With new bowl deal, Mike Slive outmaneuvers Jim Delany

Friday afternoon, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive and outgoing Big 12 Commissioner announced a five-year agreement to send their conference champions to an as-yet unnamed New Years Day bowl, if those conference champions are left out of the pending four-team playoff being considered by the college football powers that be.

With one press release, Mike Slive shows why he is the Jedi Master of The Deal and Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delany is just another politician.

The deal with the Big 12 does four things:

1. It virtually guarantees that the conference champions of the two most dominant and demographically dynamic conferences will meet in the postseason, whether that’s in the four team playoff that is poised to replace the BCS or in the Unnamed Bowl.
2. It guarantees that if the selection process somehow finds a way to screw the Big 12 and SEC champs out of berths in the final four, it creates a path for the winner of the Unnamed Bowl to be named the Associated Press National Champions. It weakens the credibility of the Delany-driven four team selection process.
3. It places intense new pressure on Notre Dame to join a conference. Delany’s insistence on “conference champions only” in the final four is one thing. Cutting Notre Dame out of a second major postseason matchup with national championship implications is another matter entirely. Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick brushed off Friday’s development, telling the NY Times Pete Thamel that the deal had no near term implications. pffft.
4. It places new competitive pressure on the Sugar Bowl, an event that traditionally hosts the SEC champion. In the BCS era however, the Sugar only hosts the SEC champion if it was hosting the BCS Championship Game or the SEC champ wasn’t playing for the title. Now, the Sugar Bowl may have to compete with another venue. There happens to be a big one just outside of Dallas.

Delany and PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott have both expressed strong desire to maintain their relationship with the Rose Bowl, which itself had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the BCS rotation. Their goal is to have at least one of the semifinal games in the new playoff played in Pasadena (assuming that the Big 10 and PAC-12 can both get teams in the four team field).

Hypothetically, a scenario is possible wherein the Big 10, PAC-12 and ACC all get final four berths along with Notre Dame at large. While that hasn’t happened yet, it’s certainly within the realm of possibilities. This is especially true if teams not named Notre Dame must be conference champs and the teams are selected by a human committee in some smoky backroom in Indianapolis. The folks who’ve watched six straight SEC teams win the BCS Championship were drooling over this; praying for it to happen, even.

Until Friday afternoon.

In the doomsday scenario above, a highly ranked SEC team will play a highly ranked Big 12 team on New Year’s Day, in prime time. Maybe the winning team won’t hoist a crystal ball, but it might host the AP Trophy while the two conferences rake in the cash.

Your move, Jim Delany.

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Big 12’s Chuck Neinas unloads on Big East and Mizzou and gets facts wrong

Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas gave a blistering interview to the Charleston Gazette and in his little fit of rage over uncertainty regarding West Virginia’s ability to get out of the Big East and play football in his league, got his facts screwed up.

Neinas would have you believe that the Big East is acting like spoiled brats in keeping West Virginia in their conference for the 27-month period stipulated by Big East rules. This is false. The litigation between the Big East and the breakaway Mountaineers isn’t about keeping the school in the league at all. It’s about a dispute over how and when the school can leave. The two parties have agreed to enter nonbinding arbitration and there are legitimate hopes that a settlement can be reached.

Neinas would also have you believe that the SEC “poached” his conference by inviting Missouri to join Texas A&M, a school that had already made the move and laid the legal groundwork for Mizzou to follow. But published documents show that it was Texas A&M and Mizzou that approached Mike Slive, not the other way around. The SEC didn’t have to expand. It was just fine at 12 members until Texas A&M quietly began exploring realignment. The SEC was just fine at 13 members too, until Mizzou quietly began exploring the possibility of following the Aggies. Slive wasn’t hunting on posted ground, as Neinas’ comments suggest.

Finally, Neinas would have you believe that the Big 12 is in the situation that it finds itself in because Missouri was “selfish.” That’s the biggest laugher of Neinas’ comments. The Big 12 is where it is today because the University of Texas made a business decision that suits the Longhorn program’s business interests and stuck to their guns when the other schools in the conference realized that what was good for Texas wasn’t necessarily good for the Big 12 as a whole. In other words, as my friend BanditRef puts it on Twitter, “Texas made it clear it was a business, Mizzou made a business decision.” 

We understand that the Big 12 is nervous. They are contractually obligated to release the 2012 schedule on February 1, and they plan to include West Virginia in the rotation. There is legitimate concern over the uncertainty surrounding the Mountaineers ability to compete in the league next year. Millions of dollars are at stake, as are the schedules of the other teams in the league.

But the Big 12’s problems are problems of their own making.

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Skynet is running the BCS computers

By: @LivingCrimson

A look at the science fiction of the Big 12 strength of schedule in the BCS computers. It’s also “Hate Auburn” week in Alabama, one of fifty-two we enjoy each year, so forgive us if we go afield.

The latest BCS standings have been released and the SEC  West  muscled  to  the  top: #1 LSU, #2 Alabama, and #3 Arkansas. Entirely deserved considering the Tigers, the Tide and the Hogs are a combined 31-2 this season, with the only losses coming from within this group.

But look below the top three and something foul is afoot in the computers. Any person would reasonably conclude the Big 12 SOS is inflated after five defeats in seven attempts at the national title (unlike the SEC with a perfect seven wins in seven attempts). The current BCS says, “Not so fast, my friend.” The other conferences say, “Awww, Corso it.”

Only artificial intelligence bent on destroying all football humanity as we know it could continue to plague us with SO MUCH Big 12 in 2011 BCS rankings.

Ergo, Oklahoma State (10-1) is only ranked #6 by the humans but elevated to #2 by the HAL 9000’s. Ditto Oklahoma (8-2) tapped out at #10/#11, yet it’s #6 in the databases. Kansas State (9-2) is #15 with the Daves and all the way up at #5 with the Joshuas. Baylor (7-3) at #20 with the people is #13 with the machines. And last but never forgotten, Texas (6-4) wouldn’t even be ranked by animals, yet is #20 in the Matrix.

That’s a Big 12 boost in rank by an average SIX PLACES. All other conferences including the SEC are almost uniformly adjusted downward in the computers.

Oklahoma State has never played in a BCS bowl. Bob Stoops’ Oklahoma has been thumped three out of four times in the National Championship Game yet keeps “earning” the benefit of the doubt in the “algorithms”. And the BCS computers would have us believe one of these teams is worthy of advancing to the title game if two SEC teams at the top of the stack should fall before December 4th.

Looks like we’re dealing with the Mother of all binary b*tches.

 

Or it’s all Auburn’s fault, take your pick. It’s a proven misconception that any reek in college football can always be traced back to Auburn. Let’s turn our eyes to the manure meisters of the Plains, who just  happen  to  run Apple.  Which just happens to control computers.  Who just happen to dictate one-third of the official BCS polls. Coincidence? We think not. How else can 7-4 Auburn be ranked #24!

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Documents show Texas and ESPN conspired, lobbied NCAA on Longhorn Network

In the Dallas Morning-News, reporter Kate Hairopoulos reports on several newly obtained documents that shed light on Texas A&M’s growing discontent with Texas, the Longhorn Network and the Big 12’s reluctance to stand up to the Austin giant.

The DMN story is unfortunately behind the website’s paywall. But the documents themselves are not.

One of those documents provides compelling evidence that ESPN and Texas worked together and lobbied hard for the NCAA to provide a rules interpretation allowing the Longhorn Network to air high school games. One stunning revelation is that ESPN “threatened” Texas Tech.

Perhaps the most explosive allegation of all—ESPN was “pushing hard to help Texas recruit high school prospects.”

The document excerpted above is from an email from Texas A&M Athletic Director Bill Byrne. It is not clear who the recipient of the email was. Byrne also expresses deep concern over ESPN’s financial relationship with the NCAA and a too-cozy relationship between Texas Athletic Director Deloss Dodds and NCAA top brass. In fact, Byrne even says Dodds himself touted the relationship to NCAA brass.

The NCAA eventually concluded that the Longhorn Network would not be permitted to show high school football games, concluding that it would have provided a competitive advantage for Texas.

However, if Byrne’s conclusions are correct—that ESPN and Texas worked together to help Texas recruit high school prospects and lobby the NCAA for a favorable ruling—the implications are explosive. It suggests collusion at the highest level of a major university and ESPN executives, and Byrne was rightly concerned that the weight being thrown around might unduly influence the NCAA.

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Missouri move to SEC said to be “inevitable and imminent”

But... then he's still out there.

Two stories released overnight Monday and early Tuesday indicate that Missouri will likely leave the Big 12 Conference and become the Southeastern Conference’s 14th member.

The first report was published by the New York Times. Pete Thamel cites a source that told him that the decision to seek membership in the SEC was “inevitable and imminent,” but provided no specific timetable for the decisions.

The second report was published by the Kansas City Star. The Star’s Mke DeArmond—whose coverage of this has been the most accurate of any reporter on the story—explains that should Mizzou decide to align itself with the SEC, the process would likely follow the same steps as those taken by Texas A&M. Texas A&M became the SEC’s 13th member in September.

The SEC wants to make sure that Missouri takes all necessary legal steps to properly extricate itself from the Big 12, a process followed by Texas A&M that drew threats of legal action by Baylor University and possibly other members of that conference.

Still at issue is the divisional alignments of two new conference members. The least disruptive alignment would be to place Missouri and Texas A&M in separate divisions, keeping existing SEC East and West members as they are and preserving inter-divisional rivalries like Alabama – Tennessee, Auburn – Georgia and LSU – Florida, while allowing SEC members Florida and Georgia to maintain their regular season finales against ACC foes Florida State and Georgia Tech. There had been discussions of placing both new conference members in the SEC West and allowing Auburn or some other SEC West school to realign with the East. However, the football scheduling problems that plan would cause have resulted in scant support among the league’s traditional powers.

The situation is of course very fluid and what’s true today may not be tomorrow. We we should have a much clearer picture by the end of the week.

Like Jason Voorhees, the Missouri to SEC story is “still out there.”

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Aggies play SEC “anticipation” game like pros, bolt Big XII

SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE

Texas A&M is learning fast.

According to a report in the San Antonio Express-News, an announcement regarding the Aggies widely expected defection to the Southeastern Conference could come as early as today, but certainly no later than… next week.

The collective groans of SEC fans can be heard from Gainesville to Fayetteville.

Clearly however, Big XII schools aren’t accustomed to the intense glare of media scrutiny applied by the media covering the SEC. SEC fans are among the most voracious consumers of news regarding their teams, their league and goings-on that might affect them. We want our news like we want our football and if somebody gets off the turf looking through their helmet earhole, so be it.

The Express-News report from Brent Zwernmann shows A&M was thrown for a loop when the New York Times’ Pete Thamel reported that the school had notified the league that it was ready to begin the divorce proceedings:

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“While we appreciate the tremendous interest in Texas A&M's conference exploration, it is not our intent to provide a play-by-play of complex discussions in the media,” university spokesman Jason Cook said in a statement. “The proliferation of social media — as well as the pressure for reporters to be ‘first' — has certainly fueled the rumors and speculation of what our next steps may be.”

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Understandable. The school isn’t interesting in allowing the negotiations to be live blogged by the media, bloggers or Twitter users. But indicating that the league or the school has an imminent announcement that could come today or certainly no later than next week…  Why, that’s just SEC homer greatness, isn’t it?

Exit Question: It’s one thing to wish avoid sharing details and playing the anticipation game. It’s quite another to lawyer up, play hardball and refuse to release any information at all. Which is what the conference appears to be doing, according to this report from Bryan Fischer of CBSSports.com. How’s that going to play with the SEC media bloodhounds?

UPDATE: Boom. Here’s the announcement. Texas A&M is now a free agent.

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SEC Expansion: The New World of College Sports

The SEC is the equivalent of the Super Bowl, the World Series and the NBA Finals all rolled into one conference in college sports.

In the “Big Four” sports -- football, men's basketball, women's basketball and baseball – the SEC has won half of the national titles since 2005-2006: five in football, three in baseball, two in men's basketball and two in women's basketball. Six SEC schools won those 12 titles – no other conference won more than three in those four sports combined over the past six years.1

The SEC has also won national championships in the last six years in women’s gymnastics (five), men’s indoor track & field (three), women’s indoor track & field (one), women’s outdoor track & field (one), men’s swimming and diving (three), women’s swimming and diving (three), men’s tennis (two), women’s tennis (one), women’s bowling (one), rifle (one), and equestrian (all six-not yet official NCAA). Only softball and women’s volleyball titles have eluded the SEC.2

So, why would the SEC consider expansion when it is already the supreme conference in sports achievement? The SEC did not fire the first shot in recent conference paradigm shifts.

The Pac-12 strove for revenue supremacy with its 2010 conference expansion, TV contract deals and talk of a Super 16 conference. The Big Ten followed with its own conference expansion and TV deals for conference championship games. The Big 12 received help from ESPN and Fox to sweeten its revenue deals and save its conference.3 The Big East is also expanding and with TCU grabs a larger market share in advance of its upcoming TV contract negotiations – and already leads in basketball revenue. Larry Scott, the Pac-12 Commissioner, and Jim Delany, the Big Ten Commissioner, continue to hint at further expansion. Scott has even talked of expanding the Pac-12’s market to the Pacific Rim/Asian markets.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The SEC cannot remain in expansion isolationism

-- standing on its current strength --

and not expect continued encroachment by other conferences

on the monetary value of its sports.

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SEC revenue from TV contracts has already been moved into third place behind the Pac-12 and Big Ten, even though SEC teams are six of the top ten schools in Division 1 FBS attendance. In men’s basketball, the SEC is third in income even though it is one of only three conferences to generate more than $10 million in revenue per school. Only two of the top ten revenue generating athletic departments are SEC schools.4,5,6,7,8

Faced with a disadvantage in revenue, the SEC must take action to bring parity to the TV contracts. SEC Commissioner Mike Slive has suggested using the conference’s “look-ins” to ensure the contracts live up to expectations.9  One avenue to fuel renegotiation is by expanding to 14 schools or even 16 schools to increase market share and take advantage of built-in “expansion” payout incentives.10  But what guidelines would Slive follow to choose new schools to bring into the SEC? In his own words:

1. Academics;11
2. Geography;12
3. Market Share;13 and
4. Technology.14

Following up on the initial recommendations presented by Slive, the NCAA just this week increased the APR (academic progress rate) to 930 from the previous cutoffs of 900/925; failure to maintain will be an automatic bowl/tourney ban in football and basketball.15 Based on academic and geographical proximity to the current SEC, Big 12 and ACC teams are the most likely candidates to receive an offer from Slive.

The nearest proximity ACC and Big 12 schools that would NOT meet academic requirements:

• Florida State, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, Oklahoma State.16

In TV market share, the SEC currently ranks last in Top-10 national TV markets, fourth in Top-20 and sixth in Top-30. The Leather Helmet Blog has an excellent, in-depth article on SEC expansion and grabbing a bigger TV market share.

Big 12 and ACC schools academically acceptable and best bets to bolster market share are:

• Duke, Texas A&M, Miami, Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia Tech. (NC State football APR would have to be improve).

Current SEC games are broadcast by ESPN, CBS, Comcast/Charter Sports Southeast (CSS) (merged with NBC in January 2011) and Fox Sports Network (FSN).17 However, the SEC owns the copyright to any game broadcast. This gives it the ability to allow other networks to rebroadcast previously televised games, and games can be streamed directly to computers and hand-held devices (SEC had the second largest iPhone sports app, only behind ESPN). It also allows fans in other countries to watch games.18

NBC in the recent past had almost no presence in college football or basketball. Since the CSS merger, speculation is that NBC/CSS may develop the Versus channel as an ESPN competitor.19,20 CSS had already been rebroadcasting SEC games the day following the original broadcast. An expanded SEC would offer more games available for original broadcasts. Also consider that ESPNU became an extremely profitable channel as a direct result of SEC broadcasts. NBC/CSS could choose to lay out a big investment with the SEC, knowing it has already shown itself a proven commodity in increasing the strength of sports networks.

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"We were the major catalyst for ESPNU moving from 23 million homes to 73 million homes in one year.” – Mike Slive

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In addition to football and basketball, there is greater viewership interest in SEC baseball, softball and gymnastics thanks to recent high profile games and championship repeats – events just waiting to be broadcast by an aggressive sports outlet. More sporting events equals more revenue.

Most Big 12 and ACC schools have the sports facilities and technological skills necessary to seamlessly merge into the SEC’s broadcasting structure (and most smaller conference schools do not). Most definitely the SEC will at a minimum add pairs of schools, taking one from the West and one from the East so as to negate any shifting within the existing SEC divisions in football.

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The most likely candidates for expansion:

Texas A&M - Duke

Missouri - Virginia Tech

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Other possibilities are Clemson and Miami from the ACC, and Baylor and Oklahoma from the Big 12. But those schools are not as attractive based on consideration of all the factors. Also, Texas A&M and Missouri would theoretically not “overburden” the already ultra-competitive SEC West.

Side benefits of any schools accepting an expansion invitation to the SEC would include equitable revenue distribution, increased share of revenue distributions from the NCAA (nationally $433 million in 2009-2010)21, more revenue to allocate to capital improvements such as expanding stadiums and other sports facilities, more revenue to offset any decrease in state funding, and more revenue to support underfunded sports programs.

While the expansion process is complicated, it is not necessarily injurious to other conferences. The Big 12 can easily add smaller conference teams to maintain its 10 school conference, or expand. The ACC can raid the Big East to offset any attrition in its conference – since basketball is more the priority anyway. The Big East can easily add smaller conference teams to offset any schools lost to the ACC – since basketball is the sport that matters. The smaller conferences won’t suffer because they’re largely supported by the NCAA, and any teams that move up to larger conferences will do so with increased revenue and TV exposure.

If the SEC expands to 16 teams, it will be ahead of any other conference in revenue for many years to come. If it expands to 14 teams, observers should expect more movement within the next ten years.

Welcome to the bigger, better SEC world.

On Twitter @LivingCrimson