Banished from Valdosta…

I’ve never known of anyone who’s suffered that fate, but Zach Mettenberger proves there’s a first time for everything.

Take his word for it.

Chris Low moves Arkansas up to #3 in his “SEC post-spring power rankings” because “Coach Bobby Petrino is convinced that his defense will be improved and said the competition between the offense and defense this spring was the best it’s been.”

When it absolutely, positively has to be sponsored all season…

Jeez, talk about the tail wagging the dog here –

FedEx has informed ESPN that it will not renew its entitlement of the Orange Bowl, ending a 21-year association with the Bowl Championship Series event. The move ends what was the longest-running title sponsorship of a BCS game.

For more than two decades as an Orange Bowl sponsor, the game became FedEx’s biggest annual hospitality event, with the company entertaining as many as 700 customers over three to four days in Miami.

While the game itself was important to FedEx, the company was not interested in a larger college football platform. ESPN is reserving bowl game entitlements for companies that buy a lengthy and more expensive college football package starting in September.

ESPN is reserving?  What does that mean in practical terms?

… ESPN has hit the market with the Orange Bowl’s title sponsorship and has begun negotiations with other brands.

“We are in active discussions around the Orange Bowl, which is a premier property and presents a tremendous marketing opportunity. FedEx remains an important client and we continue to be engaged with them in other areas,” ESPN’s president of customer marketing and sales Ed Erhardt said in a statement e-mailed by ESPN PR.

The network, which will be carrying the BCS games for the first time next year and is selling all sponsorship and advertising inventory, is seeking around $20 million annually over four years for a new title deal that includes ad commitments, sources said.

The WWL is doing the same with the other BCS bowls, too.  So at this point, it’s cut deals with the bowls and the SEC.  It brokers games between schools.  And now it’s lining up the game’s biggest sponsors.

It seems to me that the people lobbying Congress and the NCAA to force a playoff are pitching the wrong folks.  ESPN has more clout than either.  Or both, for that matter.

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The chosen quarterback

Here’s something I didn’t know until I saw this Steve Hummer article about Aaron Murray – Murray is a Member of the Tribe.

That leads me to three quick observations:

1. Doug Gillett was at least semi-prescient with this post.  Or I’m more out of touch than he is (entirely possible, sad to say).
2. One of my cherished scenarios is in play again.
3. I finally have a witty response to the “is Jared Zabransky Jewish?” queries I get from time to time.

Monday morning buffet

A few things to sample on a very rainy Monday:

• Christian LeMay led a secret life growing up in Gainesville, Florida:  “I kind of kept that under wraps because I lived in Gainesville, but I liked watching David Greene and D.J. Shockley play quarterback there…”
• Big Ten expansion:  it’s about money and sticking it to Texas (at least if you’re Tom Osborne).
• Speaking of expansion, I’m sure if you’re Jim Boeheim that you’d question the “fit” of moving from the Big East to the Big Ten, but if the Big East implodes and loses its AQ berth in the BCS, your AD may not share your point of view.
• Because it’s never too early to be thinking about it, here’s a look at games of interest from college football’s opening weekend.
• And here’s a quick link to the SEC’s 2010 football schedules.
• From Dr Saturday, here’s a fun stat about South Carolina’s Stephen Gilmore:

… Cornerback is a notoriously impossible position to judge from the outside, without a fair amount of film and understanding of the coverages in specific situations, because the best corners are typically absent from the stat sheet as a sign of respect from opposing offenses. On that front, Gilmore seems to check out: By the second game of his career, Georgia was already avoiding the boundary side of the field (all six of A.J. Green’s receptions against USC came either in front of Gilmore’s counterpart at field corner, Akeem Auguste, or over the middle, behind the linebackers in a zone look), and Alabama’s hulking star, Julio Jones, was held without a catch for the only time in his career in the Tide’s defensively driven, 20-6 win in October.

The SEC, post-spring practice

If you’re looking for a handy snapshot of where each SEC schools stands after spring practice, you could do worse than these summaries at The Times-Picayune:  SEC East rundown; SEC West rundown.

Two notes of interest:  (1) the Auburn beat writer lists the linebacking corps as both a spring strength and a spring weakness, which is a pretty neat trick when you think about it; and (2) “The Vols will barely have 70 scholarship players to work with next season.” Wow.  That includes, I presume, true freshmen.  Not a recipe for success…