It’s Michael Adams’ way, or the highway.

This is such a lovely little piece of arrogance, coming from one of the leading lights of the conference putting its foot down and insisting that its postseason proposal is the only one worthy of consideration.

“Everybody every now and then has to give a little to make something work,” Georgia President Michael Adams said. “You’ve got to quit thinking, in my opinion, how the world has been. You have to start thinking about the fact that this is a new day with a new set of rules.”

Well, after you cave to the SEC’s demand, that is.

I’m surprised Adams isn’t thinking about trying his hand at going to Washington.  Thinking like that would fit right in there.

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Phil Steele, messing with my mind

I’m not sure how this all works out (I’m hopeful of getting my hands on the mag today), but Steele has Florida as his tenth-ranked team, lower than Georgia, but also his surprise pick to win the SEC East.  Which would be a definite bummer for a number of reasons.

For what it’s worth, I don’t see the Gator backfield being good enough to get them to Atlanta.  Your mileage may vary, of course, Florida fans (and Steele).

Meanwhile, elsewhere in greed…

The Big 12 commissioner, fresh off the news of a record revenue distribution to its members (close to $20 million per school), comes down hard against player stipends, noting that if student-athletes want to get paid, “There are places you can go and play for money…”

Nice.  Surreal, but nice.

The SEC: when your best just ain’t good enough.

There’s only one reason Mike Slive and his merry band are tampering with the greatest 20-year run of success in the history of college sports.

Ego.

SEC distributed $20.125 million per team in 2011-12; Big Ten distributed $24.6 million

— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) June 1, 2012

That’s a record distribution to conference schools, but it falls short of the Big Ten’s jackpot.  And it’s a gap that’s expected to grow.

The SEC presidents simply can’t have that.  Even though it’s a shortfall born of their own shortsightedness.

Four years ago, ESPN provided groundbreaking money and exposure to the SEC in exchange for most of its content. The biggest asset was acquiring nearly every football game not owned by CBS (usually one per week) or each school (one per season).

ESPN constructed the arrangement specifically to prevent the SEC from starting its own channel. [Emphasis added.]  The SEC receives an average of $150 million a year from ESPN over 15 years, according to the SportsBusiness Journal, which first reported the channel discussions. “We sort of broke ground on major media contracts and I think the others have followed along and actually moved the ball a little bit further,” Machen said.

Since then, TV media rights have skyrocketed higher. The market got reset with the Pac-12’s deal with ESPN and Fox that SportsBusiness Journal reported is worth $250 million a year over 12 years. The ACC’s recent new agreement with ESPN took it from an average of $155 million annually to $240 million.

“The SEC has two issues,” said Neal Pilson, a sports media consultant and former president of CBS Sports. “One is they granted a lot of those rights to their broadcast carriers. Second, some of the SEC schools are already exploiting their third-tier (local media) rights.

In other words, Slive got snookered and didn’t have the foresight to bargain for an opt-out clause.  So the presidents changed the conditions on the ground with an ill-conceived round of expansion that’s taking on the appearance of a bigger and bigger screw up every time the league meets to decide something, simply to reopen the deal it struck with ESPN.

As far as that goes, it’ll likely work.  They’ll get more money, but it’s been at a cost.  Fault lines no one previously perceived had existed were opened.  The revised basketball schedule is a joke.  The 6-1-1 compromise on the football schedule is the best of a bunch of bad options and one that is likely to be revisited sooner than the presidents would like, either because CBS won’t pony up more money without being offered more inventory or because the conference finds itself on the short end of the stick when a strength of schedule component is introduced into the postseason math and the SEC’s eight-game schedule doesn’t offer enough support.

You’ll notice I haven’t said anything about the fans.

This is no way to run a railroad.