m_Ag
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I'm hoping for an SEC-Pac 12 bowl: perhaps the 2nd highest ranking SEC team remaining after the 6 'playoff bowls'' vs. the highest remaining Pac 12 team. The Alamo Bowl would be a nice place to hold it.
It would be nice to have just one Pac-12 game to balance what will certainly be many Big Ten/Big 12/ACC match-ups.
The ACC said they would remain at 8 games a season after Notre Dame agreed to schedule 5 schools a year. The schools that play Notre Dame in any given year will have 9 games scheduled by the conference anyway.
Actually, Kingsbury has publicly stated he'd like to play A&M after Manziel leaves.
As to A&M playing Tech...in most sports Tech isn't all that good, and A&M can find better opponents in Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, or even Waco. Those cities are all closer for travel purposes & home to more A&M fans than distant Lubbock. I wouldn't be opposed to playing Tech in most sports, but I'd want something a little better than a straight home/home deal...maybe 3 games in College State for 2 games in Lubbock.
With 2 more home games this year, season tickets are actually cheaper on a per game basis.
I don't think Arkansas took too many recruits from Texas A&M in the past...A&M's success will hurt Texas and Oklahoma more than Arkansas.A&M in the SEC is getting the conference more coverage from the media in the state, which should help Arkansas. They should be trying to displace Oklahoma as the biggest out-of-state destination for athletes in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Greater TV revenue from scheduling better will offset any lost revenue from a home game lost every other year.
I'd be OK with 9 conference games, but I would rather see our league stick with 8 conference games but our TV negotiations require:
1) no FCS schools be scheduled
2) every school schedule 2 'AQ' teams per year (so they get 1 TV home game each year), with at least one not being from the Big East
Any school that didn't meet these requirements would forfeit some of their TV revenue back to the networks.
This would require most current schools to drop their worst annual 'buy' game and replace that with an interesting match-up. Georgia has a series in the future scheduled with Clemson to go with their Georgia Tech series. Florida could play Miami in a addition to FSU or it could schedule someone from out of state. MSU could schedule a Washington State or Minnesota in addition to a Memphis (a soon-to-be Big East team), so they can't argue their schedule would be impossibly hard.
Replacing the 14 games that have little TV value with 7 games with high TV value would be good for the SEC's TV package. And if we really are the best conference we'll win most of those games and continue to stay well positioned in the new playoff/bowl system.
If this isn't meant to hurt the ACC, then I'm guessing the SEC and Big Ten will both be calling the ACC to setup a permanent bowl matching up the ACC champion against the #2 team from their conference, probably in Florida. Several months ago when talking about bowl structures, I told someone the SEC's dream would probably be to have the Big 12 champ tied to the Sugar Bowl and the ACC champ in the Orange Bowl, with the SEC champ going to the higher ranked opponent and SEC #2 going to the other. This wouldn't quite be that, but it would be nice.
I don't see the point in having the 1 'rotating' home and away school. You'll play that school an extra 1 time every 9 years! Might as well just have 5 permanent opponents.
My preference- give every team 3 'primary rivals' and 4 'secondary rivals'. In a given year play all 3 primary rivals home and home and 2 of the 4 secondary rivals home and home. The remaining schools (including the 2 other secondary rivals) would be played once. In 2 years you'd play your primary rivals 4 times, your secondary rivals 3 times, and everyone else twice.
This lets schools keep a number of regional rivals; kind of like giving each school their own 'division' in the conference.
The whole basis of the lawsuit that Baylor was threatening the SEC with when A&M was moving was the claim that the SEC approached A&M and enticed them to break the media contract. The SEC's defense (and A&M's claim) was that it was A&M that approached the SEC and started the conversation. If Baylor had any case at all, the ACC schools now have a much stronger case. This whole process is widely entertaining, as Big 12 supporters bash A&M for leaving and tell FSU they should follow A&M's example, sometimes in the same post!
Thanks for giving us our buttons!
If he wants to be exact, the 'official' Aggie Maroon is precisely specified on http://brandguide.tamu.edu/print/aggieMaroon.html as Hex: 500000, RGB: 80,0,0.
Of course, you're absolutely correct it will come out differently depending on the computer system used.
Referring to them as TU was not originally an insult. You can read early stories about the football team from the Austin press, and "Texas University" was used interchangeably with "University of Texas". I also believe "TU" was used nationally as the abreviation to prevent confusion with the older Tennessee, (like Missouri used "MU" to prevent confusion with Michigan).
At some point the Longhorns decided that, Tennessee be damned, they wanted to be referred to as UT, and that it was an 'insult' to refer to them as TU. This is all rather silly. Somehow schools like Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma don't think it's an insult to referr to them by an abreviation that distinguishes them from older schools.
Now, Aggies write "tu" in lowercase as a small insult to Longhorn fans, but calling them "TU" isn't really an insult. Longhorn fans are just being petty when they get annoyed by that.
The move to the SEC has actually delayed any action on the stadium a year or two. A&M has been overhauling all of its sports facilities over the last decade or so (just did the baseball park), and the football stadium is one of the last to be done. From what I understand, the magnitude of bringing everything up to modern codes, along with adding luxury boxes, revamping concessions, bathrooms, and everything else, means that building a new stadium might be cheaper than the overhaul that is necessary. Even without changing the number of seats, this would still be a major project. While the move to the SEC will increase demand for tickets, more seating would probably have been necessary anyway. A&M has had a down decade, but with a strong season 2 years ago and competitive (if frustrating) season this past year, the school has had much more demand for tickets than it has supply. At the 2010 game against Nebraska, they added all sorts of temporary seating and somehow squeezed over 90,000 people in the stadium, before deciding that was a bad idea and limiting seating to around 87,000 last year. I think they should probably go to around 93,000, but build in a way they can easily add 3,000-7,000 more seats later if demand continues to increase.
"As for Dallas, see: Kansas City. Houston? Well, we’d be okay with the league tossing the Aggies a bone and allowing a single tourney to be played there, but no more."
Houston is definitely easier for fans in Southern Lousiana, but for most of the SEC, it is at least as difficult to reach as Dallas. According to google maps, birmingham is 10h 46 minutes from Houston and 10h39 minutes from Dallas. Memphis is 2 and 1/2 hours closer to Dallas than Houston.
I think the tournament should probably be in those central locations 4 years out of 5, spending every 5th year in a place like Houston, Dallas, Orlando, or KC.
The conference is overflowing with spite and immaturity. Kansas is refusing to play Missouri in any sport, while Texas is doing the same for A&M.
Even if you accept their arguments that it is financially bad for them to play in football and men's basketball, they're hurting their other programs by not playing in other sports. Their traditional rivals would sell more tickets and get more media attention than any other non-conference teams they could schedule, all the while keeping travel easy on their student athletes and cheap for their budgets. It would be good for them competition-wise as well. Missouri is better than Kansas in just about everything that isn't basketball; A&M is competitive with Texas in all sports and better than them in many.
If the LHN ever gets on basic cable in Texas they'll want ratings; having tennis matches or softball games versus A&M will get better ratings and more interest across the state than tennis matches or softball games against even the #1 team in those sports.
They're happy to hurt their own schools if they think it will also hurt A&M or Missouri.
A quick example of what a schedule with the SEC playing every ACC and Big 12 team might look like:
Florida: FSU, (national);
Georgia: GT, WVU;
SC: Clemson, NC State;
Tennessee: UNC, (national);
Vanderbilt: Wake Forest, Syracuse;
Kentucky: Virginia, (Louisville);
Missouri:Kansas, Oklahoma State
Auburn: VT, Pitt;
Alabama: Miami, (national);
MSU: KSU, Duke;
Ole Miss: Baylor, Boston College;
Arkansas: TCU, ISU;
LSU: Oklahoma, Maryland;
A&M: Texas, TT
Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama would be required to schedule a quality team from Notre Dame, BYU, or the Big Ten and Pac 12 conferences. Kentucky would continue to schedule Louisville (who might join the Big 12 anyway).
Some of these matchups could certainly rotate after awhile, but I think this is a pretty solid menu for the SEC's TV contract (the SEC would get TV rights to whichever team was home, while the other conference would get the rights to the school that is away).
Missouri gets 2 Big 8 rivals; Arkie gets an old SWC rival; USC gets 2 old ACC rivals; A&M gets 2 in-state rivals.
*If they're staying at 8 games for the long term, then each team will play 3 home, 3 away in their division, and 1 home, 1 away against the other division. All the West teams will have to host their permanent rivals and travel to their rotating rivals 1 year, then flip with the East the next. Otherwise they won't be able to have a true rotation.
So in 2013, expect some permanent rivalries to be played on the same campus for a 2nd consecutive year in order to align everyone to the same home/away basis.
*As I said last week, I would still prefer the SEC mandate 2 quality non-conference games instead of adding a 9th SEC game, working with CBS/ESPN and penalizing a school with a cut in TV money if they fail to comply. This adds 1 quality non-conference game to most schools' schedules, getting the TV benefits of a 9th conference game while allowing us to beat other conferences instead of each other.
We could try and get both the ACC and Big 12 to have each of their schools play an SEC school annually (with some East schools doubling up on ACC schools, and some West schools double up on Big 12 schools). It would benefit the TV packages of all 3 conferences (4 SEC schools would still need to add a quality non-conference game to get to 2).
Congratulations to Missouri on finding a much better opponent than my school did on that date.
The Syracuse at Missouri game is in the running for the best SEC game that week:
Arkie-MSU
LSU-Ole Miss
TN-Vandy
Missouri-Syracuse
The other 7 schools play FCS squads.
Not hard to see why the networks want a better schedule that week!
They would have the most balanced conference schedule in the league: 4 conference home games, 4 conference away games, 1 neutral conference game.
Of course, they could only have 6 total home games in the years they play FSU or Georgia Tech away.
The Big Ten will have 8 conference games + the Pac 12 game+generally at least one other good game (3 schools play Notre Dame, Iowa plays Iowa State, PSU plays an Eastern team). I'd prefer the SEC stay at 8 conference games but require schools to schedule at least 2 'good' non-conference games. 1 of those might be Big East level, but we should be required to play other decent schools. I'd like our ADs and TV executives to have meetings and reduce TV payments to schools that don't meet this minimum requirement. The Mississippi schools could get away with scheduling a Memphis (which will be a Big East school) but would need at least 1better series. They should be able to get a school like Indiana, NC State, or BYU to schedule them home and away. This requirement would add value to our TV packages, and would give the conference a chance to beat up on other conference schools instead of each other. Sure, we won't win every game, but if we're the best we'll win a solid majority and come out looking better for it.
I was fooling around with this idea a few months back while half watching a football game. It is complicated to set up because every pair of secondary rival has to fit in a complimentary 'slot' on each others schedule.
However, I did come up with an alignment that works. It's based on geography, as I didn't have a list of most played rivalries in the SEC. I won't argue it's perfect, but it shows that it is possible. I'd like the SEC honchos who get paid to make schedules to design their own version.
Anyway, here's the setup I constructed:
Example with explanation:
FL-UG,AU,SC (LSU,A&M,UK,Bama)
H=OM,UT,MU
A=MSU,VU,Arkie
for Florida, Georgia, Auburn, and SC are permanent rivals, the 4 schools in parentheses are secondary rivals. OM, UT, MU are teams you play at home in years 1 & 3 (away in 2 & 4). MSU,VU, Arkie are teams you play away in years 1 & 3 (home in 2 & 4).
The order the secondary rivals are listed indicates where you play them over 4 years (that's the complicated part in setting this up), but that's only important if you want to make your own version.
The rest of this example:
UG-SC,FL,AU (UT,MSU,VU,UK)
H=A&M,Arkie,Bama
A=LSU,MU,OM
AU-FL,UG,Bama (UK,SC,LSU,MSU)
H=A&M,OM,VU
A=Arkie,UT,MU
SC-UG,UF,UT (VU,UK,MU,AU)
H=LSU,Arkie,MSU
A=A&M,Bama,OM
UT-VU,UK,SC (Bama,Arkie,UG,MU)
H=A&M,OM,AU
A=FL,MSU,LSU
BAMA-AU,OM,MSU (A&M,FL,UT,LSU)
H=SC,Arkie,VU
A=UG,UK,MU
UK-UT,MU,VU (FL,UG,AU,SC)
H=Bama,MSU,LSU
A=A&M,OM,Arkie
VU-UT,UK,OM (UG,MU,SC,Arkie)
H=FL,LSU,MSU
A=A&M,Bama,AU
OM-Bama,MSU,VU (MU,LSU,Arkie,A&M)
H=UG,SC,UK
A=FL,UT,AU
MSU-Bama,OM,LSU (Arkie,AU,A&M,UG)
H=FL,UT,MU
A=SC,UK,VU
LSU-A&M,Arkie,MSU (AU,Bama,FL,OM)
H=UG,UT,MU
A=SC,UK,VU
Arkie-A&M,MU,LSU (OM,VU,MSU,UT)
H=FL,UK,AU
A=UG,SC,Bama
A&M-LSU,Arkie,MU (MSU,OM,Bama,FL)
H=SC,UK,VU
A=UG,UT,AU
MU-UK,A&M,Arkie (SC,UT,OM,VU)
H=UG,Bama,AU
A=FL,LSU,MSU
I like this idea as it gives everyone a mostly sensible set of rivals. I think it's nice for variety that Arkansas plays Georgia every year. But I don't see any reason for them ever to play twice in the regular season when they could be each be playing border states with regularity.