Posted by Jerry Hinnen

The official line from the SEC is that nothing happened in last week's conference scheduling meetings, and that the league is still considering all available options as it tries to solve its 14-teams-in-an-eight-game-slate schedule dilemma.

But South Carolina president Harris Pastides wandered well away from that line Saturday, telling The State newspaper and other outlets that the league had agreed to continue with permanent cross-division rivalry games--and that he will cast his vote for his Gamecocks to break off their 19-year arrangement with Arkansas.

According to Pastides, the rest of the SEC's athletic directors and presidents were committed to finalizing the new cross-divisional games when he elected to abstain, saying it was too soon for him to commit to South Carolina adopting a new annual series with Texas A&M. The Gamecocks' former West division partners, the Razorbacks, would pick up more geographically-friendly Missouri.

“I said, ‘Hold on a second. That’s a big decision, and I’d like to hear what the fans think about that,’" Pastides said. "They were kind of motivated to get it done and move on, and I said, ‘I think it’s premature. I need to go back to Columbia and see what people think about that.’ ”

According to State reporter Andy Shain, Mike Slive's response to Pastides's pronouncement was "Well good for him."

"Nothing is set yet," Slive emphasized.

Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity echoed Pastides' comments in a discussion with the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. McGarity had previously said his Bulldogs' rivalry with Auburn -- as its nickname goes, the "Deep South's Oldest" -- could be in danger, but sounded much more positive Sunday.  

"The tone of the conversations that everyone had sort of gave the impression that everyone had a sense, at least the majority had a sense, of liking the rivalry game with an opponent from the opposite division," McGarity said. "The tone led us to believe that this has a good opportunity of moving forward." 

Pastides' method for discovering what "people think about that" in Columbia was to ask the State to poll readers on their website about the possibility of replacing the Razorbacks with the Aggies. Some 76 percent of respondents voted in favor of starting the new series with A&M.

That landslide was likely made possible by the Hogs' rampant recent success against the Gamecocks, Arkansas having won three in a row and five of the last six in the series. The Gamecocks' much tougher draw out of the SEC West (Arkansas, Auburn, and Mississippi State to Georgia's Auburn, Mississippi State and Ole Miss) was blamed by many -- and not without reason -- for the Bulldogs winning the 2011 East's trip to Atlanta despite the Gamecocks' win over the Dawgs in Athens.

“We have great respect for Arkansas, but I think it’s fair to say our fans never developed the same kind of passionate rivalry about playing Arkansas that maybe some other university did playing their Western Division rivalry,” Pastides said, confirming that he would vote in accordance with the fans' wishes.

“I respect the fans," he said. "Fans are not often consulted on important decisions and ultimately administrators come and go and coaches come and go and athletic directors come and go and fans stay.”

According to Pastides, the final vote of the presidents rubber-stamping the new cross-divisional arrangements will come next week, following the SEC men's basketball tournament.

The proposal isn't in the clear just yet; Pastides himself admits "it's not a done deal," and he happens to be the same president who claimed the SEC had agreed to a nine-game schedule for 2012 last November. A permanent cross-division rival paired with an eight-game schedule would also result in teams playing other cross-divisional opponents only twice in 12 years.

So the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry" and the "Third Saturday in October" aren't out of the woods yet. But they do, at least, seem safer than they were before last week's meetings--where the SEC may have made far more ground on the scheduling issue than they've let on.

Shain HT: Get the Picture. 

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Posted by Jerry Hinnen

Attention Birmingham residents: don't be surprised if you look in the "help wanted" section of your local Craigslist this weekend and find an ad from a user named "NoJiveSlive6nCounting" seeking "experienced cat-herder, must be able to wrangle up to 14 strong-willed athletic direc ... er, cats, with 14 differing agendas into moving in the same direction. Happily. Or at least, not angrily."

If you do, you can bet it's a response to this week's meeting of SEC athletic directors, where efforts to begin hammering out a football schedule for 2013 -- and, more importantly, a planned rotation for the seasons beyond -- seemed to have gone just an inch or two past nowhere. Reading the comments of those A.D.'s both during and after the meetings, it's easy to see why; not only is every SEC school bringing its own aims and ideas to the table, but they can't even agree on what they think they agree on. Just ask LSU and Florida, who are both willing to give up their annual cross-division rivalry or, in fact, aren't, depending on who you ask.

Of course, anyone who wasn't expecting these kinds of difficulties as soon as Texas A&M and Missouri joined the league wasn't paying attention. As we've repeated ad nauseum in this space, what the SEC wants -- preserved cross-divisional rivalries, semi-regular rotations for other East-West matchups, a divisional round-robin -- and the number of league games in which it wants them -- i.e., eight -- is flatly impossible, the scheduling equivalent of dividing by zero. Some kind of compromise somewhere in that tangled thicket of demands is inevitable.

But which compromise makes the most sense? Let's break down the SEC's options:

1. A NINE-GAME SCHEDULE

Pros: The simplest solution would give the conference room to preserve one annual cross-division game per team (saving the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry and Third Saturday in October), two slots for rotating cross-division opponents (shortening the gap between home-and-homes to four years), and still fit in the NCAA-mandated six-game intra-divisional round-robin. There's little doubt the league's television partners would vastly prefer another round of conference contests to a snoozer over yet another faceless Sun Belt punching bag.

Cons: They are many, the biggest one being that half the league would be giving up the cash bonanza of a guaranteed home game each year; for teams committed to a nonconference rivalry that requires a biannual road game (South Carolina with Clemson, Georgia with Georgia Tech, etc.) that loss will be particularly tough to swallow. There's also the increased difficulty of bottom-rung teams scheduling their way to a bowl berth; the inevitable loss of one-off nonconference series like LSU's with West Virginia; the inherent unfairness of half the league getting five home games and half just four ... all in all, it's understandable why the league would prefer to stick at eight if at all possible.

2. KEEP SELECTED CROSS-DIVISIONAL RIVALRIES

Pros: In other words, let Georgia play Auburn and Alabama play Tennessee (and maybe LSU and Florida? Arkansas and Missouri?) on an annual basis while everyone else rotates their cross-division opponents. The rivalries that matter are preserved while teams without such rivalries maintain scheduling flexibility.

Cons: For the teams with permanent cross-division rivals and just one rotating cross-division slot, match-ups with the rest of the opposite division will be few and far between--just one home-and-home over 12 years. Will teams in the West who want to recruit Georgia be happy with one trip to Athens every dozen seasons? Will East teams that struggle to fill their stadiums like Vanderbilt or Kentucky be happy with one visit from the Crimson Tide every 12 years? Will traditional rivals Auburn and Florida live with almost never playing each other again? This compromise is better than assigning every team a permanent cross-divisional rival, but it still has major problems.

3. PLAY ONLY FIVE INTRA-DIVISIONAL GAMES

Pros: As discussed by Mississippi State A.D. Scott Stricklin here, this would require an NCAA waiver or repeal of the current rule requiring conferences to stage intra-divisional round-robins to hold a title game (and such a waiver was granted to the MAC, albeit when that league had 13 teams and needed it to make an eight-game schedule work). But it would free up one key slot for a cross-divisional game--and it's hard to think of a team in the league that wouldn't take someone in the opposite division over someone in their own. League regularly dealt with tiebreaks between teams that hadn't played head-to-head back in the pre-divisional days.

Cons: Just because they dealt with them doesn't mean awkward tiebreaks are somehow a good thing; ask the Big 12 about its 2008 season sometime. And it may all be moot anyway--the NCAA may not be inclined to grant the waiver in the first place.

4. REALIGN DIVISIONS

Pros: If Auburn/Georgia and Tennessee/Alabama need to play every year, why not just lump them all into the same division and make the issue of cross-division rivalries irrelevant? You'd have to ignore geography entirely where South Carolina was concerned, but a "Rivalry" division of Tigers, Bulldogs, Volunteers, Crimson Tide, Gators, Commodores, and Wildcats -- with LSU, A&M, Missouri, Arkansas, the Mississippi schools, and the Gamecocks in the "Other" division -- would preserve almost every classic SEC series. And if you don't like that arrangement, there's always other options.

Cons: Hoo boy, the Gamecocks would not be happy with having their Georgia series dissolved in the above scenario. And even if you convince them, any scenario which lumps both Alabama schools in with the traditional East powers is going to be far too competitively weighted towards that division--the West could have just one team (LSU) that had won the league since 1963. 

5. ELIMINATE DIVISIONS ENTIRELY

Pros: More than one SEC fan has proposed simply doing away with the divisional setup -- allowing teams to schedule as many annual rivals or rotated games as they wish -- and having the top two teams in the standings play off in the league championship game. No other suggestion in this list would make scheduling easier.

Cons: That the NCAA has mandated divisions for a championship game since the game's inception is a hurdle just a shade smaller than the Empire State Building, and of course the money-tree that is the SEC Championship Game is going to go away when Razorbacks fly. Then there's the tiebreaking issues, the regressive feel of reverting to the pre-1992 standings table ... this isn't happening.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Short of pitching two schools overboard, which will happen immediately after the league gives up its championship game to help it live a life of "monastic conferencehood, in which championships are awarded for each team's level of enlightenment," nope.

SO WHAT SHOULD THE LEAGUE DO?

Simple: go to nine games. For the likes of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Kentucky, this means just two nonconference "paycheck" breathers and some massaging of the road/home split to make sure each team doesn't have too many games away from home in one season.

But guess what? The Bulldogs only played two paycheck games last season, and they ended up all right. LSU played only six true home games last year, only two of them vs. tomato can opposition, and their world somehow continued to spin as well. We're not sure there's a fan in the league that wouldn't be willing to trade two seasons' worth of exhibitions against Cupcake State for one ticket vs. legitimate SEC opposition.

BUT WHAT WILL THEY DO?

Despite the noises coming from Georgia's Greg McGarity, we expect -- and fervently hope -- that even a money-grab as naked as this round of SEC expansion has its limits, and that those limits stop outside the cancellation of Georgia-Auburn and Alabama-Tennessee. For now, expect the league to opt for option No. 2, where the schools who want permanent cross-division rivalries get them and those that don't don't. And in the long run? When the demands of television viewers and high price of paying off bodybags makes that extra home game more trouble than it's worth, the ninth game will make it debut. 

Unfortunately, there's going to be a lot of hand-wringing, a lot of scary-sounding statements, and a lot of Mike Slive cat-herding before we get to that or any compromise. Buckle in, SEC, fans.

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Posted by Jerry Hinnen

Everyone expected difficulties in scheduling an expanded SEC. But we're not sure many expected the kind of difficulties outlined by Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday--the sort that could bring an end to one of the conference's oldest and greatest rivalries.

According to McGarity, the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry" between his Bulldogs and the Auburn Tigers could be near the end if its 114-year run* as an annual series. When the SEC convenes at the end of February to map out its future schedules, it will have to decide whether or not to maintain the permanent cross-division game that has preserved the Auburn-Georgia meeting since the league's 1992 expansion. 

With only two of the potential seven cross-divisional games constituting traditional rivalries (the "Third Saturday in October" between Alabama and Tennessee is also in jeopardy), McGarity says the leaguewide support for continuing those games may not be there.

“I think if you ask Alabama and Tennessee, like us and Auburn, we’d like to retain the games,” McGarity said. “But does that work? What do the other 10 schools think? Those four schools like having those games but there’s no other East-West match-up that has that piece of history to it. So I don’t where that fits in ...

“With 14 teams, not everybody will be happy. Some will have a problem with everything. But we’ll make decisions based on the best situation of the league.”

Further complicating the issue is that with six intra-divisional games and a permanent cross-division rival, an eight-game SEC schedule would see just one slot devoted to rotating cross-divisional opponents--meaning teams in the East would play their rotating opponents in the West just twice every 12 years. A nine-game schedule would alleviate many of these problems, but both McGarity and SEC officials say there is little interest within the league to add the extra conference game. 

League officials could find a compromise--say, letting Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama continue with their cross-divisional partnerships while other schools rotate, or allowing those four schools to play their rivalry games as a nonconference matchup in years when they aren't scheduled to play within the SEC.

But those suggestions are entirely speculative. The bottom line is that in a 14-team league, there's simply no way to 1. play an eight-game schedule 2. maintain those cross-divisional rivalries 3. have other cross-divisional opponents play more often than a couple of times a decade. It doesn't work.

Which is why -- unless the league changes course on the nine-game scheduling issue -- it's going to continue to find itself wedged between the proverbial rock and a hard place. And unfortunately for Auburn and Georgia fans, the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry may well prove to be the cost of getting itself out.

*The game has been played every year since 1898 with the exception of three seasons during World Wars I and II.

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Posted by Jerry Hinnen

It sounds completely preposterous. But after watching Charlie Weis land at Kansas, we suppose even the most preposterous coaching rumor has to be taken at face value. And sure enough, Thursday night (and again Friday morning) CBSSports.com Texas A&M RapidReporter Brent Zwenerman confirmed the scuttlebutt that the Aggies' coaching search is making an effort to target none other than Georgia head coach Mark Richt. 

Houston's Kevin Sumlin remains A&M's top candidate and the most likely choice to lead the Aggies going forward. But it hardly seems a coincidence that just as the Richt-to-College Station talk gets its most serious legs, Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity has confirmed that he and Richt have begun talks to extend Richt's contract, which expires in 2013.

"We are moving that discussion forward. He and I had a great discussion this morning," McGarity told Dawgs247 Friday. "I know Mark wants to be here, and we want him here. There's just some things we need to work on moving forward."

McGarity said there was no foundation to the Richt-to-A&M chatter, replying with a simple "No" if he was at all concerned that Richt might take another job.

That makes all the sense in the world, of course. Richt has said time and again that he'll be in Athens as long as the school would have him -- he said it again just before the SEC championship game -- and both he and his extended family have forged deep ties to the Athens community. He's coming off a calendar year that saw him revitalize the Bulldog program with its best recruiting class in years, a 10-win season and clean sweep of Georgia's biggest rivals, and the program's first SEC East title since 2005. If Richt was ever going to make a lateral head coaching move -- and with all due respect to A&M, that's being generous -- now certainly isn't the time.

So, like we said: preposterous. But not so out there that McGarity isn't moving to make certain it's as preposterous as it seems.

Posted by Jerry Hinnen

Hey, remember three days ago, when we told you that per Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity, the SEC wasn't looking at a 14-team schedule for the 2012 season?

HAHAHA just kidding, folks:


As reported by the Birmingham News's Jon Solomon, yes, that's Mike Slive telling reporters at SEC basketball media days that McGarity was (as the kids say) full of it. (Slive only added that he had nothing else to add.) Since we're pretty sure there's no better source on this than the commissioner himself, it's now safe to assume that Missouri has not been ruled out from competing in the SEC in 2012 and that the league is prepared to make the necessary accomodations if the Tigers want to make the leap as soon as next season.

That, of course, was how Missouri chancellor Brady Deaton had previously described his school's potential jump, saying recently it would be "applicable to the next year."

That assertion has been challenged by everyone from McGarity to Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas to plenty of other anonymously sourced reports that have put Mizzou in the SEC in 2013 at the earliest. That makes more sense than the alternative, since the rearranging of 2012 schedules at this late date on both the Big 12's end (with a giant Missouri-sized hole in their slates) and the SEC's would be a logistical nightmare.

But it may be a nightmare both the Tigers and the SEC are willing to deal with, if it means the former dodges a lame-duck final season in the Big 12 and the latter avoids the awkwardness of a 13-team schedule. With Slive now openly admitting for the first time that the SEC is poised to go to 14 teams and the Big 12 actively pursuing the addition of one or more new members, it seems likelier than ever Missouri's defection could become official in a matter of days rather than weeks.

Will that be soon enough to leap through the rapidly-closing 2012 scheduling window? That still seems unlikely, but if Mike Slive himself is open to the possibility, the possibility is no doubt open.

Posted by Jerry Hinnen

Last time we checked in on the ongoing SEC 2012 scheduling mystery, the league seemed 100 percent committed to some form of 13-game schedule, with any additional teams -- Missouri, Missouri or potentially Missouri -- on hold until the 2013 football season. But then Mizzou chancellor Brady Deaton said that any move made by his institution would be "applicable to the next year," seemingly reopening the door for  the Tigers to join as soon as next year.

But to hear Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity tell it, that door may not be open after all. In an interview with the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, McGarity said that in discussions of the SEC's 2012 football schedule, the league has focused exclusively on a slate without any hypothetical late additions.

"That's all that we're really focusing on right now is the 13-team model," McGarity said.

He added that the SEC's concentration has been exclusively on finding a workable solution for 2012, not establishing any kind of long-term solutions for preserving rivalries or cross-divisional rotations.

"There are various challenges that will be clarified here shortly," McGarity said. "But we all realize that we're just focusing on one year. ... That's really our mission right now."

That would seem to indicate that  the conference (rather obviously) isn't planning on staying at 13 teams for very long. But a "one year" solution might also suggest the league is planning on having newcomer Texas A&M play their eight league contests as a four-four divisional split, a move that would keep the second half of this year's home-and-home cross-division rotation intact.

That kind of split would never work as anything more than a single-season patch job, but SEC spokesman Larry Templeton has already called it the "least disruptive" plan for next year.

At this late stage, of course, adding Missouri would be even more disruptive. But if the SEC's scheduling intentions as portrayed by McGarity are any indication, that's one disruption that will wait until 2013.

Posted by Jerry Hinnen



The heated verbal exchange between Vanderbilt head coach James Franklin and Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham following Saturday's Bulldog victory might result in more than just a round of apologies and finger-wagging.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported that the SEC league office is "gathering information from all parties" on the incident, according to SEC spokesman Charles Bloom. Both schools have been asked to submit written reports providing their account of the situation. The conference could issues reprimands or even suspensions on those involved "parties," though Bloom added that it was "too early to comment" on any possible sanctions from the league.

Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity told the AJC that he has met with Grantham face-to-face to review his actions. "Obviously the conduct that was displayed was not representative of how we want to conduct ourselves," McGarity said.

The incident apparently began with Franklin gesturing towards a Bulldog player that may have been safety Shawn Williams; Franklin said afterwards he wanted to confront Mark Richt with a complaint but found Grantham instead. The exchange between the two escalated into the image above and nearly sparked an on-field brawl between the two teams.

Richt said Sunday he had spoken to Franklin and regretted the incident. "I just think that tempers were hot [and] it was a very heated ballgame ... for everybody," he said. "[P]ersonally, I like it at the end of a ballgame when everybody can just walk across the field and shake hands and say good luck for the next one. Unfortunately, it didn't happen this ballgame."

Franklin apologized for the confrontation, with Grantham saying he wished things had gone differently ... while stopping short of issuing an apology. His statement to the AJC:

“First of all, I love my players and appreciate their hard work and investment in our program. I feel a responsibility and loyalty to protect and stand up for them. However, I feel it’s important to educate them in all areas of life. While my intentions were genuine, I feel it was unfortunate that things escalated to a confrontation. However, I’ll use it as a learning experience for myself as well as my players so that we all become better men.”

Grantham's repeated emphasis that was was "standing up" for his players suggests that Franklin may have had something less-than-complimentary to say about the Bulldogs' performance (which included a punch thrown by nose tackle Kwame Geathers). But whatever Grantham's motivations, it's doubtful Mike Slive is happy--and if he's really unhappy, Grantham or Franklin could find themselves out a paycheck.

Image HT: Mocksession.com.

Posted by Tom Fornelli

You know, in order to continue playing football at a school, a player is expected to perform to a certain level while in the classroom. Grades have to be maintained, or eligibility is taken away. I'm starting to wonder if the coaches and assistants at Georgia shouldn't be held to the same standards. I really think it would be to Georgia's benefit if coaches were forced to take a "How To Use A Phone 101" class.

Remember last week when Georgia was hit with some secondary violations for inadvertant text messages that Mark Richt sent to a recruit's father? Well, guess what? Georgia's inability to properly utilize a phone is going to bite it in the butt once more.

Inadvertent telephone communication once again has forced UGA to report secondary NCAA violations to the Southeastern Conference office.

This time it involves Georgia running backs coach Bryan McClendon. According to Athletic Director Greg McGarity’s Aug. 1 letter to SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, obtained by the AJC via state and federal open records laws, McClendon thought he was calling a friend named Jay Harris when he accidentally called recruiting prospect Drew Harris instead. Harris is a four-star running back prospect from Exton, Penn.

What made this a violation is McClendon’s call was made on May 29, 2011. Fellow UGA assistant coach Scott Lakatos had made a recruiting call to Harris on May 3. Therefore the second call was deemed to be a violation of two NCAA bylaws that restrict telephone contact with recruits.

I generally find when people use the acronym SMH -- shaking my head -- on Twitter to be extremely annoying, but I can't help it, you guys, after reading that I am SMH so hard right now. It's an innocent mistake, yes, but you would think Georgia coaches would learn from their mistake the first time.

Make sure you know who you are calling and texting before you send the call or the text. It's simple. If you need help, seek out one of the players to guide you through the process.