“… but once our TV partners weigh in…”

Whatever accomplishments Mike Slive wants to point to proudly as his legacy as SEC commissioner, I’m willing to bet the 2012 conference football schedule won’t be on the list.  The good news is that there are so many flaws and departures from the prior norms that Georgia’s break in avoiding the top teams from the West – again! – kind of gets lost in the shuffle.

But that’s just short term.  The real story is how going forward the conference is prepared to cede control over its scheduling to the networks.  If you don’t understand how big a change that is, make sure you read this story.  Money (heh) quote from Greg McGarity:

“I think what you may see there is a variation on when you may play certain teams, and that will obviously be determined at a later date once TV has a chance to weigh in and meet with the commissioner to find out what is best for all concerned. I don’t think there is going to be anything definite as far as when you play most of your teams.”

In the end, the only tradition these guys will stand firm on is raking in the bucks.

Advertisement

The buck stops where?

If you want to know why the Sandusky conviction is just the sad beginning of a long process involving his enablers at Penn State, start with this:

These people didn’t know the truth only because they didn’t want to know it. The best example of this pattern of denial is provided by how Mike McQueary’s witnessing Sandusky’s anal rape of a ten-year-old boy in a shower was, within 24 hours, transformed into “something of a sexual nature” when reported by Joe Paterno to his formal administrative superiors, and then within a few days into what university president Gordon Spanier characterized as “conduct that made someone uncomfortable.”

And finish here:

The single most chilling sentence in the legal record of the case is this: Referring to the rape of the child witnessed by McQueary, the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office noted in its report last November that “there is no indication that anyone from the university ever attempted to learn the identity of the child who was sexually assaulted on their campus or made any follow-up effort to obtain more information.”

I’d like to think the author is wrong about whether we’re any better than Penn State, when push comes to shove.  But, then again, I would have liked to have thought Penn State was better than Penn State.

What do you call a four-team playoff? A bad start.

The BCS is dead, the body hasn’t even had enough time to cool yet, and we’re already hearing a myriad of reasons why its replacement is doomed.

Today’s two reasons:  (1) parity makes a four-team playoff unfair for the ACC and (2) “The only way to determine a true champion is to conduct a true tournament, with 16 teams – if not more – stretched over a month or more.”

For those of you who think a four-team or even an eight-team postseason will calm the waters, the next few years are going to come as something of a shock.

Overexposed! (Clap) (Clap) (Clap, clap, clap)

From 1983, here’s a great catch by Bill Connelly:

The men who head the sports divisions of ABC and CBS say the networks did not do well financially in their telecasts of NCAA football games last season. “We had the worst year financially in our history for college football,” said Jim Spence, president of ABC Sports. CBS Sports President Neal Pilson said the situation was the same for his network. The network officials, meeting in Oregon, blamed the lack of profits on overexposure and too high a price tag for the right to show the games …

To paraphrase an old joke, how can you tell when a TV exec is lying?

Mark, you may have some ‘splaining to do.

There’s already plenty of heat on the coaching staff for Georgia’s abysmal special teams play last season, but if Blair Walsh goes on to have an outstanding NFL rookie season because his position coach corrected a flaw he found fairly easily (h/t AirForceDawg @ DawgRun), it’s gonna get a lot hotter.  And deservedly so.