“Most coaches like eight games.”

That’s Missouri’s Gary Pinkel, stating the obvious about how SEC coaches feel about conference scheduling.  (Didn’t take long for him to get the lay of the land.)

Of course, if you want the whiny version of that, Les Miles is more than happy to oblige.

“I wonder about the view of how the champion is decided in the finest collegiate football conference in America,” Miles said Wednesday without any prompting. “It’s interesting to see how you would compare our schedule with others. I wonder if there should be no permanent partners. I wonder if a computer might pick a fairer schedule by random draw.”

Hey, no big deal.  Les is just wonderin’.  Me, I wonder if tradition has anything to do with the finest collegiate football conference in America being the finest collegiate football conference in America.

Meanwhile, Steve Spurrier goes for the gold in Olympic whining with this beaut:

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said if the SEC wants to be fair, it will do away with permanent cross-divisional foes. The Head Ball Coach didn’t stop there, either.

“Tennessee’s got Alabama, who’s been the best team the last three or four years, and that’s not fair for Tennessee to have to play those guys every year,” Spurrier said. “But I don’t know. Heck, that’s just sort of the way it is. The coaches … we don’t make the rules. We just try to coach our teams the best we can.

“Nobody said it’s supposed to be fair anyway. Have you ever heard any commissioner or anybody say it’s supposed to be fair? They’d make the recruiting rules more fair. Right now, it seems like the same team gets all the top players every year in recruiting. We just need to go play whoever they tell us to play and do the best we can, and things will work out hopefully.”

Maybe the SEC can start a draft of high schoolers, Steve.  You should schedule a meeting with Slive about that.

Leave it to Nick Saban to be the voice of reason.

Alabama coach Nick Saban favors a plan that would allow a player to face every school in the league at least once during his career.

“I think it makes it more league-oriented to play more cross-divisional games,” Saban said.

How to go about doing that is the tricky part.

Saban said playing two cross-divisional foes every year and eliminating the permanent foe would be one way, but he also pointed out that going to nine conference games would also allow teams the opportunity to play more cross-divisional games. That way, the Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia rivalries would survive on a yearly basis.

That really is the nut of things, isn’t it?  Assuming he cares about the coaches’ bitching, Slive’s got a pretty clear-cut choice.  That he hasn’t actually made such a choice means (1) he doesn’t care and/or (2) he’s buying time until he gets a final answer out of CBS and ESPN about how he can maximize broadcast revenue for the conference.  We’ll learn a lot more about both when we see what emerges from Destin in June.  That is, assuming anything does.

Jessamen Dunker, you will be missed.

I tell you what – Florida football has proven itself good for some chuckles this week.  With the news that Gator offensive lineman and scooter maven Jessamen Dunker has elected to further his talents elsewhere, we learn that Dunker didn’t play well with the others.

But it should also be noted that Dunker was regarded by many as a bit of an outsider in a Florida locker room that has seemed more mature and composed in recent months. There’s this Robbie Andreu tweet…

Dunker transfer is no surprise. I've heard from several sources that he did not fit in real well with the rest of the team.

— Robbie Andreu (@RobbieAndreu) April 24, 2013

…and there were comments calling Dunker “kind of a shithead” and “not a stand-up citizen” in Inside the Gators’ Parting Shots series ($), so it’s possible that Dunker’s departure is related to being a misfit in Muschamp’s new football culture as well as his arrest.

Gee, nobody likes being a misfit, especially in Boom’s “new football culture”, whatever the hell that is, so if there’s a personality clash, it’s probably for the best… wait, what?

Despite those character concerns, Dunker was likely to get a shot to play as a rotation lineman with the Gators if he made it made into Muschamp’s good graces and onto the team…

Meet the new football culture in Gainesville, same as the old football culture.

Thursday morning buffet

Simple.  Nourishing.

• Finally, a media headline about college footballers not making money that points the finger in the NFL’s direction.
• Over the past five years, Georgia has been one of the slower offenses in the game.  But things have been speeding up recently.
• More Willie Martinez love:  “No Georgia defensive player has gone before the third round since the Indianapolis selected cornerback Tim Jennings in 2006 in round two with the 62nd overall pick.”
• It’s nice that the Peach Bowl name will be making a reappearance, but the BCS commissioners’ fixation with naming is getting a little weird.
• Richt says J.J. Green will stay on offense.  One thing about Green that impressed me at G-Day was that he showed good hands snagging a high, hard pass.  If he can offer some blitz protection, he definitely looks like a contributor on passing downs.
• You know this is shit Nick Saban doesn’t have time for.
• Sounds like Bill Hancock’s gotten a little sensitive about the old order he’s been defending:  “There are two letters that are not associated with this name,” Hancock said.  Hey, nobody ever said being a flack was easy.
• NCAA ponders waiving the waiver process for 6-7 teams that want to go bowling.

Nick Saban thinks the selection committee should have time for this.

Anything big happens in college football and it’s not validated until somebody gets Nick Saban’s opinion on the matter, right?  So he’s asked about the new playoff system and speaks very generally about it in his response.

With one exception, that is.

“I don’t think there’s enough weight put on the quality of your schedule and the opponents that you play, which in our league is very, very important, because we had six teams in the top 10 last year at the end of the season. We play each other, and that has a huge impact on the quality of team you have, regardless of how many games you lose. There are things like that that I think we can do better.”

Expect to hear more and more of this kind of talk from SEC coaches, especially if the pressure to go to a nine-game conference schedule increases.

Yeah, but this time he means it.

I was going to post something about Bill Hancock’s shameless change of face about a four-team playoff, but Rodger Sherman saves me a lot of time and trouble with this post.

I’m just surprised Ari Fleischer hasn’t weighed in yet.

Is Florida taking up Quidditch?

Oh, my Gawd, yes.  This is real.  And it’s spectacular.

There are times when you really wonder what people were thinking.

And if the Redcoat Band has a sense of humor, it’ll do a Harry Potter tribute at halftime of the Cocktail Party this year.

Wednesday morning buffet

It’s a buffet.  Just a buffet.

• “I don’t think you can ever go too wrong calling something what it is,” Scott said. “Things that make sense tend to stand the test of time.”  So how long should we give a four-team playoff?
• Alabama and Georgia are poised to dominate this year’s NFL draft.
• Preseason homerism, Gator style.
• The AJ-C breaks down Georgia’s 2013 schedule.
• SEC! SEC! SEC!:  “The ACC, the Pac 12, the Big Ten and the Big 12 all now have a “grant of rights” agreement. The SEC doesn’t have one, but it doesn’t really need one.”
• The new playoff, and a cry in the wilderness for economic fairness.  I was wondering if somebody would step up.
• Todd Gurley:  Georgia warhorse.
• They’re excited about football at Kentucky.

A Chiz can dream, can’t he?

How ’bout this?  “In a 27-year coaching career, Chizik had never left a job because of somebody else’s decision.”

That’s what happens when you’re the guy with the program that turned in the fourth-worst offensive and third-worst defensive showings in the SEC in the last six years.  Maybe we should be impressed that Auburn managed to win three games last year, given that.

It’s obvious Chizik wants to coach again.  That’s why he spent the time strenuously objecting to Selena Roberts’ report the other day.  (By the way, “we did it right” includes spending $77,000 to have private security enforce Auburn football player curfews during last season?  Ho-kay, fine.)

“It’s been a time of reflection. I’m not one to dwell on the past and look at all the ‘what-ifs’ and things of that nature, but naturally, you reflect,” Chizik said. “But I’ve also stayed busy. I’m in a place right now where I’m continuing to map out a plan.”

Careful with that kind of talk, Geno.  Remember what happened with the last SEC head coach who had a plan.

You paid good money for that?

The BCS hired Premier Sports Management to rebrand the BCS and help come up with a new name.  The result?

“College Football Playoff.”

Guys, whatever you shelled out for that, I’d have undercut PSM by half.

It could have been worse, admittedly.

“I’ll be happy with whatever,” Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany told reporters at the BCS meetings today, according to CBSSports.com’s Bruce Feldman’s Twitter feed. “Obviously I’m not great with names.”

And there’s your understatement of the day.

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UPDATE:  LMAO.

OU AD Joe Castiglione on hearing the name "College Football Playoff": "Is that really the name or just a space-filler?"

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) April 23, 2013

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UPDATE #2:  ROTFLMAO.

While they're at it, should also rename the SEC Championship Game the "National Championship Game."

— Paul Myerberg (@PaulMyerberg) April 23, 2013

Name that caption: Bite me.

For some reason, Subway cooked up a Jarvis Jones tribute.

At least he’s getting paid for it.