Just a few quick thoughts on what we at MrSEC.com expect to from this weeks SEC Meetings in Destin:
Playoff Plan
Mike Slive and his fellow presidents will hammer out the leagues official proposal for the new college football playoff that is supposedly coming everyones way after the 2014 regular season. The SEC will no doubt support a simple 1-2-3-4 system that invites the nations top-ranked teams, but with Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott and Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman both recently saying a true Plus-One might be back on the table, the SEC will need to have a compromised plan that it can fall back upon. At worst, the SEC will probably push for a plan that would include the three highest-ranked conference champs and a wild card team. If the four highest-ranked teams are all conference champs, then the lowest rated of those champs would be considered the wild card.
The other main issues will be whether or not and how existing bowl games can be worked into the new playoff system.
Football Schedule
Word is theres very little support outside LSU and South Carolina for doing away with permanent cross-divisional rivals. Missouri was hoping to keep hold of Texas A&M for the purpose of recruiting Texas, but the presidents at A&M and Carolina have publicly leaked that their schools are likely to become permanent foes instead, leaving Missouri with nearest neighbor Arkansas.
When alls said and done, we expect the SEC to adopt a 6-1-1 plan that would require each school to face the others in its division, one permanent cross-division foe, and one rotating cross-division foe each season. In an effort to let SEC teams ya know actually play one another on a semi-regular basis, wed put cash on a plan that would rotate those foes once every year rather than once every two years. In other words, Georgia might not travel to Alabama but once every 12 years, but at least the schools would be guaranteed of playing once every six somewhere.
Basketball Schedule
The SEC is expected to maintain a division-less set-up in its new scheduling format. Its also expected that the league will go to an 18-game schedule (much to John Caliparis chagrin). The easiest route would be for each league team to play five conference rivals (some permanent, some rotating) twice each season and then the remaining eight league schools once each (which would give everyone nine home and nine road games).
But there are rumblings that the league will rotate many more opponents than necessary even narrowing permanent rivals down to one per school which would be a monumental, tradition-killing mistake.
Rotation Length
The SEC would like to lock in its new scheduling format for 12 years, but it may be a shorter span gets the final nod. With so much yet to be determined on the expansion and television fronts, its possible the league doesnt lock itself in for such a long period of time.
That said, schedules can always change whether theyre locked in or not. For that reason, wed be a bit surprised if the league didnt say 12 years, locked in just to send a message of stability, if nothing else.
Basketball Tournament
Head of the SEC transition team, Larry Templeton, has already said that all 14 schools will take part in this coming seasons hoops tourney. The plan is for Seed #11 to play Seed #14 and Seed #12 to play Seed #13 on Wednesday night, leading into the normal tourney as its now played on Thursday. We see no reason to believe any last-minute changes will be made on that front.
Television Negotiations
Mike Slive will update all involved on the state of the leagues ongoing negotiations with ESPN and CBS. Those ESPN talks will include discussion of a potential SEC Network launched in partnership with the four-letter channel.
CBS is reportedly balking at paying huge rights increases to the SEC for its additions of Missouri and Texas A&M, but we believe that to be posturing. The network wants better games to choose from and for that reason we hold out hope Slive and the leagues presidents could step in at the last minute and push for a nine-game conference schedule in football.
Expansion and Realignment
Theres no way the current landscape of college football wont come up for discussion. The SEC needs to be making contingency plans in the event of mass shuffling elsewhere. Could the league decide to make a move for Florida State, a school that clearly wants in Slives league more than the Big 12 (their trustees mention the SEC on a regular basis)? Will the SEC set its eyes instead on Virginia Tech and a North Carolina school? Doing so would likely be tied to the potential SEC Network mentioned earlier (new states = new cable households = more money).
Expect more people in the league to be cool on expansion so soon after the addition of Mizzou and A&M. No one knows what impact those moves will have on the leagues value, income or on-field/on-court success moving forward. And for schools with smaller budgets and tougher climbs to the top of the SEC heap, every team added makes their work harder.
Deciding Division Champions
Last year Steve Spurrier hatched a plan to pay some football players a per-game stipend right out of coaches pockets. That idea got the kibosh pretty quickly. This year hes campaigned for cross-division games to be excluded from the leagues standings and hell bring it up for discussion at this weeks meetings. (Good luck asking CBS and ESPN for more money in those TV negotiations if the league sticks with just an eight-game slate and then renders a fourth of those games meaningless.)
Les Miles and James Franklin have surprisingly backed Spurriers plan. Miles, well, hes a bit kooky so that shouldnt surprise anyone. Franklin, however, might be giving us a glimpse into the thinking of several other football coaches. If youre the coach at Vandy or Ole Miss or Kentucky or Mississippi State, etc, would you feel you had a better chance of reaching Atlanta with what would amount to a six-game schedule as opposed to an eight-game schedule? Darn skippy, you would.
But even if Spurrier gets the backing of folks wanting an easier path to a title, it would be shocking for the nations most powerful commissioner and his presidents to not overrule their coaches on a move that would hurt the SEC in the wallet (television negotiations) and in terms of credibility (name another league that doesnt count its own league games in the standings).
Cowbells
Mississippi State AD Scott Stricklin says hes heard very little talk about his schools beloved cowbells going into this years meetings. That hasnt been the case the last two years. Still, the league is expected to once again discuss artificial noisemakers as well as whether or not State fans have been ringing their bells at the appropriate times (during stoppages of play).
Were betting the bells will get another stay of execution.
