$EC Meeting Notes

Today the SEC announced that they will be dividing up $241.5 million dollars between the 12 member schools. (Texas A&M and Missouri don't officially join the SEC until July 1st.) That's $20 million per school. Is there any doubt as to why the SEC is leading the nation in revenue?

Last year the SEC made a paltry $219.9 million. The revenues for the SEC went up 9% this year. The breakdown of the money looks like this:

• $116.6 million from their football television deal. 
• $34.2 million from the bowls
• $15.3 million from the SEC Football Championship
• $31.2 million from their basketball television deal
• $4.9 million from the SEC Men's Basketball Tournament
• $24.9 million from the NCAA Championships
• $14.4 million from supplemental distribution

Notice where most of the money comes from in this deal. Football. Is there any question as to why their is such a big scramble for conference realignment? The money is in football right now. A product that only puts out 12 guaranteed games a year per school. Also notice that the SEC pulled in $34.2 million dollars from bowl games. This amount of money is the reason why so many schools want to keep the bowls in place and not go to a full fledged playoff system. If there is only a playoff system in place, that leaves hundreds of millions of dollars out of the pockets of various conferences. The bowl system is going to stay in place because of how much money it brings in.

The 6-1-1 format schedule will be in place for a while when it comes to football. That means 6 divisional games, 1 rotating opponent, and 1 permanent cross division opponent. It's going to keep the Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia rivalries in place for a couple of more years. The other permanent cross divisional rivalries are LSU-Florida, Arkansas-Missouri, Kentucky-Mississippi State, Ole Miss-Vanderbilt and South Carolina-Texas A&M.

Ole Miss Chancellor Dr. Dan Jones will be leading a group to help study the effects of sports related concussions in the SEC member schools. Florida President Dr. Bernie Machen announced that this group will be consisting of Dr. Jones, a physician, two specialists who are experts in head trauma from SEC medical schools, two team doctors from SEC schools, and two athletic trainers from SEC schools. Now other sports do have athletes that get concussions but a majority of the concussions in the SEC come from football. As we see from above, football is the cash cow of the conference and nobody wants to see the cash cow get slaughtered. The SEC is going to do their best to put forth a CYA policy that will prevent them from civil action down the road.

Outside of the concussion survey, the other big announcement was a unanimous decision was reached in support of a four team playoff that consisted of the top four teams in the nation and not conference champions. The SEC and Big XII agree on this issue and the Big Ten, Pac 12, and ACC all say that they want only conference champions. This is going to lead to a very interesting showdown at the BCS meetings in the upcoming few weeks. Look for the SEC and Big XII to try and get the smaller conferences who are a part of the BCS to form a cohesive bloc of voting.

SEC Men's Basketball Scheduling will involve 18 conference games with one permanent opponent and 12 rotating opponents. The permanent rivalries are Alabama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Mississippi State, Arkansas-Missouri, Georgia-South Carolina, Kentucky-Florida, Tennessee-Vanderbilt, and LSU-Texas A&M.The SEC Basketball Tournament will be adding an extra day of hoops.

• Day 1: 11 vs. 14 and 12 vs. 13
• Day 2: 8 vs. 9, 12/13 winner vs. 5, 7 vs. 10, 11/14 winner vs. 6
• Day 3: 1 vs. 8/9 winner, 4 vs. 5/12/13 winner, 2 vs. 7/10 winner, 3 vs 6/11/14 winner
• Day 4: Semifinals
• Day 5: Championship