Feel the Lesmentum!

Well, looky here – Kevin Scarbinsky and Andy Staples follow in Matt Hayes’ footsteps and come out in favor of Les Miles’ campaign to end the SEC’s permanent cross-division rivalries.  It’s a veritable media groundswell.  It’s kind of funny watching the same institution that’s routinely mocked Miles for some of his less than brilliant game management at times find wisdom in the man’s judgment now.  (If Chris Huston is the next to chime in favorably, I quit.)

The funny thing about all this is that Miles has said embarrassing stuff about scheduling for years.  But now he’s being taken seriously.  I don’t get it.

Scarbinsky’s piece is easy to dismiss.  It’s more of a giant “boy, do Auburn and Tennessee really suck these days” wankfest than anything else.  Staples takes a more thoughtful approach, although in the end, it doesn’t get him to a different destination.

The SEC has tossed tradition before, and sometimes with happy consequences. Florida and Tennessee played quite irregularly before the divisional split. From 1992-2006, theirs was the league’s most exciting rivalry. South Carolina and Georgia, who played some fun games when South Carolina was an independent, have become excellent border-state rivals. Besides, the Iron Bowl, the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party and the Egg Bowl remain untouchable thanks to divisional alignments. So the league can still cling to some traditions while also ushering in a bright — and lucrative — future with a scheduling philosophy that gives teams a more even road to the SEC and national titles.

If you’re Mike Slive, “bright” and “lucrative” are redundant terms.

I know Andy’s a Florida guy so ignoring pre-1990 SEC history is wired into his DNA, but that Florida-Tennessee reference is too brief.  In the old days before divisions, conference teams never played round robin schedules, so yes, some matchups were infrequent.  But others were forged over a long period to become part and parcel of the SEC’s identity.  And even though the ’92 expansion was a money grab at its heart, Roy Kramer was smart enough to know that it was important to preserve the legacy of games like Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia because they helped define the conference even as it changed.

Behind Miles’ complaint is a pernicious attitude that winning the SEC should be viewed as little more than a means to an end and that the only goal of scheduling should be as a useful tool to help the powerhouse schools find their way into the national postseason picture.  Now he’s a coach, so I get where he’s coming from.  But as a fan and as someone who appreciates the history behind the Oldest Rivalry in the South, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

And Staples is kidding himself with his “cling to some traditions” silver lining.  Because if there’s one thing we know, it’s that we all know what the SEC will do with its scheduling in the end – carefully weigh all of its options and choose the one that makes the most money, history be damned.  As I’ve said before, that’s the only tradition the SEC believes in these days.

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UPDATE:  Barnhart reiterates why we can’t have nice things.

I can tell you that the last time this issue was seriously discussed in Destin it was very contentious. Missouri and Texas A&M were coming into the conference and one side felt strongly that at 14 teams, the SEC couldn’t afford to hold on to the old scheduling model for the sake of those two traditional rivalries. The old model survived but there was an understanding that the issue would be revisited.

He says LSU doesn’t have the votes for change.  That may be, but this issue isn’t going away.  And you can thank the lack of thought that went into the last round of conference expansion for that.

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SEC on CBS, 2013 edition

Here’s what’s out there so far:

Sept. 14              Alabama at Texas A&M                3:30 PM

Oct. 19               SEC Doubleheader                        12:00 NOON;  3:30 PM

Nov. 2                 Georgia vs. Florida                                3:30 PM

Nov. 9                SEC Doubleheader                         3:30 PM; 8:00 PM

Nov. 29               Arkansas at LSU                             2:30 PM

Dec. 7                SEC Championship                         4:00 PM

I’m not really sure what the magic is on October 19th.  There is a full slate of conference games that day, but none look like marquee matchups today.

November 9th is all about Ole Miss-Arkansas… just kidding.  CBS wants another Alabama-LSU prime time game.  The rest of that day is kind of meh.

The 9/14 game won’t have much hype going in, right?

“Les is looking out for himself, simple as that.”

If I can return to the scene of Les Miles’ cri de coeur for a minute… it seems that Matt Hayes has Lester’s back.  Here’s his case:

“All I want,” says Miles, “is a fair and equitable deal for all involved.”

Right now, it’s anything but. No matter how you look at it, Auburn, LSU and Florida are impacted most by the SEC’s standing scheduling rule of one permanent opponent from the opposite division.

LSU and Florida play each other; Auburn plays Georgia. Meanwhile, SEC kingpin Alabama plays Tennessee.

Why, you ask? Tradition, Mike Slive says.

Considering how far the SEC has come under Slive’s watch, and how he has set up the conference for the future, it’s hard to argue with that decision. That is, until you look at the numbers.

In the last 10 years, LSU and Florida have both been ranked in their game nine times. In the last 10 years, Alabama and Tennessee have both been ranked in their game once.

Wait, it gets much more compelling.

Since 2000, Auburn has played Florida and Georgia—clearly the East Division’s heavyweight programs—a total of 19 times. LSU has played Florida and Georgia 17 times, and Florida has played LSU and Alabama 17 times.

Meanwhile, Alabama has played Florida and Georgia eight times—the lowest total of any West Division team. Alabama’s argument is it plays Tennessee, which started the BCS era with a national title but has recently fallen on hard times.  [Emphasis added.]

Now Hayes is being a wee bit disingenuous here – at the start of the cycle he cites, Georgia was not one of the East’s heavyweights – but he gets at what’s really eating up Les twice in that passage.  Quite simply, every year Alabama plays Tennessee and LSU plays Florida.  Right now, that’s a lousy tradeoff for the Tigers.  And in the here and now, nobody should have the time for trivialities like tradition.

That’s assuming that this is even about tradition.  Hayes isn’t even willing to credit that as a motive.

At the mercy of Slive, who said earlier this month that he’s “willing to look at all scheduling models” at the SEC’s annual spring meetings next week in Destin, Fla. The hurdle for LSU, Florida and Auburn: the remaining 11 teams are happy with their permanent partners because the series (from each point of view) is winnable.

I feel kinda dirty now for wanting to preserve a series that’s more than a century old.  And eleven SEC teams all think their permanent rivalry games are winnable?  Hmm… maybe Big Game Bob is right about the conference.

Coming soon, to an ESPN outlet near you…

Ah, jeez.

Finebaum, the polarizing personality of college football’s signature call-in show, is leaving the Birmingham, Ala., market where his contract expired in January, for Charlotte, N.C., and a national forum: ESPN. His multi-tiered platform will include a radio program on ESPN networks, 100 televised appearances annually on ESPN and a TV simulcast of his radio show on the ESPN-owned SEC Network launching in August 2014.

It was inevitable, I suppose.  What sucks is that now I’ll be stuck paying for him to be on the air.

Rivalries are in the eye of the beholder.

Lester’s still got a bee in his bonnet about those cross-division rivalries.  But now he wants to make you feel guilty about it if you disagree with him.

“I trust they will recognize with the upcoming playoff, and with the BCS bowls being so important, everyone should shoulder the burden of playing the better teams,” Miles said. “Everybody.”

I’m supposed to give up support of the oldest rivalry in the South because Miles’ fair play fee-fees are hurt?  Screw you, Les.

But I do have a suggestion to calm the man’s troubled soul.  I’ve said most of it before – move the two Alabama schools to the East and switch Missouri to the West.  That solves the bulk of the cross-division problems.  My new candidate for the last transfer is South Carolina, since the ‘Cocks are backing LSU’s play.  If longstanding rivalries don’t matter to the folks in Columbia, then not having Georgia and Florida on the schedule every year shouldn’t bother them in the least.

Gee, a ninth conference game sure would be nice…

I don’t follow tennis all that much, so I just learned that CBS will not retain the broadcast rights to the U.S. Open after 2014.  However, as a fan of SEC football, I’m very much aware of the consequences of that.

ESPN’s new ownership of the U.S. Open tennis tournament could mean CBS televises early-season SEC football games starting in 2015.

CBS has carried the U.S. Open every year since 1968, meaning CBS doesn’t begin airing SEC games until the third or fourth week of September. With the U.S. Open leaving for ESPN after 2014, CBS would have to decide whether it wants to use some of its allotted games in earlier weeks, SEC Executive Associate Commissioner Mark Womack said today.

From a viewership standpoint, I don’t think CBS haz a sad over this.  Due to last year’s mediocre slate of games, ratings for SEC on CBS dropped to their lowest level in four years.  But that was still better than twice as much as what the Open pulled.

Here’s the thing – that “some of the allotted games” is kind of a big deal.

In years when college football’s regular season has a typical 13-week calendar, CBS owns 14 regular-season games plus the SEC Championship Game. The regular-season games include one primetime game, an early 11 a.m. doubleheader game prior to its usual 2:30 p.m. time slot, and a game on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

That’s a tight squeeze in ordinary years.  But in years when there’s an extra week to the season, CBS, with the Open gone, wouldn’t have enough product to broadcast every week if it so desired.  Seems like there’s a pretty obvious way to solve that problem, no?

Oh, it’s on now.

This financial aggression will not stand, man.

The Big Ten Conference’s financial supremacy was on display again Wednesday when the league’s latest federal tax return reported record revenue and the largest single-year compensation figure ever for a conference commissioner.

You can feel the egos seething, can’t you?

The Big Ten, which increased its annual revenue by more than $50 million in 2012, had total revenue that was $42 million more than the Southeastern Conference reported for a fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2012.

The tax return, provided by the Big Ten Conference in response to a request from USA TODAY Sports, showed commissioner Jim Delany being credited with more than $2.8 million in compensation for the 2011 calendar year.

In case you’re wondering, yeah, that’s about $1.2 million more than Slive received.

Gee, I guess we know what one hot topic in Destin will be now.

When in doubt, follow the money.

CBSSports.com dribbles out an interesting bit of information today.

The Southeastern Conference and CBS have reworked their long-term contract in light of the SEC’s new 24-hour channel and the additions of Texas A&M and Missouri, according to sources.

The terms of the deal are expected to remain intact ($55 million per year until 2023-24), with CBS lifting the exclusive 3:30 p.m. broadcast window so the SEC can air football games on its ESPN-operated channel on Saturdays.  [Emphasis added.]

Since the conference won’t “comment on financials”, it’s pretty easy to guess where Fowler’s sources came from.  And as they’re on the other side of the negotiating table, I think we can take them at face value.

What this means is that Slive got some help to make his network deal with ESPN an easier sell, but he didn’t get any more money.  So at least with regard to the CBS deal, the twelve existing members at the time that arrangement was struck are now taking home less money than they were because the pie is now split into more pieces.  I doubt that’s what the schools expected when they agreed to expand.  I sure would love to hear how Slive is spinning that to the presidents.

Will CBS pay a price for not playing ball here?  Maybe, but that’s a long way down the road.  In the meantime, the network has a ten-year contract locked in with a conference that’s going to be promoting the hell out of its product.  And who knows what the landscape is going to look like when the contract comes up for rebidding anyway?

In the meantime, if the SEC wants more TV money, I’d guess both CBS and ESPN have already told Slive what everybody knows:  a ninth conference game sure would boost inventory.

“Not having that seventh game is really a financial burden on an institution.”

If you’re a SEC AD, you want it all right now – as many home games as possible, as attractive a strength of schedule as possible, as much TV money as possible, etc.  But you’re in a conference that struggles to get its scheduling act together as it tries to fit a fourteen-school square peg into a twelve-game regular season round hole.

It’s not that you can’t have nice things.  It’s that nobody’s really sure what you can have.

“We have an idea of who we’ll play, but we don’t know when we’ll play,” McGarity said of the rotating cross-divisional opponent in the 6-1-1 format that also includes six division games and the permanent cross-division partner. “We know it will be a road game because Auburn’s coming back here in 2014. Whoever we play on the West side will be a road game. It hasn’t been finalized but Destin is when we’re planning to see everything because we’ve all got to move forward with dates, campus dates, homecoming dates and things like that.”

Shoot, no wonder McGarity says there won’t be a discussion about a potential nine-game conference schedule at Destin.  When would they have the time to talk about it?

Monday morning buffet

Step right up and start your week.

• ESPN looks at recruiting pitches for every SEC school and finds Georgia’s biggest problem with this year’s recruits is too much depth.
• Mike Bobo dishes up some Dawg porn on Justin Scott-Wesley.
• Kentucky outduels Spurrier for a four-star quarterback’s commitment.  Interesting.
• Doc Saturday’s most memorable hit in college football should be a crowd pleaser here.
• This is pretty funny.  It would be even better if it were true.
• Barrett Sallee takes a look at what makes Aaron Murray good, takes a shot at the decision not to spike at the end of the SECCG in passing.
• More big school separation talk here.
• Here’s something else Corch brought with him from the SEC that probably isn’t being welcomed in his newer surroundings.