“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.

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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.

Wait, what?

Of all the WTF things that have gone on in the world of college football in the last few months, this has to be the WTFiest.

If there is anything to that story beyond Miles’ agent trying to scam a few more bucks out of LSU, were I Joe Alleva, I’d sure be tempted to call Les’ bluff.

“Just so you know…”

We’ll always have the Hat.  He’s the anti-Saban.

Oh, and kiss ‘em while you got ‘em, ladies.

Friday morning buffet

Nom nom nom…

• Aaron Murray has a legitimate shot at setting the Georgia career touchdown passing record tomorrow.  (He’d trade that for a win, though.  Duh.)
• Les Miles, on his big-ass fullback J. C. Copeland:  “He is a large man. He will continue to be that.”
• Charlie Weis knows what separates the great coaches from the rest – attention to detail.
• John Pennington reports that the nine-game conference schedule is back on the table for the SEC, because of the need for product for the SEC Network.  Fine by me.
• Pat Dye isn’t man enough to pick a winner in the Georgia-South Carolina game.
• Geno Smith’s numbers are insane.
• Georgia racks up 544 yards of offense tomorrow… and loses?  I can see that happening, with a few untimely turnovers and whatnot.
• Despite having more scholarship players on its roster, South Carolina has played the same number of kids on scholarship this season as Georgia has.

Interesting choice of words there, Coach.

Here’s something else the Hat laid on the assembled multitude in Hoover yesterday.

“They’ll really add to our conference,” Miles said. “The Aggies bring a very, very capable team, and (Texas) is a very lucrative recruiting area…”

“Lucrative recruiting area”? Oh hells, yeah.  Just ask Willie Lyles.

Les Miles does all the diligence due.

It’s nice that Zach Mettenberger sees his stint at LSU as the result from God’s plan.  Evidently the Almighty One didn’t require his new head coach to dig too deeply into what went into his old head coach’s decision to dismiss him from the Georgia program.

When you were recruiting Zach, did you by chance call Coach Rick(sic)? If so, what was the gist of some of those conversations? I certainly reviewed those guys that we recruit. I got the real view of the incidents and understand kind of what happened there, and recognize that certainly people make mistakes.

Translation:  I needed a quarterback.  Beyond that, if you don’t look too closely, you don’t have as much to worry about.

STFU, Les.

I realize that the Sturm und Drang we hear from the coaches at the SEC meetings is essentially window dressing – don’t forget, last year they unanimously voted against the roster management rules that were passed by the presidents a day later – but that doesn’t mean Les Miles hasn’t been showing his ass in a major way this week.

Yesterday I wondered if Miles’ complaint about LSU playing Florida on a permanent basis was about him or if he was making a bigger argument about the conference as a whole.  I guess with his AD whining about other schools’ selfishness on the issue, the Hat chose to go all in.

“Mississippi State is going to play Kentucky every year, and I think that is disproportionate,” Tigers coach Les Miles told reporters Wednesday at the gathering in Destin, Fla. “I’m not for Auburn playing Georgia every year. Again, it’s disproportionate. I think there should be an opportunity to see a greater segment of the conference.”

It turns out that Dan Mullen isn’t for Les Miles.  Booyah!

… This, of course, led to the response from Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen, which was a G-rated version of what he really wanted to say.

“I’ve been in this league for a while, and I have a national championship ring from when my crossover games at the University of Florida that year (2006) were Auburn, Alabama and LSU,” Mullen said. “Is that fair? But we still won a national title. I don’t see how there’s any relevance to that.”

I know it’s hard to believe, but it doesn’t appear that Miles and LSU are winning many converts (“Reporters struggled, though, to find other coaches coming forth in agreement with Miles…”) on the issue.

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UPDATE:  Make sure you read this terrific post at And The Valley Shook.  Particularly this:

That said, permanent rivals are important. They also strengthen the bonds of the conference, and it ensures programs of relative quality play each other every year. More importantly, it preserves two of college football’s greatest rivalries. Alabama-Tennessee gets the press, but I think saving Auburn-Georgia is more important.

Auburn is an Eastern team playing in the West. Their traditional rivals were largely the eastern schools, and they took one for the conference when they agreed to move West. The SEC predates 1992, and Auburn’s already been asked to sacrifice the Florida game, but asking them to also give up the South’s Oldest rivalry is just obscene. That’s not progress, that’s slapping tradition in the face. I think preserving one of the oldest rivalries in sports is not some incidental goal. Auburn’s given up a lot for the SEC, and as their conference mates, we can give them this. Tradition matters. It matters a lot. Even if it’s not my tradition.

It’s sad that the fans grasp this, while the folks in power grow less and less concerned about it.

Les Miles and the geography of tradition

As with so many things Les Miles says, it’s hard to tell whether he’s being a smartass or just smart when he discusses his displeasure with LSU having Florida as its permanent cross-division partner/rival.

“This is all based on some vague tradition that is not considering that you’re adding teams to the conference,” he said. “Tell me about the tradition of the conference when you add teams to it.

“I mean, Florida isn’t even a nearby state. This tradition of rivalry is the fact that we enjoy playing them.”

Wait a minute… if you enjoy playing them, then why do you want to do away with… oh, never mind.

If Miles is complaining specifically about his game, well, okay.  Although his “adding teams to the conference” rationale doesn’t make much sense in that there were unbalanced rivalries/pairings before expansion when he didn’t object and the two new schools aren’t exactly patsies.  But there’s so much “it’s not fair!” whining going on these days you can hardly blame the man for his share.  However, if he’s dissing “the tradition of the conference” as a whole, The Hat can go screw himself.

It’s not like we fans were clamoring for conference expansion.  That’s come about solely as a result of the chase for the almighty dollar.  And that’s a chase that benefits Les Miles a helluva lot more than it does me.  So if you’ve got a problem with SEC tradition, Les, kindly keep it to yourself.

Well, if Les Miles thinks it’s a good idea…

He’s on board with Spurrier’s division record only proposal.

“I want the schedule to be fair and I want it to give everybody the same opportunity,” Miles said today in Birmingham at a luncheon for the Changed Lives Christian Center. “I’m for the Western Division deciding the Western Division champion and the Eastern Division deciding the Eastern Division champion.”

He doesn’t like playing Florida.

I swear, the coaches don’t want to play nine conference games and they don’t want to play tough cross- divisional games.  How ’bout we let them play twelve games against Sun Belt and MAC teams and then vote on which teams they think are best suited for the SECCG?