Name this caption: motley crew edition

Mike Slive and the SEC Fourteen (h/t Team Speed Kills):

I’m really digging Franklin and Richt posed next to each other. Was that staged, or did they choose that?

Anyway, let’s hear from you in the comments.

What are the odds?

ESPN dude checks with a leading British sports book to get an early peek at next season’s MNC odds and gets this list of favorites:

LSU Tigers: 4.5 to 1 odds
Alabama Crimson Tide: 5 to 1
USC Trojans: 8 to 1
Oregon Ducks: 10 to 1
Oklahoma Sooners: 12 to 1
Florida State Seminoles: 12 to 1
Georgia Bulldogs: 12 to 1

The “Mark Richt’s teams never do well in the face of high expectations” meme starts now.

“… we have to be able to make the case we played the toughest competition possible.”

Stewart Mandel explores the possibility that a four-team playoff may result in regular season scheduling becoming more challenging, possibly by design (Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione suggests the possibility of a selection committee, à la what the NCAA does with basketball) or by necessity, which is the position Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame’s influential AD finds his school in, given that it can’t be a conference champ.

“If you’re going to be an independent in a world with a limited number of postseason spots in a playoff or plus-one, you have to rebut the pretty strong presumption that conference champions should be there,” said Swarbrick. “We all assume the SEC champion will be in position to be there next year, so as an independent, we have to be able to make the case we played the toughest competition possible.”

Interesting that he mentions a particular conference there.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?  If D-1 football goes down this road and incorporates a strength of schedule component into its playoff criteria, that’s going to run smack into the SEC’s current insistence that its eight-game conference schedule is tough enough.  What will Slive do if the computers and/or a selection committee say otherwise?

“It’s not like we’re out there stalking people.”

It turns out the NCAA has conducted surveillance lately.  Even better, it’s now considering hiring private investigators to do more of the same.

What could go wrong?

Maybe they should consider outsourcing the work to TMZ.