S.E.C. Media Days: The Annotated Les Miles

I say dump the bottom feeders in the SEC and play all the other SEC teams and go from there, just like the pac 10.

The Pac-8 played a round-robin seven-game league schedule. This practice was abandoned (of necessity) when Arizona and Arizona State joined the league. The practice was adopted anew with the addition of an annual 12th game to the slate.

If a conference has more than 10 members (as four of the six B.C.S. conferences do), a round-robin conference schedule cannot work.

The S.E.C., on the other hand, plays an eight-game conference schedule (up from a six-game league slate as late as 1987) and several conference members have longstanding out-of-conference rivalry games (Clemson-South Carolina, Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, and Kentucky-Louisville). The Pac-10, by contrast, has only one annual non-conference rivalry (Notre Dame-Southern California).

The bottom line is that the S.E.C. champion will have survived a nine-game conference schedule of eight regular-season games (including all five teams from its own division and half of the teams from the other division) and the conference championship game. The Pac-10 champion will have survived a nine-game conference schedule, as well.

The Pac-10 champion is assured of playing every good team in the league and every bad team in the league. The S.E.C. champion will miss three conference teams (or two if the S.E.C. championship game is not a rematch), which may be good or may be bad, depending upon the luck of the draw.

It's hard to say that one way is more difficult than the other, year in and year out, and, although one road may be more or less tough in any given autumn, we cannot know in August which will be the harder row to hoe. Unlike the Big Ten, neither the Pac-10 nor the S.E.C. allows for the possibility of conference co-champions who have never met on the football field. On the whole, though, one system isn't better or worse than the other; it's just different.

As for dumping the bottom feeders in the S.E.C., which, precisely, would those be?

Mississippi State has appeared in the S.E.C. championship game within the last decade, losing by 10 points to the eventual national champion. Ole Miss won 10 games and the Cotton Bowl in 2003. Arkansas has been to two conference title tilts in the last five years. Kentucky went to and won a bowl game last year, and the Wildcats return the most accomplished quarterback in the league. Vanderbilt is threatening to make it to a bowl game and the Commodores have been extremely competitive under Bobby Johnson, claiming victories over Georgia and Tennessee in the last two seasons. South Carolina may contend in the Eastern Division this year.

I will happily jettison the bottom feeders. Especially after last season, though, I can't honestly claim to know which ones they are.

In regards to dropping the bottom feeders I would go along some of the guidelines that you used in your radical realignment series. I would do the same thing in the Pac 10 BTW, as there are a number of programs I would dump in a heartbeat. All this crap about SC towering over all of college football is just too much to take...and I'm an SC homer. If we could increase the level of competition in both leagues this argument dies a quick death.

Now, I'm selfish in this because I want to see some great games, like LSU-Auburn in 2006. But, as an example, I'm not sure that Vandy being on the doorstep of going to a bowl game and being recently competitive constitutes them as a traditional power. Traditional powers matter and the SEC has some great tradition. Another example is ucla, they have a great tradition, at least within the Pac 10, and they will be on the rise once they make a coaching change.

Miles' comments open old wounds and do nothing to change the situation. Is it pie-in-the-sky? Yes, but it would be nice to see some original thought come out the conference presidents in order to put the best product out on the field.

Seeing that the conference bigwigs are into making money why not try this?  

The MLB has a luxury tax why not use a similar formula, instead of having lower tier schools on the schedule as OOC games move some of the powerhouse teams around from the different conferences, regionally of course, to create some really good match-ups. The conferences can then increase their take from the networks and distribute some of it to those schools that have been moved to conferences/divisions. The competition will increase exponentially and we, the fans, will be treated to some great games.

Pie-in-the-sky I know.

As you know, I believe Les Miles was out of line when making his original statements and the question whether the eventual Pac-10 champion's nine-game conference slate represents a more or less impressive accomplishment than the eventual S.E.C. champion's nine-game conference slate is a fit subject of debate in early December, but not in late July.

Likewise, I recognize that the bottom six programs in the S.E.C. (Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Mississippi State, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt) are not on a par with the top six (Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, L.S.U., and Tennessee). However, not all perennial doormats are created equally.

Baylor has challenged some folks in the Big 12 and pulled off some upsets under Guy Morriss. Stanford has had some success, winning a conference title within the last decade. Bobby Johnson's Vanderbilt squads have been competitive.

This, in my view, puts them a cut above such sad sack programs as Duke in the A.C.C., Indiana in the Big Ten, and (until recently) Temple in the Big East, which rarely were competitive, even intermittently.