Nothing like getting an expert opinion.

At this point, I think there’s a pretty general consensus that the best reaction to Big Game Bob’s assertion that the SEC isn’t all that because, hey, their crappy teams put their pants on one leg at a time just like the Big 12′s crappy teams do is to yawn because it’s a fairly meaningless observation, particularly given that he’s comparing the bottoms of a 14-team conference and a 10-team one.

But you should know somebody’s got Stoops’ back.  Mr. Decided Schematic Advantage has weighed in.  (Is there something about being a former Gator assistant coach that’s conducive to whining about this?)  And let’s face it – Weis at least has the currency of perspective here.

“We were the only team in the whole league that didn’t play in a bowl game. It was us. We were the sole member,” Weis said. “You talk about bottom-feeders, you think Iowa State was a bottom-feeder?”

Now there’s you some conference pride, buddy!

Nobody knows suck like Charlie Weis knows suck.

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You’re not so tough, SEC.

Big Game Bob wants you to know the SEC is overrated because his Sooners would have given Missouri as much of a righteous arse kicking last season as Texas A&M gave Oklaho… hey, wait a minute!

All things being equal in the Big Ten…

Mea culpa, folks.  I don’t know how I missed it, but it seems that with the Big Ten’s divisional re-jiggering and move to a nine game conference schedule, Jim Delany’s also hit on the big idea of parity scheduling.

… If you look at the schedules, what you’ll see is over time, the crossovers rotate. In the first 18 years, you’re going to see a lot of competition between teams at the top of either division. We call that a bit of parity-based scheduling. You’ll see Wisconsin and Nebraska and Iowa playing a lot of competition against Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan…

This is what you get when your conference commissioner puts on his programming director’s hat.

… From a business standpoint, I get it because TV completely drives the sport and having Nebraska or Wisconsin play Ohio State-Penn State-Michigan as much as possible is a no-brainer. But from an equity standpoint, it has some problems, at least during the 18-year period at the start of these new divisions…

Yeah, it does.  To start with, look at the question that drew that answer:

… How in the world did this parity-based schedule come to be? This has got to be a classic case of the decision makers being way too immersed in their task and completely losing sight of the big picture. I see the benefit, but this completely destroys any credibility in the process of crowning a conference champion. It’s one thing for the scheduling gods to bless a lucky team or two every year based on randomness, but to deliberately tip the scales so that some teams will have tougher/easier schedules than others is absurd. The concept of a champion has been completely marginalized. If a “mid-tier” team ever has a surprise year and wins the B1G, how could anyone call them a champion if the schedule is DELIBERATELY aligned in their favor EVERY YEAR?! How has this not been met with opposition by anyone with a brain? It’s not too hard to imagine this system malfunctioning. Example: Iowa wins the west winning a couple crossover games against Rutgers and MSU, while Nebraska comes in 2nd in the west going 0-2 against Michigan and OSU. A scenario like this is almost guaranteed to happen at some point.

I suspect that if you could get Delany to talk about it off the record, he’d tell you that it’s unlikely that a mediocre team, even one buoyed by a parity schedule, would get by a tough opponent in the conference game, and that in either event, the winner would come out with an enhanced position for the national playoff.  That’s the second purpose to this arrangement – to make sure there’s at least one team that emerges out of the conference race with a good SOS number.

It’s all about the ratings (TV and schedule, in that order).  Works for the NFL, doesn’t it?

Sounds great.  If you aren’t, say, a Minnesota fan, that is.

Delany’s announcement this week of the East-West football alignment that starts in 2014 will include “parity” scheduling — meaning more games for a traditional mutt such as the Gophers against Maryland, Rutgers and Indiana, rather than Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State.

Get those tickets as soon as possible when the 2014 home schedule comes out. Maryland, Rutgers and Indiana are sure to pack the joint.

Some people lack an appreciation for the greater good.  Or the bottom line.

Friday morning buffet

The tidbits, the tidbits!

• So how’s that whole Dream Team thing working out?
• Malik Ramik Wilson progresses at inside linebacker.
• Of all the lists I’ve seen, this is certainly one of them.
• Mike Gundy almost left Oklahoma State for Tennessee because of non-conference scheduling.
• Tony Barnhart wants you to know something:  “The SEC West is the toughest division in the toughest college football conference in America. This is not debatable.”  They don’t call him Mr. Conventional Wisdom for nothing, folks.
• Florida State’s DeMarcus Walker claims Alabama jammed him up with the NCAA.  Is there anything to that?  John Infante says the Tide had the means, but there’s no way to know about the motive.
• Todd Gurley was banged up at the end of last season… not that you could have known from his production on the field.
• Jeez, this is a creepy story.

Tuesday morning buffet

Sidle on up and grab you a plate.

• DeLoss Dodds says Texas won’t schedule a game with Texas A&M because the Longhorns’ fans have hurt fee-fees.
• John Infante asks a good question about what the NCAA’s Board of Directors is up to with regard to suspending some of the new recruiting rules.
• T. Boone Pickens, whatta guy.
• I definitely don’t have a dog in this fight.
• John Helyar’s got a story that’s worth a read on the NFL’s relationship with Riddell and whether that might have played a part in undermining a company that produced a concussion-preventing helmet.
• Ole Miss getting a big head after a 7-6 season?  Oy.
• The Mountain West still ain’t happy with Mark Emmert.
• Cam Cameron on Zach Mettenberger:  film don’t lie.

Big 12 championship – it’s not us; it’s you.

Big 12 commissioner attributes conference’s decision to back off holding a championship game to ratings/attendance concerns over other conferences’ championship games rather than acknowledging the stupidity of such a game for a conference with a round robin regular season schedule.

Sunday morning buffet

Grab a plate and indulge yourself.

• Ted Roof is planning on running more of the same, except he’ll be doing it with Tech’s 3-4 personnel.  It’s Mike Bobo’s wet dream.
• Alabama public officials get the best of both worlds – no season ticket expenses and no secondary market premium prices, either.  Nice work if you can get it.  (And no, I doubt Alabama is only place where this happens.)
• Trust us, Jesus wants you to use this deer antler shit.
• One thing about any possible Big 12-SEC scheduling partnership – if you’re Mike Slive, it’s a nice negotiating tactic to throw out as an alternative to a ninth conference game.
• Okay, so now Junior admits he made mistakes at Tennessee.  Was that part of the plan?
• Seth Emerson looks at the recruiting services’ rankings systems and thinks the stars are aligning more properly.
• “LSU is known nationally as a football team, not as an institution of higher learning.”

Deregulation is just another word for more money.

The Big 12, which is a ten-team league that plays a round-robin schedule, is chafing under the repressive rule of Da Man.  At least that’s what its commissioner is saying.

“At a time when lots of deregulation is taking place, it seems a little bit odd that the NCAA would be describing how we determine our champions,” Bowlsby said Wednesday night, when he watched the Iowa State-Oklahoma State men’s basketball game.

“I think it’s reasonable to say if you’re going to have a champion that you’re going to have to designate it in one fashion or another. But to say it has to be between 12 schools or that there has to be divisional play or there has to be a round-robin, we’re deregulating lots of things and that certainly is a candidate.”

Freedom, bitchez!

This, of course, is utter nonsense.  Bowlsby just wants the extra revenue a conference championship would pull in.  Never mind that it would make the regular season meeting between the two finalists essentially meaningless – we fans should bask in the warmth of knowing that the heavy boot of NCAA repression was lifted and that conferences like the Big 12 could run as they damn well see fit.  Because that’s what college football is all about.

Hey, look at the bright side.  If the two teams split the two games, maybe they could face off again in the postseason for all the marbles.  Rematches are awesome if they pay well enough.

Big 12 pride

I get that Texas A&M has had a helluva year on offense.  Sumlin knows what he’s doing.  Manziel is a helluva talent.  But still…

It took Texas A&M going to the SEC to validate Big 12 offenses. Took A&M going to the SEC to prove that prolific Big 12 offenses weren’t the result of porous Big 12 defenses.

The Aggies led the SEC in scoring (44.8 points per game) and total offense (552.3 yards), ranking third nationally in both categories.

“We’re really proud of the way they went into the SEC and played the way they did,” said OU linebacker Tom Wort. “I’m proud of the way they handled themselves and kind of represented the Big 12 in a little way.”

I’d find the chest thumping a little more authoritative if they’d have mentioned how the other Big 12 refugee handled those big, bad SEC defenses, but somehow there’s no mention of Missouri’s 2012 performance anywhere in the article.

And this?

Six straight SEC national championships, including a Florida victory over OU four years ago in the Big Bowl, have established the idea that Big 12 offenses don’t travel. That the spread concepts that flourish outside the SEC won’t work in the league that features big, mean and fast defenders.

How you can mention the SEC’s national title run, which included two schools running spread offenses, and act like nobody in the SEC has ever run the spread before in the same paragraph is a pretty neat trick.  And, again, Sumlin’s offense springs from the Hal Mumme tree, which got its major college start at Kentucky.

I can’t figure this part out, either.

“We have a lot of talented offenses in our league and a lot of good quarterback play,” Norvell said. “That allows the teams to play the style of offense that we play. I’m not saying the SEC doesn’t have that type of quarterback, but it doesn’t seem they’re exploiting that position as much in their league as we are in ours.”

No offense, but Alabama and Georgia exploited that position just fine.  Their quarterbacks will finish this season earning the top two passer ratings not only in the conference, but in the country.

Point here isn’t that Texas A & M’s offense wasn’t prolific.  It was.  But there are plenty of ways to skin that “offense succeeds in the SEC” cat.  Most, though, involve having a really good quarterback as a starting point.

Thursday morning buffet

I’ve been saving up.

• Georgia Tech’s (legal) cut blocking scheme claims another victim.  Hey, NCAA, if you’re worried about player safety, maybe it’s time to take a look at that.
• “He told me, ‘I need a job, Dad.’
• No ice cream for Georgia’s offensive linemen last week.
• John Lilly’s consoling advice to Marshall Morgan after Morgan’s mother of all bad place kick attempts?  “You got your worst one out of the way.”
• I am so shocked to learn that the schools and networks disagree over the value of a fourth contract bowl game.
• Good on ‘ya, Tom Osborne.  And I love the timing.
• Mark Wiedmer asserts that Auburn has an “arguably more reasonable” fan base than does Tennessee.  And he’s a UT beat writer.
• Auburn’s offensive coordinator advises his quarterback to move quickly this week.
• Bill Connelly’s Alabama-TAMU preview is worth a read.