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The SEC is distributing $309.6 million between the 14 schools in the league, which equates to $20.7 million per school. This does not include revenue from the SEC Network.
What's crazy? Just five years ago, the conference distribution was $165.9 million. It's nearly doubled in five years. These television contracts are largely the reason why. They've completely changed how college football works.
We'll hear a lot about this through the summer. This is what they're calling the effort of the Big 5 Conferences to create rules specific to their own conferences instead of having the same rules and regulations as conferences with far smaller resources.
Mike Slive discussed the possibility of creating a Division IV within the NCAA if it doesn't pass, but much prefers to stay Division I because it would be much simpler. This will be discussed heavily this summer, and we'll probably hear much more about it at SEC Media Days in mid July because the next vote for Autonomy happens in August.
The SEC is doing away with its Jeremiah Masoli Rule (goodbye, Houston Nutt legacy!) to give grad students an opportunity to transfer even if they only have one year of eligibility remaining.
It will have a twist, however. The student in question must have a successful academic track record in order to be granted the waiver. Additionally, the student will be evaluated during the athletic season at the new school, and if the student is not performing appropriately academically, the school will be banned from using the transfer waiver rule for three years.
This is mostly for Mississippi State, but it does apply to everyone. No more fines for the Bulldogs for clinging their cowbells and no more buzzkills complaining about them.
The SEC is allowing schools to play music or pipe in noise whenever they want until the center goes over the ball and until the play is whistled dead. But between those plays, go nuts.
The SEC will experiment with 30-second shot clocks during basketball exhibition games this fall. It will be interesting to see how that might benefit a team that plays really really fast...
Georgia Writer Skeptical Of Playing In Little Rock
I'm including this because I think it's funny.
Seth Emerson seems a little apprehensive that a game in Little Rock will be any good (not that a loud swath of Razorback fans would argue with him).
Here he says Bielema "did his best to sell it" in describing the atmosphere even though that's basically a standard Bielema quote when discussing Little Rock games. He also wrote that Bielema "claimed to be impressed" with the crowd of 45,000 who attended the Mississippi State game last year. The word "claimed" implies he didn't really buy what Bielema was selling.
I just thought it was funny.
