With six, you get egg roll.

Not to be outdone by the SEC’s awkward struggle with scheduling games for thirteen schools, the Big East has decided to go trolling for new members under every mid-major rock in America.

… According to the New York Post, and citing unnamed sources, the Big East will issue invitations to Boise State, Air Force, Navy and UCF — those first three institutions would join as football-only members – once the exit fees are increased.  The Post reports those invitations could be made as early as this weekend.

The Big East had previously announced it had authorized conference officials to expand membership to an even dozen schools.

The final two spots, the Post reports, would come down to Temple, SMU and Houston…

I think they’ll need to rename the conference.  How about the Big East of the China Sea Conference?  Or the One From Column A, Two From Column B Conference?

Oh, and in somewhat related news, evidently Brigham Young won’t be joining the Big 12 because the TV suits said no.

It’s gotten ridiculous.  At some point, maybe they should just eliminate the middleman and name ESPN the commissioner of college football.

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The SEC goes to three divisions: East, West and WTF

More and more, it’s looking like a thirteen-team SEC will be a complete cock-up.

Fine-tuning the fourth quarter

Sounds like Georgia is still feeling its way on how to finish a game.

“When you’re in the ‘four-minute offense’ and you’re pretty much running it every time, you can’t afford to have a penalty,” offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said. “We’ve been in that pretty much the last three weeks — ahead and trying to run clock.”

The reason why was evident against Mississippi State when Murray was picked off for a touchdown.

“We probably could have kept running it, used clock and punted and not scored and people would be complaining we didn’t score, but won the game 24-3,” Bobo said.

Against Tennessee, Richt said, “We pretty much said, ‘OK, we’re not going to throw the ball anymore. It was a three-and-out, it was a three-and-out and we gave them the ball. Just put more pressure on the defense to make these stops. … If we’re in that situation again, I would have to think twice about deciding whether or not we ought to just continue to play offense.”

Said center Ben Jones: “You always want to be able to come out with four or five minutes left in the game and run the clock out. When they’re loading the box up, sometimes it gets a little difficult.”

Can’t say I’m not sympathetic to Jones’ plight.  I blame Grantham.

In other games of interest in the SEC East…

I’m not going to predict Florida’s or South Carolina’s fate tomorrow (I’m especially clueless about Florida-Auburn), but there sure is a lot at stake, particularly for the Gators.

Auburn is a game with huge consequences for Florida.  Win and Muschamp’s team continues to control its destiny.  Lose and the chance of winning the East gets very, very slim.  Not only would the Gators have to run the table with the rest of their conference schedule, they’d also have to have both Georgia and South Carolina lose another SEC game.  That’s a lot to hope for.

From a purely Georgia perspective, though, I’m not sure Florida winning or losing on the Plains matters so much, simply because I think the Dawgs have to win in Jacksonville no matter what to have a legitimate shot to get back to Atlanta at season’s end.

That’s not the situation in Starkville.  As long as Georgia and Florida keep winning, South Carolina can’t lose.  One slip up and the ‘Cocks lose their tiebreaker advantage with the Dawgs.

One other scheduling note to consider:  for all the focus on which of the three has the hardest path against the West, it’s also important to remember which of them have games left against the weakest teams in the East.  South Carolina has already played Vandy and Kentucky;  Florida has yet to play Vanderbilt.  Georgia hasn’t played either, until tomorrow.  (By the way, if you now lump Tennessee in with those two, keep in mind that South Carolina’s record in Knoxville is 1-14.)

How do you think things will look in the East around 11:00 tomorrow night?

Can there be too much hurry in the hurry-up?

Interesting complaint from Texas A&M’s defensive coordinator:

“I think there needs to be a discussion on it within the league to figure out how they want to handle it [up-tempo offense], because it’s becoming more and more widespread with different teams. Like I said it’s a legitimate tactic if you are using the same personnel. But we’re having teams … last week, they’d run a 50-yard go route, the guy gets done with his route, runs right off the sideline, the other guy runs on from right at the line of scrimmage. Our corners have to run 50 yards back and they’re snapping the ball. Without the opportunity to sub, I don’t know that it’s legitimate.”

I can see both sides to this argument.  On the one hand, as long as both sides have the same opportunity to flog the defense, it would seem to be fair.  On the other hand, if the rules say that both sides are supposed to have an equal opportunity to substitute, then it’s up to the officials to allow that to happen before letting the play run (of course, that begs the question of how much time the defense should be given to make personnel changes).

If I’m a head coach, it probably comes down to what kind of offense I’m running as to which side I come down on the question.  But if I’m a defensive coordinator who wants to keep my job, my answer is going to be different, no matter what the head coach is weighing.  Which, when you think about it, explains Sherman’s and DeRuyter’s comments completely.