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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If the SEC expands, who would be aTm’s running mate?

Talk of Southeastern Conference expansion has heated up again this week, with strong rumors that Texas A&M is fed up with Texas throwing its weight around and might be looking for a new home. While school and conference officials are publicly saying all of the right things, there’s enough smoke out there to conclude that there might be a five-alarm conflagration exploding sooner rather than later.

In a recent interview, SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said that he could get the conference to 16 programs in 15 minutes, and it would be wise not to take that statement as so much false bravado. If the conference did indeed open the doors, it could probably get to 24 teams in 15 minutes. But the overnight creation of a 16- or 24-team Super Conference would initiate a 2012-like global seismic event, a polar shift that the quietly but intensely competitive lawyer would probably not want to be responsible for.

More likely is a more gradual expansion consisting of two programs now and possibly others down the road. The talk this week indicates that Texas A&M is a strong candidate for the ticket. But what program would be the running mate?

Late last night, I posted this tweet in my public timeline, and promptly started a firestorm of discussion:

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If aTm were to join SEC West, SEC East would need to pick up a major market program from the east coast. I smell #FSU or #GT

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My reasoning is simple: Texas A&M brings access to the HUGE media markets in that state. Dallas, Houston and San Antonio are big time markets that the SEC would love having in its portfolio. Those programs make sense to me because they have large, enthusiastic fanbases. They also bring in large east coast media markets and they already have longstanding rivalries with current SEC schools. Yes, the SEC already has access to those markets, but doesn’t dominate them. Via the contracts with CBS and ESPN, the SEC already has access to every media market in the country. Access isn’t the issue.

My Tweet set off an hours long discussion on Twitter (still going as of 10:00 am CDT). Two of the schools mentioned in the discussion are Virginia Tech and Miami. Virginia Tech makes a lot of sense. That program also has a large and enthusiastic fanbase and brings in the Washington, DC media market. It’s not Houston and Dallas, but it’s big enough.

But, Miami? Give me a break. That would be like having another Vanderbilt minus the gazillion dollar endowment. Their finances are an absolute dumpster fire and their facilities couldn’t compete with those of a suburban Birmingham high school. They play in a 73,000-seat stadium located 20 miles from the campus in a metro area notorious for bad traffic and worse crime. In the last game of the 2010 season, they lost to South Florida 23-20 before an announced attendance of 27,000. When the program is in need of a new head coach, people throw out names like Jon Gruden, Jim Harbaugh and Kyle Whittingham and I giggle uncontrollably. Like those guys would ever leave comfortable gigs for a third-world program. The SEC might as well add UAB.

I think Virginia Tech makes a lucrative target, but I’m still thinking that if phone calls get made to east coast programs, both Florida State and Georgia Tech have to be on the short list. They lock down markets in Atlanta, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa and yes, even Miami.

Even more fun to think about is today’s Exit Question: What if Slive makes a move for Texas A&M plus all three of the above? Jim Delany’s head would explode and Larry Scott would sit and weep.

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Mike Slive lied to Paul Finebaum

During a wide ranging, multi-segment interview on the Paul Finebaum Radio Network, Mike Slive either told the host an outright lie, or deliberately misled him. Finebaum had asked him about the NCAA eligibility determination made on December 1 that made former Auburn Quarterback Cam Newton eligible to compete in the SEC Championship game and ultimately, the BCS National Championship game. Finebaum noted the controversy surrounding that decision and the media firestorm it created.

Slive told Finebaum that “the [Cam Newton eligibility] investigation was done by the NCAA. They drew conclusions that permitted the young man to continue to compete and … we had no facts to counter the NCAA’s findings…  I know it lingers, I know it’s out there. But the NCAA did the investigation. They made the facts. They made the determination on his eligibility based on the facts they they knew, and that’s really where it went.”

Not only did Slive lie to Paul Finebaum. He lied to the entire listening audience.

Regular readers of this blog know that during eligibility determinations, the NCAA does not conduct any investigation because reinstatement decisions are NOT investigations.  The eligibility staff doesn’t have any investigative capability at all. It relies totally on the member school to provide all relevant facts and makes it decision based on that information. NOT information that it uncovers through any sort of investigation.

I don’t care which team you root for.  Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Clemson, Florida State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, East Buttermilk Polytechnic. It matters not. What I do care about is that you understand that the process resulting in Auburn’s declaration of ineligibility and the subsequent NCAA decision reinstating Newton was not an NCAA investigation.  It was a story presented to the NCAA Eligibility staff that was written, produced and directed by Auburn University.

Accordingly, Slive’s statement that “the NCAA did the investigation” is DEMONSTRABLY FALSE.

One of the following statements is true.

Mike Slive knows the difference between eligibility determinations and enforcement investigations and deliberately misled Paul Finebaum and the entire listening audience.

Mike Slive is clueless about the two distinct and separate processes and believes the Auburn fambly canard that the NCAA has already investigated the Newton scandal and the December 1 decision was the end of the matter.

You decide what you want to believe. But any shred of respect I might have had for the Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference has been destroyed.

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