By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:
“To be the man, you gotta beat the man!” – Richard Morgan Fliehr, AKA Ric Flair
We’re getting a rematch of the SEC Championship Game in one week in Indianapolis, which is a rather weird place to hold a national championship game in that it’s (a) Alabama and Georgia from the SEC; and (b) Indy is a great place for the national championship in basketball, but football? The last time a football team from the state of Indiana was relevant was Notre Dame in 1988. Oh sure, Notre Dame makes the College Football Playoff every so often but goes home with a loss and a participation trophy. Indianapolis is the heart of Big Ten country. The Big Ten is about as relevant as Notre Dame when it comes to the playoff.
Alabama and Georgia are the two best teams in the country which is why they’ll play again. Alabama blew the doors off Georgia back on December 4. Somehow that didn’t convince enough people that Nick Saban has his team in beast mode, which he always does this time of year, because Georgia is favored to win the national championship game. Go figure on that one. Nick will call it rat poison. Count on it.
Alabama got to the championship game by turning Cincinnati’s previously perfect season into another ho-hum semifinal, the kind of which we always see when the southern teams play the northern teams in the playoff. The southern teams dominate the line of scrimmage, which is what Alabama did to Cincinnati, crushing the hopes of everyone who either believes in Cinderella stories or that a Group of Five team will one day dream the impossible dream and play for a real national championship, not the kind they dreamed up down at UCF. Later in the evening, Georgia’s O-line, manhandled by Alabama three weeks earlier, manhandled Michigan on both lines of scrimmage. Jim Harbaugh can put a necktie on those Michigan Men but they’re still just pigs from the Big Ten wearing a cool necktie. Isn’t that always the case for the Big Ten? Lots of hype, but when it comes down to crunch time, my friends in Texas would say, “All hat, no cattle.”
The semifinals were on New Year’s Eve. If we’re going to have a national championship game a week to 10 days after the semifinals, then at least have the decency to play the games on New Year’s Day. That way, at least we could watch the traditional bowl games with a sense of anticipation for the usual semifinal blowouts later in the day.
Because the bowls mean less and less, the playoff does need expanding to 12 teams. We might always wind up with two teams from the SEC or one from the SEC and Clemson in the championship game but at least there will be a chance in the first round for a Cincinnati or a team from the Fun Belt to get a win over one of their Power Five brethren to inject a measure of hope that for one year, at least, the clock may not strike midnight.
An expanded playoff is one of the bigger reasons why Texas and Oklahoma are bolting the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference. It has been 16 years since the last Big 12 team (Texas, 2005) won a national championship. Since the advent of a four-team playoff, no Big 12 team has made it to the championship game and only four times in eight years as a Big 12 team even made the final four. The SEC, meanwhile, has had at least one team in the final four all eight years, two teams in the final four twice (2017, 2021), at least one team in the national championship game seven times and two teams in the national championship game twice (2017, 2021). Since Alabama and Georgia are in this year’s national championship game, it means the SEC will have had five of the eight national champs since the playoff system replaced the BCS.
Under the four-team playoff format, Texas and Oklahoma are aware that the only assurance they have of making the playoff from the Big 12 is to go unbeaten. When the playoff expands, teams with two losses will have a chance to make it in. There are better odds for multiple two-loss teams from the SEC than two-loss teams from the Big 12 although this year would have proven the exception if the playoff had been 12 teams.
The four-team format favors the SEC, which is guaranteed to have its 12th national champion in the last 16 years and the third in a row. As Stewart Mandel of The Athletic pointed out, either an SEC or ACC team (FSU 2013, Clemson 2016 and 2018) has won the national championship every year since 2006, the only exception 2014 when Ohio State beat Oregon in the first College Football Playoff championship game.
Digest that for a moment and then you can start connecting a few dots.
Now you know why ESPN is willing to pay six times what CBS has been paying for exclusive rights to the Southeastern Conference following the 2023 football season. At $63 million per team per year, the SEC will be the tall hog at the college sports trough, but when Texas and Oklahoma join the league the lowball estimates are that every team in the league will get another $9 million while most economists say the impact will be $80 million. Per team. Per year.
Texas and Oklahoma add value to the ESPN television package which is why the network is likely to collaborate with the SEC, Notre Dame and the Big 12 for a deal that will send Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC as early as 2023 in exchange for support that will ensure the Big 12 will remain in business as a Power Five conference with an ESPN exclusive TV deal. There is a ripple effect to all this, which is to snuff out the attempt by the so-called “alliance” to roadblock playoff expansion.
The “alliance” is the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC, whose commissioners don’t like it that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been, is and will always be the smartest guy in the room. They’ve stonewalled the playoff expansion process, but the only thing they have accomplished is to prove why Sankey is perfectly fine if the playoff remains at four teams. The two best teams are in the SEC and they’ll play for the national championship. Michigan was wiped out by Georgia and the Pac-12 and ACC were excluded. They would have made a lot more money this year in a 12-team playoff in which five of their teams would have been in the bracket. If there had been a 12-team playoff this year it would have looked like this:
Six highest ranked conference champions: 1. Alabama (SEC), 2. Michigan (Big Ten), 4. Cincinnati (American), 7. Baylor (Big 12), 11. Utah (Pac-12) and 12. Pittsburgh (ACC)
Six highest ranked at-large teams: 3. Georgia (SEC); 5. Notre Dame (Independent); 6. Ohio State (Big Ten); 8. Ole Miss (SEC); 9. Oklahoma State (Big 12) and 10. Michigan State (Big Ten)
The breakdown would be: SEC (3), Big Ten (3), Big 12 (2), American (1), Independent (1), Pac-12 (1) and ACC (1).
As it stands, the SEC will make a lot of money off the playoff this year. The Big Ten will get one semifinalist share and the Pac-12 and ACC will get shut out. The Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 need a 12-team playoff in the worst way.
The silly boys in the “alliance” should also take a look at the recruiting rankings. The SEC dominates because it’s the best conference and the league can be counted on to produce national champions. If the “alliance” wants to catch up to the SEC and be THE MAN then it needs to beat the man and the place for that to begin is to (a) expand the playoffs to make their schools more attractive and (b) recruit at the level of the SEC.
Maybe they’ll figure that out someday.
HOW WILL COVID AFFECT UF IN BASKETBALL THIS WEEK?
A COVID-19 outbreak at UF forced the postponement of the Gators’ SEC opener at Ole Miss last week. The Gators (9-3, 0-0) are scheduled to host 19th-ranked Alabama (10-3, 1-0 SEC) Wednesday night at the O-Dome, but there has been no update from the Florida camp since the postponement. Has the entire team been cleared to play and practice? If not the entire team, how many will be able to dress out and play Wednesday? And, how many practice days were affected by the outbreak?
Alabama is coming off a huge win over then No. 14 Tennessee plus the Crimson Tide has an earlier win over Gonzaga. A Florida team at less than full strength or one that hasn’t gotten in enough practice days will be at a serious disadvantage.
SEC BASKETBALL
Tuesday’s games: No. 11 Auburn (12-1, 1-0 SEC) at South Carolina (9-3, 0-0 SEC); No. 18 Kentucky (11-2, 1-0 SEC) at No. 16 LSU (12-1, 0-1 SEC); Texas A&M (11-2, 0-0 SEC) at Georgia 5-8, 0-0 SEC); Vanderbilt (8-4, 0-0 SEC) at Arkansas (10-3, 0-1 SEC)
Wednesday’s games: No. 19 Alabama (10-3, 1-0 SEC) at FLORIDA (9-3, 0-0 SEC); Ole Miss (8-4, 0-0 SEC) at No. 14 Tennessee (9-3, 0-1 SEC); Mississippi State (10-3, 1-0 SEC) at Missouri (6-7, 0-1 SEC)
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: If you grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, then you probably remember that commercial whose theme was “It’s what’s up front that counts.” Well, that can be applied to Alabama and Georgia. If you watched the College Football Playoff semifinal games, then you saw how Alabama pushed Cincinnati around on both lines of scrimmage and how Georgia turned Michigan’s vaunted D-line into non-factors. Seeing how Alabama and Georgia dominated the lines of scrimmage only showed the enormity of the job facing Billy Napier.
I am convinced Florida will have good enough people at the skill positions to win next year. Napier scored big when he got Ohio State transfer QB Jack Miller III to come in and compete with Anthony Richardson. I think the Gators have good talent at running back and need to add a little more speed at the receiver positions but overall they will rank in the top third of the SEC at the skill positions.
What concerns me is who will block for them and on the other side of the ball, who will stop the other team from imposing its will on the Gators? Going back to 2010, the Gators haven’t had a single season with a truly physically dominant offensive line. Will Muschamp recruited the defensive line extremely well but when his recruits all moved on to the NFL, Jim McElwain didn’t replace them and Dan Mullen’s recruiting was always deficient when it came to bringing in the people who could neutralize an opponent’s offensive line.
Napier has his work cut out for him. I’m convinced the offensive line will be upgraded in the coaching department with Rob Sale and Darnell Stapleton but can they elevate the talent that is already on hand to play at a high enough level? I’m convinced UF will bring in good high school talent but that takes awhile to develop. Are there good enough people in the transfer portal and can Napier convince them to come to Gainesville? Good coaching will help the D-line, but so can the transfer portal if there are enough wide bodies with talent who want to transfer to Florida.
I’m the eternal optimist but I am also a realist. Billy Napier is the right man for this job but until UF loads up on talented, big guys who can dominate the line of scrimmage, the Gators will be playing from behind.
A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:
“To be the man, you gotta beat the man!” – Richard Morgan Fliehr, AKA Ric Flair
We’re getting a rematch of the SEC Championship Game in one week in Indianapolis, which is a rather weird place to hold a national championship game in that it’s (a) Alabama and Georgia from the SEC; and (b) Indy is a great place for the national championship in basketball, but football? The last time a football team from the state of Indiana was relevant was Notre Dame in 1988. Oh sure, Notre Dame makes the College Football Playoff every so often but goes home with a loss and a participation trophy. Indianapolis is the heart of Big Ten country. The Big Ten is about as relevant as Notre Dame when it comes to the playoff.
Alabama and Georgia are the two best teams in the country which is why they’ll play again. Alabama blew the doors off Georgia back on December 4. Somehow that didn’t convince enough people that Nick Saban has his team in beast mode, which he always does this time of year, because Georgia is favored to win the national championship game. Go figure on that one. Nick will call it rat poison. Count on it.
Alabama got to the championship game by turning Cincinnati’s previously perfect season into another ho-hum semifinal, the kind of which we always see when the southern teams play the northern teams in the playoff. The southern teams dominate the line of scrimmage, which is what Alabama did to Cincinnati, crushing the hopes of everyone who either believes in Cinderella stories or that a Group of Five team will one day dream the impossible dream and play for a real national championship, not the kind they dreamed up down at UCF. Later in the evening, Georgia’s O-line, manhandled by Alabama three weeks earlier, manhandled Michigan on both lines of scrimmage. Jim Harbaugh can put a necktie on those Michigan Men but they’re still just pigs from the Big Ten wearing a cool necktie. Isn’t that always the case for the Big Ten? Lots of hype, but when it comes down to crunch time, my friends in Texas would say, “All hat, no cattle.”
The semifinals were on New Year’s Eve. If we’re going to have a national championship game a week to 10 days after the semifinals, then at least have the decency to play the games on New Year’s Day. That way, at least we could watch the traditional bowl games with a sense of anticipation for the usual semifinal blowouts later in the day.
Because the bowls mean less and less, the playoff does need expanding to 12 teams. We might always wind up with two teams from the SEC or one from the SEC and Clemson in the championship game but at least there will be a chance in the first round for a Cincinnati or a team from the Fun Belt to get a win over one of their Power Five brethren to inject a measure of hope that for one year, at least, the clock may not strike midnight.
An expanded playoff is one of the bigger reasons why Texas and Oklahoma are bolting the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference. It has been 16 years since the last Big 12 team (Texas, 2005) won a national championship. Since the advent of a four-team playoff, no Big 12 team has made it to the championship game and only four times in eight years as a Big 12 team even made the final four. The SEC, meanwhile, has had at least one team in the final four all eight years, two teams in the final four twice (2017, 2021), at least one team in the national championship game seven times and two teams in the national championship game twice (2017, 2021). Since Alabama and Georgia are in this year’s national championship game, it means the SEC will have had five of the eight national champs since the playoff system replaced the BCS.
Under the four-team playoff format, Texas and Oklahoma are aware that the only assurance they have of making the playoff from the Big 12 is to go unbeaten. When the playoff expands, teams with two losses will have a chance to make it in. There are better odds for multiple two-loss teams from the SEC than two-loss teams from the Big 12 although this year would have proven the exception if the playoff had been 12 teams.
The four-team format favors the SEC, which is guaranteed to have its 12th national champion in the last 16 years and the third in a row. As Stewart Mandel of The Athletic pointed out, either an SEC or ACC team (FSU 2013, Clemson 2016 and 2018) has won the national championship every year since 2006, the only exception 2014 when Ohio State beat Oregon in the first College Football Playoff championship game.
Digest that for a moment and then you can start connecting a few dots.
Now you know why ESPN is willing to pay six times what CBS has been paying for exclusive rights to the Southeastern Conference following the 2023 football season. At $63 million per team per year, the SEC will be the tall hog at the college sports trough, but when Texas and Oklahoma join the league the lowball estimates are that every team in the league will get another $9 million while most economists say the impact will be $80 million. Per team. Per year.
Texas and Oklahoma add value to the ESPN television package which is why the network is likely to collaborate with the SEC, Notre Dame and the Big 12 for a deal that will send Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC as early as 2023 in exchange for support that will ensure the Big 12 will remain in business as a Power Five conference with an ESPN exclusive TV deal. There is a ripple effect to all this, which is to snuff out the attempt by the so-called “alliance” to roadblock playoff expansion.
The “alliance” is the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC, whose commissioners don’t like it that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been, is and will always be the smartest guy in the room. They’ve stonewalled the playoff expansion process, but the only thing they have accomplished is to prove why Sankey is perfectly fine if the playoff remains at four teams. The two best teams are in the SEC and they’ll play for the national championship. Michigan was wiped out by Georgia and the Pac-12 and ACC were excluded. They would have made a lot more money this year in a 12-team playoff in which five of their teams would have been in the bracket. If there had been a 12-team playoff this year it would have looked like this:
Six highest ranked conference champions: 1. Alabama (SEC), 2. Michigan (Big Ten), 4. Cincinnati (American), 7. Baylor (Big 12), 11. Utah (Pac-12) and 12. Pittsburgh (ACC)
Six highest ranked at-large teams: 3. Georgia (SEC); 5. Notre Dame (Independent); 6. Ohio State (Big Ten); 8. Ole Miss (SEC); 9. Oklahoma State (Big 12) and 10. Michigan State (Big Ten)
The breakdown would be: SEC (3), Big Ten (3), Big 12 (2), American (1), Independent (1), Pac-12 (1) and ACC (1).
As it stands, the SEC will make a lot of money off the playoff this year. The Big Ten will get one semifinalist share and the Pac-12 and ACC will get shut out. The Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 need a 12-team playoff in the worst way.
The silly boys in the “alliance” should also take a look at the recruiting rankings. The SEC dominates because it’s the best conference and the league can be counted on to produce national champions. If the “alliance” wants to catch up to the SEC and be THE MAN then it needs to beat the man and the place for that to begin is to (a) expand the playoffs to make their schools more attractive and (b) recruit at the level of the SEC.
Maybe they’ll figure that out someday.
HOW WILL COVID AFFECT UF IN BASKETBALL THIS WEEK?
A COVID-19 outbreak at UF forced the postponement of the Gators’ SEC opener at Ole Miss last week. The Gators (9-3, 0-0) are scheduled to host 19th-ranked Alabama (10-3, 1-0 SEC) Wednesday night at the O-Dome, but there has been no update from the Florida camp since the postponement. Has the entire team been cleared to play and practice? If not the entire team, how many will be able to dress out and play Wednesday? And, how many practice days were affected by the outbreak?
Alabama is coming off a huge win over then No. 14 Tennessee plus the Crimson Tide has an earlier win over Gonzaga. A Florida team at less than full strength or one that hasn’t gotten in enough practice days will be at a serious disadvantage.
SEC BASKETBALL
Tuesday’s games: No. 11 Auburn (12-1, 1-0 SEC) at South Carolina (9-3, 0-0 SEC); No. 18 Kentucky (11-2, 1-0 SEC) at No. 16 LSU (12-1, 0-1 SEC); Texas A&M (11-2, 0-0 SEC) at Georgia 5-8, 0-0 SEC); Vanderbilt (8-4, 0-0 SEC) at Arkansas (10-3, 0-1 SEC)
Wednesday’s games: No. 19 Alabama (10-3, 1-0 SEC) at FLORIDA (9-3, 0-0 SEC); Ole Miss (8-4, 0-0 SEC) at No. 14 Tennessee (9-3, 0-1 SEC); Mississippi State (10-3, 1-0 SEC) at Missouri (6-7, 0-1 SEC)
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: If you grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, then you probably remember that commercial whose theme was “It’s what’s up front that counts.” Well, that can be applied to Alabama and Georgia. If you watched the College Football Playoff semifinal games, then you saw how Alabama pushed Cincinnati around on both lines of scrimmage and how Georgia turned Michigan’s vaunted D-line into non-factors. Seeing how Alabama and Georgia dominated the lines of scrimmage only showed the enormity of the job facing Billy Napier.
I am convinced Florida will have good enough people at the skill positions to win next year. Napier scored big when he got Ohio State transfer QB Jack Miller III to come in and compete with Anthony Richardson. I think the Gators have good talent at running back and need to add a little more speed at the receiver positions but overall they will rank in the top third of the SEC at the skill positions.
What concerns me is who will block for them and on the other side of the ball, who will stop the other team from imposing its will on the Gators? Going back to 2010, the Gators haven’t had a single season with a truly physically dominant offensive line. Will Muschamp recruited the defensive line extremely well but when his recruits all moved on to the NFL, Jim McElwain didn’t replace them and Dan Mullen’s recruiting was always deficient when it came to bringing in the people who could neutralize an opponent’s offensive line.
Napier has his work cut out for him. I’m convinced the offensive line will be upgraded in the coaching department with Rob Sale and Darnell Stapleton but can they elevate the talent that is already on hand to play at a high enough level? I’m convinced UF will bring in good high school talent but that takes awhile to develop. Are there good enough people in the transfer portal and can Napier convince them to come to Gainesville? Good coaching will help the D-line, but so can the transfer portal if there are enough wide bodies with talent who want to transfer to Florida.
I’m the eternal optimist but I am also a realist. Billy Napier is the right man for this job but until UF loads up on talented, big guys who can dominate the line of scrimmage, the Gators will be playing from behind.
