A bridge too far to troll.

There are some places even Mark Bradley won’t go.

‘Why not eight?’

If you had “before the first playoff game is played” in the When Will The First Conference Commissioner Advocate An Eight-Team Playoff? pool, you win.

Four teams may not be enough for a college football playoff, according to ACC commissioner John Swofford.

Speaking at Wednesday’s weekly Durham Sports Club meeting at the Croasdaile Country Club, Swofford said an eight-team playoff, “in terms of the number of teams, would probably be ideal.”

This season marks the debut of a four-team College Football Playoff, replacing the BCS, which chose two teams for a national championship game.

“I don’t think all the controversy’s going to go away,” Swofford said of the new system. “You have four teams that get a chance to play for the national championship, which is twice as many as before, but whoever’s fifth or sixth is not going to be happy. There will be some conferences that won’t have a team in the playoff.”

After they go to eight, Swofford and his peers can recycle that puppy with just a couple of changes in the numbers.  As long as there’s more money in it for them, of course.

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Overall odds: Georgia 77.9%, Missouri 22.1%.

Georgia’s in the SEC East clubhouse at 6-2 and Missouri is still out on the course with only one conference loss, but Bill Connelly says the odds are with the Dawgs.

… Mizzou has to win at Tennessee (probability: 39%) and Arkansas (57%) to stay ahead. Missouri goes 1-1 or 0-2, and Georgia goes to Atlanta.

The only thing about that is Missouri’s been a better road team – one that’s on a nine-game winning streak, in fact – than it’s been at home, where it’s lost to Indiana and gotten smoked by Georgia.

Then again, given the way the East has been this year, there’s probably no point in trying to make sense out of the situation.

“It’s part of the job, though, definitely.”

USA Today takes a look at what Mark Richt does to earn a living.  There’s a lot more than just coaching games.

It’s Richt’s job to maximize that revenue. His contract specifies that he “take any and all reasonable actions … to generate substantial net revenue for the Association and University,” an unusual clause for coaching contracts.

“It’s just stating the obvious,” McGarity says.

Richt’s contractual duties also include soliciting sponsors for marketing opportunities and helping to find donors for scholarship endowments…

… Richt’s contract is unusually specific about his media and other public relations duties, including no fewer than 12 appearances at Bulldog Club meetings throughout the Southeast and no fewer than two full days each year assisting the school’s president in fundraising activities. Parameters for his radio and TV appearances are spelled out in detail in his nearly 40-page contract and in greater detail in a 191-page multimedia and marketing rights licensing agreement that the contract specifies be provided to him.

Georgia sounds like it’s more than getting its money’s worth out of him.

Richt, whose 14 seasons at Georgia make him one of the nation’s longest-tenured coaches at his current school, has a middle-of-the-pack salary for coaches in the Southeastern Conference, where schools generate staggering amounts of football revenue. Georgia’s was $77.5 million in 2012-13 — fourth in the nation and second in the SEC, according to school’s most recent financial reports to the NCAA.

And this has to warm the cockles of Greg McGarity’s heart:

Richt waves off the notion that a coach with the fourth-highest winning percentage among active FBS coaches should be making a good deal more than his conference’s median. “I am making more than I ever dreamed of,” he says, “so I don’t worry about it too much.”

At least they don’t make him sell programs at halftime.

Game control to Major Tom

You knew this weekly rankings stuff from the selection committee was a bad idea before it even started.  This week’s contribution:

There’s reason to believe TCU would have remained at No. 4 had it not struggled against Kansas, trailing at halftime before pulling ahead in the fourth quarter. But by failing to notch a convincing win, the Horned Frogs gave the committee enough cause to place two SEC teams in the top four — and, if we think down the road, might have given the committee reason to eventually slide Baylor into the top spot coming out of the Big 12.

“The committee recognized that TCU did not control the game against Kansas,” Long said. “When you add that to their body of work, it was obviously a close game, to come from behind at one point at Kansas, a team that does not have a strong résumé this year. That certainly impacted it.”

TCU then earns a place in college football history: The Horned Frogs are the first team to fall out of the Playoff top four after a win.

So the committee won’t consider margin of victory, but “game control” – that’s another story.  I guess style points do matter.  Or at least they do this week.

One thing I can say in defense of the BCS computers is at least they didn’t have to rationalize their output in public.

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UPDATE:  “Game control”?  Nobody said anything about game control!

Richt asked about "game control" on SEC teleconference. He asks if it's from the playoff committee and admits he has no idea what it is.

— David Paschall (@DavidSPaschall) November 19, 2014

Wednesday morning buffet

Dig in if you want some.

• “I came in with champ. I’m leaving with Him. Simple as that.”
• Kentucky, if you’ll recall, used a good bit of diamond formation against Georgia.  Here’s an in-depth look at how that formation is utilized these days.
• Bill Connelly’s conclusion about Georgia after posting the advanced box score from Saturday:  “Georgia is just so damn confusing this year.”  Yup.
• Now Tennessee decides it’s good policy to suspend players who are accused of breaking the law?
• Cory Brinson takes a peek at life after Gurley and decides it’s promising.
• For the first time in school history, Auburn has allowed at least 30 points in five straight games.
• John Infante suggests a different course of action that the NCAA could have taken in the Penn State matter.
• Would the SEC nix a potential Texas-Texas A&M bowl game meeting out of concern that a TAMU loss might “damage its brand”?  Jeebus.

“That’s why people get beat.”

I know Richt’s got to say things like that as he prepares his team to play a cupcake after the SEC grind’s been wrapped up, and I know Charleston Southern gave Vanderbilt a good fight and all, but, still, it’s going to be hard to say much good about a team with this kind of mindset going in:

Chadwell said his defensive players got a little “squeamish” on the bus ride back Saturday from a win at Liberty, because they were watching Chubb run through Auburn.

Maybe they’ll feel better about Brendan Douglas, since they’ll probably be seeing a lot of him on Saturday.

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UPDATE:  If you’re looking for some background on Charleston Southern, here you go.