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Spring meetings eventful
Remember when the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla., were an excuse for a four-day vacation for head coaches and beat writers.
Did you even know back when that they even had meetings?
Not so fast my ready-to-head-to-the-beach friend.
I can still remember when the college football offseason was boring. You waited impatiently for Street & Smith to release their football guide which came out at a logical time in August instead of before the practices even started.
Now, thanks to social media, recruiting and coaches like Les Miles, Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban and the latest entertaining Arkansas head man, that's no longer true.
It seems we can't get enough news about a coach is calling out another, what 5-star committed to which team and which conference Southwestnorth U. will be in next year.
The SEC Digital Network even streamed last week's meeting live, while also interviewing all the coaches.
Those preseason magazines have to be so envious.
These meetings are no longer your Paul "Bear" Bryant meetings.
Spurrier made news last year when he came up with a plan to pay players out of his own pockets.
Commissioner Mike Slive irked a few people by talking about cutting football scholarships.
You can imagine how well that went over with Saban, who yelled at reporters in the lobby for shifting opinion toward fewer scholarships.
The coaches voted 12-0 against cuts, but Slive got presidents to vote it in.
"I'm not a dictator," Slive would say later after Saban criticized the SEC office for not allowing coaches to have a say in the scholarship reductions.
Now on to the 2012 reality edition.
Spurrier was back bringing up paying players again.
There will likely be more talk of an SEC television network, which has been knocked around for several years but has more punch now that the SEC has millions more TV sets in Missouri and Texas.
The SEC voted to have an eight-game conference schedule with six divisional games, one permanent non-division and one rotating non-division opponent. The non-division opponents will rotate in a single-year rotation, meaning each school will play the six non-divisional opponents in the first six years and switch the sites for the following six years.
The permanent opponents for SEC football conference scheduling are: Alabama - Tennessee; Arkansas - Missouri; Auburn - Georgia; Florida - LSU; Kentucky - Mississippi State; Ole Miss - Vanderbilt; South Carolina - Texas A&M.
Also worth noting, rotating teams on SEC football schedules won't be home & home in consecutive years
Spurrier (there he is again) made his desire for an eight-team playoff known—again.
Spurrier also came to the Spring Meetings armed with a proposal that would reward division titles to teams that have the best division record rather than SEC record. Saban has already come out in opposition to the proposal, which has been backed by Miles and Vanderbilt head coach James Franklin.
Just for good measure, Saban reiterated his stance on the first day of the meeting.
Miles had already stated that he wants a four-team playoff to be determined by the top four teams rather than have automatic bids for conference champions. Miles' LSU team became the poster-child of the automatic bid movement after the Tigers were beat by Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game, even though they beat Alabama earlier in the season.
The SEC voted to have an 18-game conference schedule for men's basketball, featuring one permanent rival per school and 12 rotating opponents.
The permanent opponents for SEC men's basketball conference scheduling are: Alabama - Auburn; Arkansas - Missouri; Florida - Kentucky; Georgia - South Carolina; LSU - Texas A&M; Ole Miss - Mississippi State; Tennessee - Vanderbilt.
Poor Florida.
The SEC voted to have a 16-game conference schedule for women's basketball, featuring single round-robin games with one permanent opponent and two random opponents.
The permanent opponents for SEC women's basketball conference scheduling are: Alabama - Auburn; Arkansas - Missouri; Florida - Georgia; Kentucky - South Carolina; LSU - Texas A&M; Ole Miss - Mississippi State; Tennessee - Vanderbilt.
The men's and women's tournaments will increase by one day. The first day will feature games pitting the 12 vs. 13 seeds and 11 vs. 14 seeds.
The SEC voted to change Bylaw 30.22.1.1 to state that a sport could become a league-sponsored sport if 25 percent of its membership sponsored the sport (previously 1/3) - which is a minimum of four sports. Thus, the sport of equestrian will become an SEC-sponsored sport in 2012-13. Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas A&M currently sponsor equestrian.
Yes, Tiger fans, time to pack the Cow Palace again.
Actually, the John M. Parker Agricultural Coliseum opened in 1937 and sat 12,000 people at its peak. At the time of its construction, it was six feet larger than Madison Square Garden, which made it the biggest coliseum in the United States. It is named after John M. Parker, 27th Governor of Louisiana, who pushed to move the campus to its current location during his tenure.
Getting back to the SEC, under the title of craziest of crazyy things to happen during spring meeting week, Vanderbilt coach James Franklin made headlines and had to apologize after this statement:
"I've been saying it for a long time, I will not hire an assistant until I see his wife. If she looks the part and she's a D1 recruit, then you got a chance to get hired. That's part of the deal. There's a very strong correlation between having the confidence, going up and talking to a woman, and being quick on your feet and having some personality and confidence and being articulate and confident, than it is walking into a high school and recruiting a kid."
Seriously, Franklin had to apologize because some thin-skinned folks refused to see the humor or actually appreciate the point he was trying to make without making it into an insult against humankind.
Maybe it was better when there was no offseason news. |
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