sanders Commings wouldn’t bow before Alabama either:

“I think we’re the best defense in the country.  I thought we were last year and we have 10 out of 11 or 12 players back who are part of the starting rotation.  So there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be the top defense.  Everybody on this defense thinks we are…

It’s good to play with confidence.  Confidence is just another word for swagger.  We step on the field and that swagger is turned all they way up.  We feel like we can shut anybody down, shut anybody out.  In order to play good, you have to be confident, you have to have swagger.”

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