This is SOLID GOLD. Watch College Station Mayor Nancy Berry give Florida Coach Will Muschamp the what-for after his (somewhat) derogatory comments about the town she governs.
Aggies are a proud bunch, and they’re Texans to boot.
The best part of this short video are the series of photoshopped images showing Muschamp at various venues and events around town.
Berry ends her rant on a positive note, though.
Welcome to the SEC, Aggies.
Helmet tap to Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel.
A longstanding SEC rule prohibits student seating in the first 25 rows and between the 30 yard lines. The rule was put in place to protect the safety of visiting teams and has never been challenged.
They want university president R. Bowen Loftin to request a waiver, and few observers believe they’ll have much sympathy from the other members of the conference.
[The rule] would impact 1,400 seats, including all of the 374-student Aggie Band. Some 30,000 tickets are set aside for students in the 82,600-capacity Kyle Field.
Students voiced strong opposition to the rule last week, prompting Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin to schedule a meeting with student leaders Monday to discuss options.
"The Aggie Band is the pulse of the spirit of Aggieland," said Jeff Pickering, student body president. "Having them right there on top of the opposing team is important."
Pickering said an exception should be made for Texas A&M because it's unique. He said the Aggie Band, which is a unit in the university's storied Corps of Cadets, is a military outfit.
"We can control a military outfit," Pickering said. "And the fish [freshmen] are thinking about the show they're about to put on. They don't have time to throw things. And what are they going to throw? A piccolo?"
The rest of the SEC membership will view Texas A&M’s “specialness” about as warmly as they do Mississippi State’s cowbells and Tennessee’s piping in of Rocky Top. They may think they’re special and unique and all but as stated above, the rule is designed to protect the players.
That means players for all 14 teams. If the rule is changed, it will have to be made conference-wide. The other teams aren’t making an exception for Aggieland. If they did (and please pardon the cliché), all hell would break loose.
Barrett Sallee at CollegeFootballNews.com captures the matter perfectly with this paragraph:
Do you really want LSU students - with 12 hours or more of “prep time,” standing directly behind Texas A&M players in Baton Rouge? How about Florida students virtually on top of the Aggie players in The Swamp? Of course not. That’s not a knock against those fan bases; it’s a testament to the passion in the SEC.
Could you also imagine the LSU student section seated just a few yards away from Nick Saban? That’s going to be a night game, by the way. How about having the Alabama students seated right behind the Auburn Tigers in the 2012 Iron Bowl? The dreaded Gator Jort Squad right behind Mark Richt at the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party?
Aggie, you really don’t want this and trust us here—it won’t end well.
Slive and the rest of the conference leadership will dutifully listen to Bowen and let him make his case. Then, they’ll consider the conference-wide ramifications and politely tell the Aggies to deal with it.
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.
Later reports from USA Today’s Campus Corner had the SEC denying that it had made an offer to Missouri, but the sense is that the “denial” is plausible because, while the SEC probably has a wink-nudge offer to Mizzou, no way is Slive & Co. going to allow themselves to be portrayed as hunting on posted ground.
A&M looks to be all but a done deal and Mizzou might well be the dance partner, bringing the SEC to a 14-program conference with two, seven-member divisions.
The math of having an even number of conference participants makes scheduling a relatively easy thing to do. Scheduling equitably with 13 members is doable, but it wouldn’t be easy and it would leave some division members missing out on one game that they’d probably like to play.
There’s a good deal of chatter on how the two new conference members would fit into the league’s divisional system. Some folks think having two programs from west of the Mississippi all but guarantees that Auburn is pushed into the SEC East and both of the former Big 12 schools join the west. There’s also talk of rearranging some of the programs from the East and West to bring more balance. All of that is much too complicated and would likely end some storied conference rivalries.
A much easier solution (and therefore the one that will likely be the first option rejected) would be to simply rename the two divisions, keep the existing members in place and split the two new programs between the former East and West Divisions. Like this, for example:
| Former SEC West | Former SEC East |
| Alabama | Florida |
| Arkansas | Georgia |
| Auburn | Kentucky |
| LSU | South Carolina |
| Miss State | Tennessee |
| Missouri | Texas A&M |
| Ole Miss | Vanderbilt |
In order to maintain the eight-game SEC schedule that requires each team to play each of its divisional opponents, one of the two rotating interdivisional games would have to be dropped, and each member school plays two opponents from the other division, rather than three (a recent schedule tweak following the addition of the 12th regular season game). One of the two interdivisional opponents is designated a divisional rival, while the other rotates on a home-away basis.
Alabama keeps its Iron Bowl rivalry with Auburn and neither team faces the prospect of having to play back-to-back should both be in the SEC Championship Game. Tennessee and Alabama also keep their storied rivalry, as do Auburn and Georgia, Tennessee and Florida, Georgia and Florida, and so on. Texas A&M and Missouri would almost certainly choose one another as their interdivisional rival, and you’re all set for an eight game schedule with 14 teams in the SEC.
Told ya that would be easy. Check, please?
Exit Question: Can Mike Slive avoid the disaster of division names that Jim Delany came up with?
While I don’t necessarily doubt those reporters’ sources, I don’t think the SEC would hold such a meeting, take such a vote, and release a statement on the matter if it didn’t have firm assurances that no legal action from Baylor (et al) was forthcoming.
Here’s the statement from Florida’s Bernie Machen, chair of the league’s chancellors and presidents board:
After receiving unanimous written assurance from the Big 12 on September 2 that the Southeastern Conference was free to accept Texas A&M to join as a new member, the presidents and chancellors of the SEC met last night with the intention of accepting the application of Texas A&M to be the newest member of the SEC. We were notified yesterday afternoon that at least one Big 12 institution had withdrawn its previous consent and was considering legal action. The SEC has stated that to consider an institution for membership, there must be no contractual hindrances to its departure. The SEC voted unanimously to accept Texas A&M University as a member upon receiving acceptable reconfirmation that the Big 12 and its members have reaffirmed the letter dated September 2, 2011.
Read the last sentence again:
“The SEC voted unanimously to accept Texas A&M University as a member upon receiving acceptable reconfirmation that the Big 12 and its members have reaffirmed the letter dated September 2, 2011.”
Upon receiving written notice that none of the Big 12 schools would stand in the way of Texas A&M leaving their conference and joining the SEC, the latter met and finalized the move. Upon hearing that at least one school in the Big 12 was reconsidering, Slive’s people contacted Beebe’s people and got the all clear—that Baylor (or whoever) had decided not to let the matter be decided by a judge and cleared the way.
That resulted in this morning’s statement, and it indicates to me that the deal is done.
Welcome to the Southeastern Conference, ladies and gentlemen. Tighten your chinstraps.
SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE
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:
“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.”
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.
SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE
Thamel notes the $15 million (estimated) alimony exit fee and the Southeastern Conference’s marriage proposal formal invitation to join the league, which requires approval of nine of the 12 existing conference members. These are potential stumbling blocks but does anyone seriously expect these to prevent the move? Surely A&M already knows they have the votes in Birmingham, and that $15 million is scratch with their humungous endowment.
If all goes according to plan, the SEC’s 13th member could be playing an SEC schedule in the 2012 season. Assuming the SEC is unable to recruit a running mate for the Aggies to round out a 14-team conference and balance the schedule, Thamel also notes that the math of putting together the slate of matchups could be tricky.
In case you missed it, my friend the Bandit Ref has “The Break Up Talk” cartoon. Bandit Ref and K1ngCrimson are the rogues responsible for Houndstoothmen.com, the startup site with cartoons, lampoons and other silly SEC stuff.
Exit Question: It doesn’t matter whether the SEC gets a 14th team to round out the schedule or not. The only question remaining is how many teams get bye weeks before playing Alabama in the 2012 schedule.
UPDATE: Thamel now says the communication between Texas A&M and the Big XII was via telephone, not a letter, and that his earlier information was incorrect. Still, who thinks this is not only a matter of time?
Against some, they’ve fared well. Against others, not so much. They’ve never met either South Carolina or Vanderbilt since 1894. They’ve never lost to Auburn but have never beaten Tennessee.
They have a 42.3% winning percentage against all current SEC opponents. From a competitive standpoint, it doesn’t look like Texas A&M brings much of a winning tradition to the conference. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not using this as an argument against welcoming the Aggies into the conference. I just thought I’d have a look at their record against our programs and it’s worth noting that they have a winning record against only three of the 12 schools—Auburn, Georgia and Ole Miss.
As a boy, I often listened to WWL’s broadcasts of the annual showdown between LSU and Texas A&M at night. Those were some great games.
| SEC School | Texas A&M All Time Record |
| Alabama | 1-3-0 |
| Auburn | 2-0-0 |
| Arkansas | 24-40-3 |
| Florida | 1-1-0 |
| Georgia | 3-2-0 |
| Kentucky | 1-1-0 |
| LSU | 20-27-3 |
| Mississippi State | 2-3-0 |
| Ole Miss | 4-0-0 |
| South Carolina | 0-0-0 |
| Tennessee | 0-2-0 |
| Vanderbilt | 0-0-0 |
| TOTAL | 58-79-6 |
If you haven’t visited GridIronHistory.com, I strongly recommend it. It’s operated by hogville.net’s @BearlyDoug and it is growing into a fantastically useful resource for stat and history geeks (like me). The @GridIronHistory Twitter account is also currently posting random team history tweets using data archived at the site. Great resource.
