1. Mike Herndon: “This new game will be a good deal for the SEC, which maintains its spot at the forefront of the sport, but the biggest winner is the Big 12.”

2. Sam Mellinger: “The Big 12 just gained a whole lot of credibility, Missouri’s decision to jump to the SEC just became less reasoned and Kansas’ stance on not playing the Border War just did the same.”

3. Big 12 interim commissioner Chuck Neinas: ”We may not be Facebook but the Big 12 Conference would get a strong buy call from Wall Street today.”

4. Florida State and the Big 12.  Best option or only option?

5. Don’t count on Miami having an interest in the Big 12 (last item).

6. Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart:  ”I dont think we can allow conference realignment to eliminate tradition.”

7. Kentucky’s Brian Adams is giving up football to focus on baseball.

8. Salaries for LSU assistant football coaches put them among the nation’s elite.

9. Hugh Freeze and Ole Miss are recruiting nationwide.  246 (and counting) offers out to recruits.

10. Georgia’s most important players? Jarvis Jones comes in at No. 6.

11. Breaking down Florida’s defensive line.

12. Big expectations for an incoming trio of basketball players at Kentucky.

13. Did you know there’s a National Association of Sports Public Address Announcers?

14. Bobby Petrino sells an Arkansas home.

1. Flip-Flop: Swofford Now Says ACC Now Prefers Conference Champ Model For Playoffs

2. UF’s Muschamp Makes A Funny (That A&M Folks Won’t Find Funny)

3. Bama To Face WVU In 2014 Chick-Fil-A Game

4. ESPN Further Proves Its Not A News Organization Anymore

5. Can We Please Stop The “Big Ten Has To Play In Hot Weather At Bowl Time” Nonsense?

SEC/Big 12 Alliance and Conference Re-Alignment

1. Jon Solomon: “The schools are regaining control of the postseason economics. The Fiesta Bowl, which has anchored the Big 12 champion, should be nervous.”

2. Jerome Solomon: “This could be good news for Houston, bad news for the University of Houston.”

3. Stewart Mandel: “Will the SEC and Big 12 push for this new bowl to serve as their designated semifinal host?”

4. Jay Greeson: “The Champions Bowl is less about a power conference and more about a power play.”

5. Gene Frenette: “It’s a certain death notice for Big East football, and the ACC might not survive without convincing Florida State/Miami to stick around and Notre Dame to come on board.”

6. Pete Thamel: “The knee-jerk reaction on Twitter and among other college officials was that this could mean that Florida State winds up in the Big 12.”

7. Bobby Bowden’s message to Florida State boosters: “Do you want to win a National Championship at Florida State?  You’ve got a better chance in the ACC than you have in the Big 12, or even the SEC.”

8. Tony Barnart’s message to Florida State’s representatives:  ”Just shut up. Seriously. You need to shut up.”

SEC Headlines

9. Arkansas AD Jeff Long: “My interest and commitment continues to be providing leadership to the University of Arkansas and to Razorback athletics at this critical time in our program’s history.”

10. Arkansas coach John L. Smith is a man with something left to prove.

11. Georgia’s Damian Swann could have a real impact in the Bulldogs secondary this fall.

12. Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley on recruiting: ”I think it’s important your recruiting office is not tied to coaches,” he explained. “That’s something that we’ve tried to structure because it’s a transient profession and you can’t get held hostage by a coach. In other words, if he leaves, [you can't have] your whole recruiting thing get disrupted.

13. Tony Gilbert is leaving Georgia to join Auburn as a graduate assistant.

14. Why John Calipari and Billy Donovan make sense as candidates to eventually replace Mike Kryzewski as coach of Team USA.

So it’s Friday and I’m at the hospital giving blood.  (Men, as a prostate cancer survivor, let me encourage you to get your PSA checked.  That simple blood test saved my life.)  While sitting and waiting… and waiting… and waiting… the texts began to roll in:  ”New SEC deal with Big 12 to be announced shortly!”

Great.  A lunchtime Friday gift for the media guys hoping to get a jumpstart on the weekend.

After finally having the blood drawn, I zipped home to put together a quick summary for you.  Only I soon realized there is no quick summary for this story.  This story is just part of a much larger, still developing story: the complete and total reshaping of college football as we know it.

For all the details, you can turn to long-time SEC scribe and all-around good guy, Tony Barnhart of CBSSports.com.  But here’s the basic gist:

* The SEC and Big 12 announced today that beginning with the 2014 season (January of 2015, that is), the regular-season champs of those two leagues will meet  in a bowl game that is not a part of what’s expected to be a brand new four-team college football playoff.  Consider it the answer to the Big Ten-Pac-12′s Rose Bowl alliance.

* That’s if the SEC and Big 12 champs aren’t invited to the playoff, of course, and during the BCS era there have only been two occasions in 14 years when either the SEC champ or the Big 12 champ hasn’t made the national title game.  The last time both leagues were shut out was way back in January of 2003.

* If one or both league champions make the playoff field, then league runner-ups would get the nod.

* The site of the game will be determined by a bidding process.  The Sugar Bowl has been the home of the SEC champ since 1976.  The old Big 8 was traditionally tied to the Orange Bowl, but the Big 12 locked in a deal with the Fiesta Bowl.  For now, however, it looks like Jerry Jones and his Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas will be the top competition for the Sugar Bowl crew come auction time.

Now, for some very quick reactions, thoughts, questions, and observations (in no particular order):

1.  This looks to be good news for the Big 12 and bad news for the ACC.  At the moment there appear to be five major  football conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC.  The Big 12 was wobbling just a few months ago after losing four major brand name schools in the span of a couple of summers.  Now the Big 12 appears locked and loaded for the future (if its schools can all continue to play nice together).  The ACC?  Uh, well, not so much.  After delivering yet another punch to the Big East by grabbing Pittsburgh and Syracuse last year, John Swofford’s league now appears to be the odd conference out if we ever find ourselves living in that four super-conference universe that’s so often been discussed.  How can the ACC guarantee its survival as a big-time football league now?  By raiding the Big East for Rutgers and UConn or South Florida?  There are now two power blocs when it comes to future votes on college football matters: Big Ten-Pac-12 and SEC-Big 12.  The ACC doesn’t have a dance partner.

2.  Florida State, you now have another reason to move.  President Eric Barron might not like it and it might not make the most sense to the faculty and staff at FSU, but the Big 12 now looks more secure than the ACC.  The perception of many will be that the SEC chose to partner with the Big 12 because it’s in better shape going forward.  We don’t deny that, but an SEC-ACC bowl could have also yielded rematches thanks to rivalries between Clemson-South Carolina, Florida-Florida State and Georgia-Georgia Tech.  Regardless, many FSU trustees and fans were pushing for a Big 12 move based on perception anyway.  Now the perception of Big 12 > ACC is even greater.

3.  Business rules.  Forget emotions.  Forget one conference grabbing teams from another conference.  Harsh words and threats of lawsuits just don’t matter when it comes to money.  The SEC and Big 12 weren’t the best of chums less than 12 months ago as Texas A&M and Missouri packed their bags and departed the latter league for the former.  Well, the hatchet has apparently been buried.  (You might say the tomahawk — in this case — has been buried in the ACC’s head.)  Dollars rule in college athletics.  Mike Slive and Swofford have had a good working relationship for a while.  But when it came time to toss a rope to one league or the other and help pull them into the boat with the three most stable conferences — SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 — it wasn’t Swofford’s ACC that got the call, it was Chuck Neinas’ Big 12.

4.  Earlier this week we wrote that FSU’s power play could force Swofford to reverse field and join the Pac-12 and Big Ten in pushing for a champs-only or a champs-mostly playoff format.  He did just that in part to exert some pressure on the Seminoles to stay in the ACC, an easier league to win than the Big 12.  But now it appears that the SEC and Big 12 were already planning ahead.  We don’t believe Slive learned of Swofford’s flip-flop and picked up the phone to Neinas and new Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby this week.  Barnhart says the two leagues have been discussing such a plan for years.  But the fact remains, Swofford abandoned the SEC’s push for a 1-2-3-4 playoff system and Slive appears to have had another partner already lined up on that front.

5.  This move seems to guarantee that by the 2014 season the BCS will be gone.  There’s still a lot of work to do before a playoff format is agreed upon and — let’s face it — that whole thing could still blow up in everyone’s faces.  But whether there’s a playoff or not, it looks as if we are definitely heading back to the days of conferences cutting their own bowl deals.  Come 2014 the bowl line-up could look a heckuva lot different for everyone.  (Earlier this week, Big Ten commish Jim Delany said he’d like to see the bowl eligibility standard raised to seven wins and he even suggested his league might go down that road on its own, by choice.)  In just two years, there could be fewer bowls and those bowls could have completely differently conference tie-ins.

6.  Delany also suggested this week that perhaps it’s time for the bowl games to pay less money to the teams they invite… with the caveat being that those games would no longer require schools to buy tickets by the bushel (which leads to most schools losing money on their bowl trips).  At Big12Sports.com today, Neinas mentioned in a video interview the possibility that the new Big 12-SEC game could be run simply by the leagues and not by a bowl at all.  So not only could bowls look different — in number and in tie-ins by 2014 — but they could start to go away altogether, replaced by games run by the conferences.  Or at least that seems to be an idea that more than one commissioner is tossing out for leverage purposes, if nothing else.

7.  As for the Big 12-SEC game, here’s hoping the good people in New Orleans can raise enough cash to outbid Jones and Arlington.  No offense to the Metroplex, but would you rather spend New Year’s in the French Quarter or in chilly mid-Texas?

8.  And before anyone tosses out St. Louis as the perfect fit for the new game, would you rather spend New Year’s in the French Quarter or in even chillier Missouri?

9.  Back to Florida State for a second, does this new power play now guarantee a Seminole move to the Big 12?  Or is there a reason FSU trustees have continually mentioned the SEC as a league they’d like to hear from?  If the SEC wanted to help stabilize the ACC it could have.  Instead, it partnered with the Big 12 and tightened the noose around the ACC’s neck.  If Slive isn’t worried about destabilizing the ACC, then perhaps he knows the age of the super-conference is here — like it or not — and he’s willing to grab FSU his own self.  That’s pure speculation, but what in the past three weeks has not been pure speculation?

10.  What was Slive’s ultimate goal here?  To help stabilize the Big 12 — a league he didn’t intend to destabilize last year — while at the same time partnering with what has been the nation’s second-strongest league during the BCS era?  (Championship game berths by league: SEC – 9, Big 12 – 7, ACC – 3, Big East – 3, Big Ten – 3, Pac-12 – 3.)  Did he want to deal a death blow to the ACC?  Or was he simply looking to do what was best for his own conference, consequences be damned?  Personally, I’ve never heard a peep from anyone at an SEC institution suggesting that Slive would for any reason “attack” Swofford’s ACC.  Therefore, it seems much more likely that this was Slive’s way of saying, “You can have the Rose Bowl, we’ll partner with the Big 12 and recent history says our bowl will feature higher-rated teams than your bowl.”  It’s strictly business.

11.  Though Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick says he doesn’t think the new SEC-Big 12 deal deal will have “significant near-term consequences” for his school, rest assured he’s puckering up a bit more today.  Unless Notre Dame and the ACC can reach an agreement to merge, both bodies will continue to become more and more irrelevant by the hour.

12.  Kudos to Neinas and the Big 12.  Dan Beebe took the fall for a league that was built on a fault line and part of the league’s turnaround can surely be attributed to the fact that its members were looking over the edge of a cliff just a few months ago and that scared them straight (at least straight enough to share their media rights for 13 years).  Still, the Big 12 is a perfect example of how the college football landscape is changing and morphing and shifting day after day.  One day the Big 12 looks doomed.  The next, it looks strong as can be.  Who knows what the future holds?  But Neinas deserves a lot of credit for grabbing the reins of his league’s wild horses, stopping them, and ultimately pulling them and the Big 12′s wagon back from precipice.

So what conclusions can be drawn from all this?

The Big 12 appears stronger.  The ACC appears weaker.  The likelihood of Florida State moving looks somewhat greater.  And the SEC just continues to roll right along with an answer for every problem, a yin for every yang.

Other than those, no one should draw any conclusions.  There’s a battle over a new playoff and what form it will take.  Will it include existing bowls?  Will bowls start to disappear, replaced by conference-owned games?  What about bowl eligibility standards?  Will more schools move from their current leagues?  What about those $2,000 stipends for players?  How can the NCAA preserve a level playing field when the biggest leagues are pushing to give players extra cash while more and more small schools (Old Dominion, Texas-San Antonio, Georgia State, etc, etc) jump to the FBS level?

Think you’ve got a read on what’s coming next?  Think again.  The powers-that-be don’t even know what’s coming next.  There are too many variables in too many equations for anyone to feel confident in their beliefs about the future of college football.

Today’s news?  Yeah, it’s big.  But what it means long-term for all the parties concerned?  That’s anybody’s guess.

Sorry for the long list of headines today.  Business takes me elsewhere.

1.  The Chick-fil-A Kickoff games for 2014 are set: Alabama-West Virginia and Ole Miss-Boise State.  (Gee, I wonder which game will get the best time slot.)

2.  The NCAA is working on a number of rule changes…

3.  But transfer rules won’t easily be lifted. 

4.  College basketball refs are getting a refresher course on block/charge calls.

5.  Alabama and West Virginia have never played each other in football.

6.  Tony Barbee has lined up games in Chicago and Charleston for his Auburn Tigers this season.  (Chicago’s great, but give me Charleston.)

7.  Mike Anderson has added a juco star to his basketball squad at Arkansas.

8.  NikeBlog.com has a teaser photo suggesting the Razorbacks could be trotting out new football uniforms this year… complete with two different helmets and what appears to be a navy/charcoal/black design.

(Sidenote — Another tradition goes up in flames as Michigan’s going to be using more uniform variations this fall.)

9.  Bobby Petrino broke even in selling his $600,000 lake home.

10.  LSU’s coordinators don’t want their players to forget their BCS Championship Game loss to Alabama.

11.  Speaking of not forgetting that night… the Alabama fan videotaped placing his genitals on the face of a passed-out LSU fan has been indicted on sexual battery and obscenity charges.

12.  Ole Miss is trying to find and grow new revenue streams.

13.  Here’s a look at Florida’s offensive line coming out of spring practice.

14.  No surprise: tailback Isaiah Crowell will be an important man at Georgia this fall.

15.  UGA has named a long-time Georgia high school coach as the football program’s new director of on-campus recruiting.

16.  Kentucky hoops transfer target Montrezl Harrell has been given a release from Virginia Tech.

17.  This writers says Joker Phillips is one of several SEC coaches who need to rally before 2013.

18.  This writer believes the SEC wants to get to 16 teams and will do so soon.  (We disagree and from everyone we’ve spoken to at SEC schools, they’d prefer to see how the additions of Mizzou and A&M play out first.)

19.  The Florida State-Big 12 story won’t go away…

20.  Even though Bobby Bowden thinks FSU should stay put.

Yesterday we beat you over the head with our continued push for a nine-game SEC football schedule.  You know, the kind that appears not to be on the way.  At least not now.

Today, we wanted to remind you of our views regarding the SEC’s new basketball scheduling format.  Ah, yes, basketball is on the docket for a Destin vote as well.

As you already know, the league will continue to go division-less in hoops just as it did this past season.  And with Missouri and Texas A&M joining the conference, the league’s schedule will increase from 16 games to 18 games per season.

There have been recent conversations across the conference that the SEC might choose to preserve just one permanent home-and-home opponent per team under its new format.  If that’s anything more than fearmongering, then the SEC is about to botch its hoops schedule as badly as sticking with an eight-game plan for football will botch things on the gridiron.

Back in January, we rolled out what we call our 4-1-8 plan.  The goal of our plan was to preserve as many of the SEC’s old rivalries as possible while also creating new, geographically-driven rivalries for the league’s two new members.

You can read the full plan — including which of the SEC’s most-played rivalries would be continued — right here.

The gist of the plan, however, can be summed up easily:

1.  Each school would play nine home games and nine road games.

2.  Each school would face four permanent rival schools at home and away each year.

3.  Each should would play one rotating rival at home and away each year as well (which brings the total number games versus home-and-away opponents to 10).

4.  Each school would face the remaining eight league schools once per season (with four of those games at home and four on the road).

Easy.  Simple. Grounded in tradition.  Why that’s as perfect as a basketball schedule can be.

Which is why we would be shocked if the Southeastern Conference approves such a plan.  It makes too much sense.  Instead, we expect many traditional rivalries to be scrapped in order for SEC coaches and ADs to guarantee themselves the easiest, creampuffiest schedules possible.

At any rate, with the focus on the SEC’s new football scheduling format sure to get most of the attention at the SEC Meetings in a couple of weeks, we thought it was important to remind folks that basketball is about to get a revamp, too.  Here’s hoping the SEC will do a better job on the hoops front than it appears it will on the football front.

1.  Some big-time basketball programs are raiding mid-major schools for their early graduates (in hopes of getting them to transfer.)

2.  Alabama’s Nick Saban has wrapped up his spring speaking tour.

3.  Will youth be a problem for Auburn again this fall?

4.  The high school coach of former Arkansas receiver Quinta Funderburk says he will transfer to Syracuse (not at Virginia were many initially suspected).

5.  AthlonSports.com looks at whether or not the Razorbacks can win the West without Bobby Petrino.

6.  Razorback basketballer Devonta Abron has transferred to TCU to join ex-LSU coach Trent Johnson.

7.  Mike Anderson’s team will play in this year’s Las Vegas Invitational.

8.  Here’s a closer look at Mississippi State’s athletic spending in 2011.

9.  Three Ole Miss football players are in danger of not being eligible this fall.

10.  This writer says Texas A&M will be a perfect fit with the SEC.

11.  This scribe doesn’t believe Steve Spurrier’s plan for crowning division champs has any hope of being adopted.

12. A pair of ex-Georgia football players have found new homes.

13.  Safety Corey Moore needs to have a big year for the Dawgs.

14.  Kentucky’s John Calipari is after yet another transfer, this one from Virginia tech.

15.  The fountains outside Rupp Arena turned blood red yesterday, but it wasn’t a prank by Louisville fans (or an act of Charleston Heston.)

16.  Here’s a closer look at South Carolina’s athletic budget in 2011.

17.  Derek Dooley says he’s stayed in touch with previous Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer.

18.  Vanderbilt running back Lafonte Thompson — who switched his commitment from Virginia Tech to Vandy on National Signing Day 2011 — is being allowed to transfer away from the Commodores.

19.  Quarterback Corbin Berkstresser has been suspended by Missouri after his arrest for leaving the scene of an accident earlier this week.

20.  Tiger defensive back Robert Steeples is transferring to Memphis.

This morning I was reading a razor-sharp attack on the Big Ten’s undying allegiance to the Rose Bowl by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports.  In it, Wetzel treads awfully close to an argument that’s been used by dozens of Big Ten supporters during the recent push to put the semifinals of a new college football playoff — if we actually get a new college football playoff — on campuses, rather than at bowl sites:

“And what about the chance for the Big Ten to finally stop playing games in SEC/Pac-12 country, maybe see if one of those sunshine programs can handle a few flakes of Midwest snow?”

Ah, yes, the weather.  You know the line as you’ve probably heard it/read it as many times as this writer has: “SEC teams should have to go play in the cold instead of Big Ten teams always having to go play bowls where it’s hot.”

Whether you like the idea of on-campus semifinals or not — and the SEC would have hosted more games than any other conference under such a set-up, by the way — it’s time to drive a stake through the heart of the “it’s the heat” myth.

Currently, the Big Ten plays three bowl games against SEC teams in the state of Florida — the Capital One in Orlando, the Outback in Tampa, and the Gator in Jacksonville.  All are played on New Year’s Day.  According to Weather.com:

* The average high in Orlando on that day is 71 degrees with an average low of 50.

* In Tampa, the average high on New Year’s Day is 70 degrees and the average low is 52.

* In Jacksonville, the average high is 65 degrees with an average low of 41.

I’ll buy that Big Ten schools have farther to travel than their SEC counterparts when it comes to bowling in the Sunshine State.  I’ll freely admit that the crowds on hand for those games are likely to have a pro-SEC slant.  I’ll even admit that seeing SEC teams play in the snow of January would be darn fun.

But the idea that Big Ten teams melt in 50-70 degree temperatures like the Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark?”  Sorry, not buying it.  Even the average afternoon humidity in January in those three cities is in the 53-57% range.

Look, if the bowl games were played in Florida on August 1st instead of on January 1st, those many Big Ten folks who’ve been beating the “we have to play in their heat” drum would get my support.

As it stands, however, not even the Saskatchewan Roughriders should wilt at 71 degrees.

Folks who want to make the case for on-campus semifinals — an idea which appears to be dead anyway — can pick from any other number of good reasons.  They just need to drop the bit about Big Ten teams playing in Deep South heat.  ’Cause in January, there is no Deep South heat.

Unbelievable Update — Those of you who read this site know that we often link you to the work of Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News.  We think he’s sharp as a tack (probably because we agree with most of his work).  Well, as we were putting today’s headlines together just now — 11:30am ET — we found his latest column:  “Big Ten fans: Chill the griping about SEC football weather patterns.”

No wonder we like that guy.

A little less than two week ago, Alabama’s Nick Saban was asked about his schools success recruiting the state of Georgia.  He joked that he still had a lake house in the Peach State (though it’s for sale).

We pointed to two factors that we believe have played a role in Bama inking 20 Georgia natives in the past four classes:

1.  Georgia produces too much talent for UGA and Georgia Tech — until this year the only FBS-level programs in the state — to be able to keep it all at home.

2.  Saban has repeatedly played games in the Georgia Dome, smack in the heart of Atlanta.

In 2008, Bama faced Clemson in the first Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game at the Georgia Dome.  A year later, Virginia Tech served as the Tide’s opener in that same game.

Next year, Alabama will once again face the Hokies in Atlanta.  And yesterday we learned that the Tide’s 2014 opponent in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game is expected to be West Virginia.  Nick Saban told a Bama booster group yesterday that a game against his home state’s top university was on the docket.  The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail reports today that a West Virginia official has confirmed that a UA-WVU game “is in the works.”

For Georgia fans tired of seeing Alabama play a primetime game on the opening weekend of the season in their home state year-in and year-out, get used to it.  Saban’s done it twice before and now two more are officially lined up for future dates.  Expect more of the same moving forward.

Early next month in Destin, Florida, Mike Slive and the presidents of the 14 SEC schools are expected to debate, discuss and ultimately approve of a new scheduling format for football.  To date, coaches and ADs have been firm in their stance that the status quo must not be changed.  Slive and the league’s transition-czar — former Mississippi State AD Larry Templeton — have repeatedly told the press that there’s been no traction toward switching to a nine-game conference slate.

Those who read this site regularly know that we believe that to be a mistake.

A simple businessman looks at his current situation and says, “All’s well, why change?”  A smart businessman looks at his current situation and says, “How is that situation going to change in the future and how must I change to insure future success?”

The SEC’s ADs — driven by the desire for more home games and an easier shot at bowl eligibility thanks to more cupcake opponents — believe that the eight-game schedule that has served the league so well the past 20 years will be just fine and dandy moving forward.

It won’t be.

Yesterday, amid Florida State rumors and realignment talk, ACC commissioner John Swofford made it official that his league would go to a nine-game conference slate when Pittsburgh and Syracuse are allowed to leave the Big East and join the ACC.  That puts the ACC right in line with every other major conference expect one.  Guess which one.

The Big Ten will be sticking with its current eight-game schedule, but a new round-robin agreement with the Pac-12 will guarantee that all Big Ten schools face nine or more BCS-level opponents per season.  In addition to the new yearly Big Ten games, Pac-12 teams will continue to play a nine-game in-league schedule… meaning Pac-12 schools will joust with a minimum of 10 BCS-level foes per year.  The Big 12 — a 10-team league for the time being — intends to maintain its nine-game, “everybody plays everybody,” round-robin conference schedule.

If you’re keeping score at home, that means of the five major conferences, four will require their schools to play a minimum of nine BCS-level foes per year.  Only the Southeastern Conference will stand pat at eight.

But it’s worked so far, right?

Yes, but a smart businessman like the one mentioned above should see that the landscape is rapidly changing.  Other leagues — whether SEC fans, coaches and ADs believe them to be inferior or not — are going to be playing more top-level games.  There’s a new playoff coming and there’s a push to get as many conference champions into that mix as possible (with as few wild card teams as possible).  Strength of schedule will matter as much or more than ever.  And in a sporting nation that’s quickly grown tired/sick/jealous of the SEC, you can bet strength of schedule in the SEC will become a key attack point for rival leagues, many poll voters, and perhaps a few computer programmers, too.

We’ve been writing that that for months now.  Last week, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany became the first person to take a swing at conferences that play fewer big-time opponents:

“The polls don’t always measure strength of schedule.  Some conferences are playing nine games, some are playing eight.  The Pac-12 is playing nine and then go out and play a round-robin game against us, that’s 10 and some of them are going to play Notre Dame — that’s 11 difficult games.  If they’re ranked fifth in the country and they won a conference championship, I think that’s quite an accomplishment.  Some teams don’t even win their own division.  They started off highly in the rankings, lose early, don’t play a championship game and they might end up at four.”

Wonder which league he had in mind.

For the SEC, the clock is ticking.  The league can do as it did in the early ’90s and overrule the fearmongers from within who claimed at the time that an eight-game league schedule and the addition of a first-of-its-kind championship game would end the SEC’s chances of ever winning another national title.  (Note: Alabama won the national crown in Year One of the tougher schedule, championship game era.)  Or the SEC can stand still as the world rushes past.

The SEC has benefited at the polls and in the computer rankings because the perception has been that the league is tougher than every other conference.  (We at MrSEC.com believe that that perception has been a reality because of BCS title game success and the number of pro prospects NFL teams draft from Slive’s league every April.)  But the new perception is about to become that SEC schools actually play weaker schedules.  Like it, don’t like it, that’s what going to be said east, north and west of the SEC region.

Slive and his presidents can force a nine-game league schedule down their ADs and coaches’ throats for the long-term success of the conference in Destin.  We don’t believe they will, but they could.  And they should.

Getting tougher in 1992 made the college football world take note and has served as a launching pad for two decades of unrivaled success.  Now the SEC simply needs to keep up with the other four major conferences, not surpass them, to maintain their strength of schedule “wow” factor with the media.  Th same media who drive the perception of SEC greatness.

Will it keep up with the Joneses?

To quote a line that’s been credited to dozens of past military leaders: “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.”  Roughly translated: Always be audacious.

In this case, simply the avoidance of timidity will do.

Rival leagues and the media will be watching.  And the SEC’s reputation is at stake.