“You also have to remember we play the SEC Championship Game.”

Judging from this article, a majority of Southeastern Conference athletic directors favor sticking with an eight-game conference schedule.  What’s interesting is that there isn’t a single mention in the article about television contracts being a motivating factor in the equation.  Instead, it’s almost all about the playoffs.

“I think we’ve done a really good job convincing the country that a one-loss SEC team deserves to play for the national title,” said Mississippi State Athletics Director Scott Stricklin, who supports eight games. “Are we going to be able to make the same argument for a two-loss team, which would happen more often (with nine games)?”

I think Stricklin’s missing the point there.  Greg McGarity, however, isn’t.

Said Georgia Athletics Director Greg McGarity: “The eight-game formula has served us well in the national championship discussion. Is that the right pattern moving forward? I think a lot of us think it is until proven differently.”

In other words, until they see proof that the conference is getting burned by the selection committee on the strength of schedule front, nobody’s inclined to do much of anything.

Which means we should expect scheduling to continue to be a season-by-season process.  And there’s something else we should continue to expect – a steady diet of cupcakes.  The recipe for those comes from the perfect combination of arrogance…

“I’m not worried about other schools playing nine games in their league. In some leagues, the bottom half of their league is cupcakes. So big deal you’re playing nine. You’re playing a cupcake anyway.”

… (because all cupcakes are equal, right?) and finances.

Gate revenue is also an argument made by some ADs for eight games. For Florida and Georgia, which annually play a neutral-site SEC game and an ACC rival that fluctuates home and away, nine SEC games would mean only six home games every other year.

“That’s a net loss of over $2 million what you generate every home game,” McGarity said. “So over a 10-year period, in today’s dollars, you’re leaving $10 to $11 million on the table.”

By negative implication, I assume that means Slive hasn’t been able to get the networks to pony up enough for the improved inventory a ninth conference game offers.

So expect Slive to be reactive instead of proactive on this front.  That means we’ll have plenty of SEC coaches bitching about scheduling for the foreseeable future.  And then even more bitching when one of them gets screwed out of a playoff spot.  Oh, goody for that.

Thursday brunch buffet

A little nosh for you…

• Kevin Sumlin says TAMU’s spring football game is worthless for his team.
• Here’s a look at who’s in the mix to start at quarterback in Clemson’s opener against Georgia.
• John Infante suggests that Mark Cuban take on AAU ball instead of the NCAA.
• Greg McGarity, on piped-in music at Sanford Stadium:  “…we have an opportunity to do certain things that will get our crowd excited in a proactive manner, rather than in a reactive manner.”  I have no idea what that means.
• Michael Elkon has an intriguing look at how the unionization effort by the Northwestern players might impact college football transfer rules.
• Nick Saban says he’s powerless to remove an injured player on the field playing a HUNH offense (”So you can’t do anything. You’ve got to call timeout to get a guy out. And if you tell a guy to get down, that’s really against the rules, and they boo him out of the park.”).  Mark Lewis, the NCAA’s executive vice president for championships and alliances, emphasized that an injury timeout already exists.  Good to see everyone’s on the same page.
• With Gary Pinkel’s latest raise, nine SEC head coaches make more than $3 million per year.
• Athlon ranks the 10 best SEC quarterbacks of the BCS era.

You can’t put a price tag on the perception of promoting alcohol use.

Actually, I suspect we’re about to find out that you can.

The SEC plans to review its alcohol policy for neutral-site games and home games off campus, and not necessarily selling alcohol to the public at campus games, SEC Associate Commissioner Herb Vincent said.

The University of Texas recently began selling beer and wine at some sporting events this year and may continue at football games in the fall. At least one SEC athletics director likes the idea for SEC stadiums, where alcohol is permitted in private suites but not public areas.

Selling beer at football games “would enhance the fan experience,” LSU Athletics Director Joe Alleva said.

Not to mention the schools’ bank accounts.  Unleash the rationalization hounds!

“I don’t think that’s something that would necessarily be a negative for drunkenness and it might curtail the drunkenness if you sold beer. Right now, they drink excessively in the parking lot before they come in because they can’t get alcohol inside. Perhaps if they had access in the stadium, they wouldn’t drink as much when they come in. I think it’s something we have to talk about. This may come down the road in the future, and I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”

And here’s your real tell:  Mike Slive has “mixed feelings” about it.  That’s a long way from firm opposition.

There’s way too much money involved here, especially once the conference gets over its hypocrisy about message sending.  Aside from concession sales and sponsorships, you’ve got the real golden goose:  advertising.  My prediction is they’ll start sliding down the slippery slope once they see how Texas makes out with its new policy and they’ll keep going with explanations that don’t pass the logic test until they get it all in.

When that happens, at least we’ll be assured of one good thing, an end to this silliness:

In 2006, officials from Florida, Georgia and the SEC asked CBS and other television networks to no longer use the “World’s Largest Cocktail Party” phrase when referencing the Florida-Georgia football game. The movement to tone down the nickname was done to raise awareness about the excessive use of alcohol on campuses.

Wednesday brunch buffet

More tasty morsels for your reading pleasure:

• Lots of early contenders for the Fulmer Cup lead, including Ole Miss.
• For everyone advocating the SEC ending divisional play as a means of straightening out football scheduling, it hasn’t done much for basketball.
• Good news!  To accommodate DISH, the SEC Network is moving its launch date up a couple of weeks. That means we can have more PAWWWLLL.
• “Mike McQueary confided to a dozen Nittany Lions players that he could relate to the helplessness of the young boy he had seen with Sandusky in a campus shower a decade earlier because he was abused as a boy…”  Too bad his experience didn’t motivate him to respond in a better way.
• Georgia is the only SEC team facing two BCS conference opponents this season.
• “South Carolina defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward and his staff were in Austin last Friday, Saturday and Sunday to talk strategy with new Texas coach Charlie Strong and his defensive staff.”  While we’re passing rule changes, you know one I’d like?  A rule prohibiting defensive coordinators of teams on Georgia’s schedule from consulting with Charlie Strong.
• And don’t forget the NCAA’s football rules committee has its review of the 10-second substitution proposal scheduled today.

A perverse form of job security

If Mike Slive is planning to stay in his post as SEC commissioner until he solves the conference’s football scheduling problem, he’ll be there for a while.

The Longhorn Network is in business, baby!

DISH and Disney get in bed together.

Seriously, the big news is that the SEC Network has its first major distribution deal.

Now I just wonder how much that’s gonna cost me.

Margin called, gentlemen.

It’s not too late to bail out Saban, Mr. Slive.

#NCAA rules comm. will allow every FBS conference to implement eight-man officiating crews if they so choose, according to #Big12 officials—
Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerCBS) March 03, 2014

One thing, fellas – if you decide to give an eight-man crew a try, how ’bout putting more thought into how it should operate than you did with the targeting rule?

“We all knew it wasn’t going to last forever.”

Can somebody explain Chris Low’s point here?

The cannibalistic nature of the league caught up with it last season, even though Auburn survived an early-season loss to LSU to work its way back up the BCS standings and into the national title game.

Is he saying that Auburn lost to FSU because the SEC was so tough last season?  Otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense.  And even that point seems a little shaky to me.  The SEC’s been tougher in several recent seasons than its 2013 version, with its conference winner going on to win the title game in those years.

Only reason I ask is that I don’t see the conference being any easier this season, even in the face of the league-wide drop off we’re likely to see at the quarterback position.  So is Low predicting another national title goose egg?  Given that the postseason field is expanding to four, I would think the SEC’s odds of winning another title game are better than ever.

In today’s SEC, variety is the spice of life.

I’ve touched on this before, but the idea that the SEC’s loss of so much experienced talent at the quarterback position going into this season may lead to a defensive renaissance needs to be put in context.  And that context ain’t that pretty.

The last couple of seasons only continued a trend toward more explosive offense and away from the suffocating defense that was the SEC’s trademark for many years. Just a few seasons ago, nearly every SEC defense ranked among the nation’s top half in terms of yards allowed. That’s no longer the case, as about half of the league’s defenses trended toward the bottom in 2013 — with Arkansas (76th), Missouri (81st), Tennessee (83rd), Auburn (86th), Kentucky (91st) and Texas A&M (109th) all ranking 75th or worse nationally in total defense.

Some of those teams generally sucked, sure, but you’ve also got your two division winners in that group.  (And no Todd Grantham.  But I digress.)  How much of that development can you attribute to great quarterbacking and how much to a broader issue of defensive quality?

Ching thinks that it’s not your father’s SEC anymore and the offenses will still run ahead of the defenses.

Getting rid of some great quarterbacks will certainly help improve those numbers, but this is no longer the smashmouth, pound-the-run league that it once was. It’s not as simple to defend what today’s offenses throw at you as it was during the I-formation days of yore, and several SEC defenses have a long way to go before anyone would consider them competent at containing such attacks.

You have Gus Malzahn’s ground-based spread at Auburn, which led the nation with 328.3 rushing yards per game and nearly carried the Tigers to a BCS crown. There’s Missouri’s version that featured one of the league’s top rushing attacks and some dangerous (and huge) weapons at wideout. Kevin Sumlin’s spread at Texas A&M obviously benefited from having Manziel as the triggerman, but the Aggies are still going to post big numbers even without Johnny Football.

And you’ve still got versatile offensive schemes such as those at Ole Miss, South Carolina and Georgia — all of which will start senior quarterbacks — that will almost certainly continue to produce on the ground and through the air. Wild cards LSU, Florida and Mississippi State also have the potential to be impressive on offense depending on how their quarterbacks and young skill players develop.

It’s the wide array of offensive schemes that are the big challenge to conference defenses now.  To succeed over the course of a season, you’ve got to be able to go from handling the HUNH you see from Auburn, Ole Miss and TAMU (all different in philosophy) to the pro style stuff that’s Alabama’s, LSU’s and Georgia’s bread and butter and anything in between.  That calls for having enough quality personnel to be versatile.  Yeah, teams in the conference recruit very well, but well enough?

Tuesday lunch buffet

Some mid-day nourishment for you.

• Honestly, this is kind of refreshing.
• Athlon ranks the SEC’s 2014 football rosters.
• Boom says Florida has “more pressing needs right now” than an IPF.
• Does the law give the NCAA the ability to define amateurism in college sports?  You can guess what the NCAA thinks about that.
• Anyway you look at it, this can’t be good news for Michigan.
• On the other hand, when you’re at Notre Dame, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly “told me I couldn’t talk about it” is a viable course of action.
• I’m sorry, did somebody say we needed another one of these?