Hugh Freeze shrugs off Dan Mullen's potential shot -- for now
Whether he can keep it up better than Houston Nutt remains to be seen.

I heard people talk about it, but I haven’t seen it. I haven’t met coach Mullen and I don’t know why he would. You would have to ask him if he meant that toward me.

I hope Freeze is right that Mullen wasn't taking a shot. Knocknig someone over their faith is never cool.

Jarrett Lee thinks he is a 21-point quarterback
Yes, the former pick-six machine is just as confused as the rest of us about why Les Miles didn't put him into the game. I'm not sure that it would have made quite the difference Lee seems to think it would have made.

"I don't know what happened. Obviously, the coaches had a reason for doing what they did. As a player, you have to respect that. But there were some players and plays that could have helped us win."

Lee denies any of the LSU locker room disarray rumors, which should be at least minimally comforting for LSU fans. Sort of.

'And if that doesn't work, we can always secede'
South Carolinians have never been fans off outside events affecting what goes on within the state's borders. Football is unsurprisingly no exception. So before an expanded ACC and SEC get any ideas about junking the South Carolina-Clemson rivalry, beware -- the South Carolina Legislature stands ready to thwart your diabolical and nonexistent plan.

Continue reading this post »

We're back, part 95
If you've missed Sprints, we're going to try to get back on the horse and get this thing going again in the offseason. If you haven't -- well, it hasn't missed you.

Site issues
If you've gotten irritated with the site getting a bit buggy lately -- we're with you. The tech team at SBN, which is one of the best in the business, is working on it. We hope that most of the hiccups have been worked out, but you can always let us know if not and we'll pass it up the chain.

Ole Miss alumnus wins strange football 'bowl'
In case you didn't hear, there is football played in New York and New England, though it tends to be of the highly-paid and far more boring variety. The two cities' teams played in something called the "Super Bowl," which pairs the No. 1 team from the American Football Conference with the No. 1 team from the National Football Conference.

In any case, the winning team was quarterbacked by former Ole Miss player Eli Manning. Congratulations to Manning and his football team on winning this bowl, which is fervently watched by canine owners if I got the correct impression from the commercials. I'm sure they'll get a nice trophy for the victory.

Derek Dooley jumps the shark
After he denied several students' requests to be released from their scholarships early, you would think Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley would be willing to hold himself and his program to the same standards he holds his players to and would be happy to offer them multiyear, guaranteed scholarships. You'd be wrong.

Continue reading this post »

AS THE CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT TURNS

We broke the Googles
Allow us a moment of navel-gazing here at the top of Sprints, if for no other reason than the fact that the story is slightly amusing. As you all know, we do parodies of realignment news from time to time, mostly as a way to break up the depressing reality of writing about realignment during the actual season and as a sort of fun commentary about the ridiculousness of the things that actually are happening. So when I wrote a humorous and completely fictional post about Memphis being accepted as a member of the SEC, I didn't really give it a second thought.

And then this happened.

Yes, for a time at least, the top result on Google News for "memphis sec" was a story headlined "Memphis Application Accepted as SEC's 14th Member," which was meant to be a joke for all of us to enjoy. The insanity should have ended there -- but at least one person in the world still was not in on the joke.

Continue reading this post »

CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT NEWS

Leave Mark Emmert alone
There are few people that are more critical of Mark Emmert than I am. That's not entirely fair, only because there are a lot of people that are very critical of Mark Emmert. The thing is, Emmert gives anyone who wants to criticize him more than enough ammunition to do so. Which is why it was so frustrating to watch a lot of otherwise smart people decided to make fun of Mark Emmert -- for saying exactly the same thing they were saying to make fun of Mark Emmert.

"I think what came across (with realignment) is that all we care about is money and what we can do that is to our advantage," Emmert said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. "Nobody was talking about what this is going to do for student-athletes or intercollegiate athletic programs. It was all about let's make a deal."

And while I hate to differ with SB Nation so openly -- Emmert is right. And SBN.com is saying that in the same commentary where it's criticizing Emmert. There's nothing in that statement or the full interview that suggests that Emmert is saying conference realignment isn't about money; he's saying that it is all about money, or at least it looks that way, and it shouldn't be.

Continue reading this post »

CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT NEWS, RUMORS, ETC.

West Virginia not turned down, according to West Virginia sources
For those who went crazy over a Cincinnati site reporting that West Virginia had been turned down by the SEC -- the local media says that isn't so. That's not to say that the writer for the Cincinnati site was wrong, but that his source might have been mistaken, or engaged in wishful thinking. Just like in everything else in life, more people want to seem like they're in the know about conference realignment than actually are in the know.

After hours of conversations, texts, etc., with those in the know, it's clear the Mountaineer athletic department is staring at two scenarios.

It has indeed turned to the Southeastern Conference. It's up to the SEC to welcome West Virginia - or turn its back. As of Monday evening, the conference had not said no to the school.

Does that mean this report is necessarily right? No, but it certainly seems more likely than reports that the SEC has turned down West Virginia. Because if it spurns West Virginia, and things go awry with Missouri or whoever else is being considered for the 14th team, where is the SEC going to go -- Rutgers? It's more likely that the SEC might sit on the application for a while and see how things play out. And then, if things haven't moved significantly with someone else in a week or two, the Mountaineers might get a look. That's if they're not already on the fast-track for membership.

Nobody matters but you?
Because of the immense respect I have for the Mayor, I really wanted to be able to respond to this somewhat reasonably. But that was before I read more than the headline, and I ran across one of the most astonishingly arrogant things I've ever read on Dawg Sports, whatever other disagreements I might have with it.

I don’t care what South Carolina wants, because, frankly, if we had bought the substance of South Carolina’s current argument against Clemson 20 years ago, we wouldn’t have invited South Carolina to join.

Continue reading this post »

Why FSU might consider the SEC even if Texas joins the ACC
Here is a lesson in how the economics of conference realignment aren't always what you might think. If you look at the ACC contract, it might make more sense for the Seminoles to join the SEC instead. Why?

He said that FSU's share of the ACC television contract is between $13 and $14 million, compared to $24 million that each of the Pac-12 conference members receive.

I believe the $21 million for the SEC might be a year or two old, but it's the number that comes to mind -- let's use it for the sake of argument. Let's also go with the $14 million figure -- that would mean the average SEC team makes $7 million more than the average ACC team. That means for Texas to join and the ACC contract to catch up to the SEC on a per-team basis -- and we're going to assume for the moment that both are able to renegotiate the contract -- Texas would have to add $105 million to the value of the ACC contract ($7 million more for each current ACC team and $21 million for Texas itself). By contrast, Texas A&M has to only add $21 million for the contract for the SEC to stay at the same level. That's the economics of realignment that a lot of people don't see.

Now, I still think the chances that FSU joins the SEC are remote at best. But Texas moving to the ACC doesn't mean it won't happen.

Continue reading this post »

Team Speed Kills Now. Then.
Last night's episode:

CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT CAPERS

The latest unexpected twist in the conference realignment soap opera
I honestly did not see this coming.

Florida State has begun taking forceful steps to prepare itself for conference realignment, whether that means joining Florida in the SEC or becoming part of an ACC super conference that may include Texas.

With recent talk of a possible formation of four super conferences, Andy Haggard, chairman of FSU's board of trustees, said Tuesday that his school has begun forming a committee that will explore the university's options. He says FSU should be prepared for any scenario, whether it's moving to another conference or staying in the ACC and having a say in who else may join the league.

Now, there are many many reasons to be extremely careful about reading too much into this report. The first is the reported and widely accepted "gentlemen's agreement" between Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and/or Kentucky to keep the BCS programs in those states out of the SEC. Unless Florida has had a change of heart, that agreement could block FSU. And it might not be all; FSU shares recruiting stomping grounds with schools like Auburn and Alabama as well. So it would be a tough sell to bring the Seminoles to the SEC.

Continue reading this post »

THE REALIGNMENT CAPERS

Speaking Slive-an
Before we actually go line-by-line through Mike Slive's statement on conference realignment, let's explain why it's important to go line-by-line through Slive's statement. First, it's a bit extraordinary for the SEC to openly release this kind of statement, much less put it on their website. Slive could have quietly delivered these lines in a speech, and they might have gotten picked up by the local media, but it would have been just another statement. The only reason for the SEC to make such a big production of these lines is that they wanted it to be heard.

Secondly, Slive is a lawyer. If you've ever known anyone in law school, you know that they have to learn the slightly differences between words that you and I would use interchangeably. Lawyers are extraordinarily careful about what they say. The only way to read Slive's statement is to look at like he carefully crafted every word, because odds are he carefully crafted every word. Now that all of that introduction is out of the way, let's look at the statement.

In the 78 year history of the SEC, the conference had accepted the membership applications of only two institutions -- Arkansas and South Carolina. Texas A&M is now the third. We remain optimistic that Texas A&M will be a member of the SEC and have started to look  at schedules for 2012-13 involving 13 teams.

Continue reading this post »