Derek Dooley isn't happy about the SEC's new rules that attempt to restrict oversigning. He feels that the practice of oversigning has a bad rap and needs to be defended by coaches who want to do it. He attempted to do just that in the AJC yesterday, but he came off sounding entirely self-serving. Let's go through it, shall we?

"...[the new rule] really puts stress on you [as a coach] on what to do because the odds are, in my experiences, you’re going to get one out of four down the stretch. If you’re recruiting 8 guys, generally you’re going to get two of them. Here’s the problem. If I have 21 commitments at this point and I only sign 25, that’s four spots. What do I do with those 8 that I’m still recruiting? That’s the challenge."

Dooley doesn't like the rule because it forces him to make tough decisions about who and how to recruit down the stretch towards National Signing Day. Guess what? You're making around $2 million per year. I don't feel sorry for you if a new rule that helps protect players makes your job harder. That's why they pay you the big bucks. If you end up one or two players short of your goal, well, you're paid about $2 million per year to make that not matter.

Tennessee has been down on numbers as of late, and I'm sure that has worn on Dooley. However, it's been due to attrition from a rapid series of coaching changes. It has nothing to do with him not oversigning. Continuing...

"I think over-signing is good for the student-athlete. Let me give you some hypotheticals: Let’s say a a guy gets hurt his senior year, and there’s a good chance he won’t play his freshman year of college. He has got to do surgery and rehab. What could we do in the past? In the past, we could sign him, grayshirt him and put him in next year’s class."

When asked by interviewer Michael Carvell in a good followup question why he shouldn't just sign such a player and have him get healthy under the watch of team doctors, Dooley responded:

"Well, he can get the same medical care and rehab at home. What you’re going to get into by putting him in next year’s class is that it doesn’t shortchange you for this year’s class just to rehab a guy. You can get the same medical care anywhere you go, as long as you go to the right doctors."

Are you kidding me? Dooley sounds like he's more concerned with his roster numbers than doing right by the injured player. Sure, just let the kid and his family pay for the doctor visits and rehab for a few extra months instead of letting him get it free of charge through the school as a scholarship athlete. That totally sounds like you're doing what's in the kid's best interest. And for what? To possibly sign one extra player who, as a true freshman, has a pretty decent chance of redshirting anyway.

Here's an even stranger example where he stops making sense. Dooley brings up sign-and-place as a positive for players who can't make it academically directly out of high school:

"You look at their mid-year grades and you see that they’re going to be an academic risk, or there’s a good chance that they won’t qualify. Well, then you have to make a decision. Because in the past, you could sign them and if he didn’t qualify, place him in a junior college, help him get into a junior college and give him the motivation to come back to your school one day. Now you can’t sign him, or you’re not willing to take that risk because you can’t be short on your roster."

That's a fair point taken in isolation from the rest of his comments, though he still sounds more concerned about his roster numbers than anything. There's a pro league he might want to look at coaching in if meeting a roster number is his primary consideration.

But anyway, why can't he just promise to sign the kid out of the JUCO the next year? That's not too far off from how grayshirts work, and he sees no chance whatsoever of that particular concept being exploited by coaches:

"...I don’t know of any coach that didn’t promise a guy a gray-shirt and didn’t follow through with it. Because what’s going to happen, and that’s what I always say, let the market take care of the coaches who are abusing it. If a coach lies to a player, who is going to want to play for that coach?"

Why are promises good enough with grayshirts but not with kids who have to spend a year at a junior college? This just doesn't make sense.

There is one point on which I am 100% in agreement with Dooley on though, and it's this particular snippet:

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Florida, playing without the injured Will Yeguete and Mike Rosario, took down Alabama, playing without the suspended JaMychal Green and Tony Mitchell, by a score of 61-52 last night in Tuscaloosa. It was only UF's third road win of the season in eight true road games, and the first over a team in real March Madness contention.

The Gators' Patric Young had a monster game thanks in large part to Green and Mitchell being out. He had 19 points on 9-12 shooting with a number of easy dunks inside. It made up for a poor shooting night by the rest of the team, which went 12-40 from the field combined. Erik Murphy tied with Bradley Beal for the next highest scoring total with 14, largely thanks to going 4-8 from downtown. It wasn't a great effort by the Gators, with a 19-0 run spanning both halves essentially being the difference in the game.

While Florida was missing two solid rotation guys, Bama was down its two leading scorers and rebounders in Green and Mitchell. Andrew Steele and Trevor Releford came back from suspensions of their own, and Steele was the only member of the Crimson Tide to make it to double digits with 11 points.

Alabama is 0-2 since Anthony Grant handed down the bulk of his suspensions, with this loss following one to LSU. The Tide did beat Auburn with only Mitchell suspended prior to that. You can practically watch their NCAA tournament hopes evaporate before your eyes right now, but Grant is taking a stand against "conduct detrimental to the team" in Mitchell's case and violations of team rules in the others'. It's rare to see a coach sacrifice short term gain for the sake of discipline, so my hat's off to Grant for doing it.

If the players can learn their lessons and live up to Grant's standards, they will still have an outside chance at making the tournament with a strong finish to the year. The toughest team left on the schedule is Mississippi State, though the returns of beating that team diminished with them losing back-to-back games to Georgia and LSU. The Tide will probably have to win out and pick up a victory or two in the SEC tournament to have a real shot at an at large bid.

Florida stopped its mini-skid with the win, but it faces another road test this Saturday with a game at Arkansas.

Spencer Hall posted a beautifully written piece on what might bring the end to the current Alabama dynasty, comparing it to Nebraska in the '90s and looking at where the threats to it lie now. I disagree some with the approach and with the conclusions.

Figuring out why Nebraska fell off is a fairly easy thing to: Tom Osborne retired. Frank Solich kept it going at a reduced level for a while, reaching another brief peak with Eric Crouch, but Solich was no Osborne. Steve Pedersen fired Solich and hired Bill Callahan, and the rest is history. If Bama falls off when Saban retires, the decline won't be shrouded in mystery.

To see how dynasties can fall off without the head coach leaving, I'd have looked more towards USC under Pete Carroll. It was a monster of a program, winning all or a share of two national titles and requiring a heroic effort from Vince Young to deny it of a third. And then all of a sudden, it just wasn't the best anymore. The decline did begin somewhere around when OC Norm Chow left, but given what he's done after leaving USC, I'm less inclined than I used to be to point to that and call it a day.

After all, the teams were still quite good. The 2008 defense in particular was one of the absolute best of the decade. Carroll just lost the ability to win on the road with the same consistency as at home. Of USC's five losses across 2006-08, four came away from the Coliseum. The one home loss was the famous upset by a really bad Stanford team in '07, which came a year after USC's epic last-weekend flop against eventual 7-6 UCLA. I'll let you decide whether losing to nine-win Oregon State teams in both 2006 and 2008 also counts as "losing to a team you have no business losing to", but those indiscretions indicate the program that lacked focus at bad times. Eventually, it seems that expecting to win solely because you showed up happens to every great regime. I think that could have hurt Alabama some in 2010, to bring it back to Saban briefly.

The line between undefeated and one or two losses can be razor thin, and that was the case for those Trojans. Guys just didn't quite pan out like they used to. Joe McKnight was supposed to be the next Reggie Bush, but he wasn't. John David Booty and Mark Sanchez were not Matt Leinart and Carson Palmer. Taylor Mays was a fearsome hitter from the safety spot, but his coverage was lacking compared to his predecessors. A few of these things happening at once can be overcome, but if they all happen at the same time, a program can't help but fall off from being elite every year.

In 2009, when Carroll went with freshman Matt Barkley because he didn't have a single other reliable quarterback, the decline really set in. Carroll then skipped town right as the NCAA sanctions were about to hit. Lane Kiffin has done a better job than I thought he would getting things back up, but as much as anything, it's because guys like Barkley, Robert Woods, and Marquise Lee are panning out (or being well developed by the coaches) again.

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Reports began circulating yesterday that Auburn was interested in hiring former Georgia defensive coordinator Willie Martinez as its new defensive backs coach. The former one there, Phillip Lolley, has been kicked upstairs into an administrative role. Tom Dienhart is now reporting that, according to a former Auburn staffer, bringing in Martinez is a done deal.

Martinez is joining a defensive staff headed up by new defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder, who was the DC over Martinez for four years at UGA from 2001-04. Martinez then succeeded him at DC when VanGorder left to be the DC for the Atlanta Falcons, but a a fairly steady decline culminating in over 30 points allowed in 2009 led to his dismissal. He spent the last two seasons at Oklahoma as DBs coach, but he found himself out of a job after Bob Stoops was able to bring his brother Mike back to the staff.

Auburn will be the fourth place that VanGorder and Martinez have coached together, and their collaboration certainly worked out well for those four years in Athens. VanGorder's Bulldog defenses allowed at least 4.83 points per game below the conference average in league play every year, going all the way up to over 9 points below the average in 2003. By comparison, Todd Grantham's defenses so far have allowed 1.65 and 1.69 points per game below average in his two years, respectively.

Getting that particular band back together should work out well for Auburn, which has had a rough go of it on defense in two of Gene Chizik's three years. Both VanGorder and Martinez have SEC coaching and recruiting experience, and they're comfortable working together. They'll need to perform well as the other side of the ball makes what will probably be a significant transition from Gus Malzahn's uptempo spread option to a more pro-style attack with Scot Loeffler.

The preseason SEC coaches' baseball standings dropped today, and they've predicted Florida and Arkansas to take the two divisions. Last year Florida tied for the East crown in a three-way tie with South Carolina and Vanderbilt, while Arkansas took the West with a one-game lead over a three-team logjam in second. Florida was picked to repeat as conference champs in a separate vote from the divisional standings, a sentiment that matches the national sentiment that has the Gators No. 1 in the Coaches' Poll.

Here are the standings with the point totals for each team. Teams got six points for first place votes, five for second place votes, and so on.

EAST

1. Florida (66 points)

2. South Carolina (56)

3. Georgia (42)

4. Vanderbilt (40)

5. Kentucky (25)

6. Tennessee (18)

WEST

1. Arkansas (64)

2. LSU (58)

3. Alabama (38)

4. Ole Miss (34)

5. Mississippi State (33)

6. Auburn (20)

Florida's 66 points make it the unanimous pick in the East division, as coaches couldn't vote for their own teams. Arkansas came two points short of being the unanimous West pick, and based on how the rest of the voting went, it's probably safe to assume that LSU got the two first place votes the Hogs didn't get.

More rule talk. Because everyone loves discussing NCAA rules.

Last week brought news of the NCAA proposing new rules about player safety. This week brings news of it looking to slim down its gargantuan rule book.

Rules that potentially could be changing soon include allowing players in good academic standing to play right away after transferring, deregulating athlete housing (which could bring back athletic dorms), allowing coaches to publicly discuss recruits prior to them signing an NLI, letting schools have more leeway in providing financial help to players' family members who are sick or injured, and various other changes that relax a lot of the rules surrounding recruiting.

These proposals all generally look good to me, though I'm not thrilled with the idea of coaches discussing recruits before they sign. The NCAA has trended towards trying to exert more control and influence over athletes' lives in the past, so it's good to see it scaling back. I think these kinds of measures will ultimately help the NCAA's mission, as the fewer rules there are, the easier it is to focus on the ones that really are important.

Slip slidin' away.

The latest SBN Bracketology is out, and it's not a good one for the SEC. Kentucky is still a No. 1 seed, however every other team from the league has fallen from last time. The next-best seeded team from the conference is 7-seed Florida, who plummets after being upended by Tennessee over the weekend. Vanderbilt and Mississippi State clock in as 8-seeds, while Alabama squeaks in as a 12-seed.

Check out the new S-curve, if you're into that kind of thing.

Ranking the boys of summer.

Our friends at Garnet and Black Attack have ranked the SEC's baseball teams for this season. Florida is on top, followed by South Carolina, Vanderbilt, and Arkansas. The last SEC baseball season with 12 teams begins on Friday.

No changes to the SEC recruiting rankings.

The last big-name football recruit to declare his intentions was Maryland WR Stefon Diggs. He chose to stay at home at play for the Terps after having considered Florida, Auburn, and Ohio State. We'll keep you updates if and when he becomes the latest local kid to transfer away from Randy Edsall.

Yes, you can complain about the cold.

When the only Canadian-born current SEC football player that I know of is comparing the weather to that of his homeland, then yes, you can feel free to grouse about this cold snap all you want.

The NCAA has announced new rule proposals to make the game safer for players, and unlike the $2000 stipend, I can't imagine these rules being overruled by the membership. The five proposals are largely concerning special teams, and they are as follows:

• Kickoffs and touchbacks: Kickoffs go from the 35-yard line instead of the 30, mimicking the rule change the NFL has made. Touchbacks would come out to the 25-yard line instead of the 20 to encourage receiving teams to take more touchbacks. Players on the kicking team must be within five yards of the 35-yard line when kicked to reduce the running start they get. The NCAA's data shows that injuries are more common on kickoffs than any other aspect of the game, so these rules are intended to cut back on those injuries.
• Helmets coming off: If a player's helmet comes off and it's not because of an opponent ripping it off, it works like an injury. The player must not participate in the rest of the play and has to come off the field for at least one play. The proposal doesn't say so, but I'll bet this is as much about getting players to wear their helmets properly as it is trying to keep them from coming off during a play.
• Blocking below the waist: Blocking below the waist would be, with few exceptions, impermissible for anyone but stationary offensive players who are in the tackle box when the ball is snapped. Under the current rules, it is possible to block below the waist anytime "the opposing player is likely to be prepared for this contact". That broad language includes on special teams.
• Shield blocking on punts: The NCAA is concerned about players who attempt to jump over the back defenders in the shield punt formation. Therefore, rules about jumping them become identical to those about jumping during place kicks: you can jump straight up in front of but not over top of the blockers.
• Kick returner safety: This proposal is vaguely worded, but it sounds like a return of the old halo rule.

Football player safety has never been more in the spotlight, especially with hundreds of former players suing the NFL over head trauma. As a matter of fact, player safety should be a central concern. Rules should adapt and change as we come to know more about the wear and tear that the game puts on players' bodies.

In college football, it's especially appropriate to try to reduce head trauma. These players are enrolled at institutions of higher learning with many on scholarship to be there. They are called student-athletes. Protecting players' brains seems like it should fit right in with the core missions of the universities themselves, no?

Weeks after former LSU TE DeAngelo Peterson panned the team's offensive game plan in the BCS title game, the game's certified goat is grousing about it too. Jordan Jefferson has come out against what his coaches cooked up and called in the rematch with Alabama:

"I definitely didn't expect for [the title game] to play like that. Alabama was a little bit more prepared than us. There was a lot of things that we should've did different to catch a rhythm on offense"...

Jefferson wanted to "put the ball in different passing areas, use our talent on the receiving side."

"... We have great guys in those areas and sometimes we just wonder why we don't use those guys," he continued on WCNN. "But we're not the one calling the plays. We still have to go out and execute what the coaches and coordinators are calling. We can't complain as players, but sometimes we do question that."

Jefferson was definitely right about a few things. He mentioned that the team faced too many second- and third-and-long situations, which is almost certain death against a defense as good as Alabama's. It also is the team's job to execute, and Jefferson certainly didn't do that much well. He made some puzzling reads on option plays and unloaded an unforgettably bad interception on a shovel pass.

Maybe I just didn't pay as much attention then, but I don't remember many players distancing themselves from the game plan after the last BCS championship game offensive horror show when Ohio State flopped against Florida. When two senior leaders come out and publicly call out the offensive staff like this with Peterson and now Jefferson, it really makes you wonder about these players and the program. Toss in a high profile recruit flipping from LSU to Texas on signing day due to perceived low team morale, and I don't know what to think anymore.

It's clear that even though the Tigers went 13-0 en route to their SEC championship, the BCS National Championship Game loss to Bama devastated the team. Whether it will end up having devastated the program is something we won't find out until next fall.

One of the immediate lessons coming out of the 2011 college football season is that a playoff is coming to the Football Bowl Subdivision. Even the traditionally anti-playoff Big Ten has leaked a plus one plan, though it's more to make the conference look like its not standing in the way of progress than anything. The wheels are turning and momentum is gaining.

It's kind of odd then to see Mike Slive of all people, who proposed a plus one back in 2008, trying to pump the brakes on the playoff speculation:

"Really a lot of this discussion is premature, and I want to respect the process that we're in," Slive told members of the Nashville Sports Council during a question-and-answer session. "We've had four-year formats since we started. We've done it on the basis of four years, so each four-year period you have to sit down and decide what format is going to be going forward. So we have decided to sit down and talk about this from every different side"...

"What would [a possible playoff format] look like and whether it's actually going to happen, all of that is premature," Slive said. "I think we need the time to sit down and analyze it. We need time to take ideas back to our respective conferences and ... a decision to be made sometime later this year as we begin to talk about the ... next format."

Given that Slive is nothing if not a lawyer, it's actually not so strange at all when you think about it. There is a negotiating process, and by God, they're going to do some negotiating. Calm down people, nothing to see here just yet.

Slive has also been an under-promise/over-deliver kind of commissioner, preferring to handle things in the background before making any public statements. Think about how conference expansion went. Every statement from the SEC attempted to pour cold water on the fires of speculation right up until the announcements and helmet-trading ceremonies were made. Plus, his policies for the league about coaches and schools handling their grievances in private first rather than in public (shout out, Lane Kiffin!) also reflect that instinct of his.

Slive and the SEC are certainly not going to be standing in the way of a college football playoff. I think the commissioner just doesn't want to get people's hopes up that a format will be announced later this spring. The current BCS contract runs for another two seasons, and it may take most of that time to hammer out details among the various conferences and their disparate desires.

It's been an up-and-down year as Mike Anderson has begun his tenure at Arkansas. The Hogs took on an understandable (UConn), a not so great (Oklahoma), and a bad loss (Houston) in the non-conference, but they started the conference season in style by taking down Mississippi State. A tough loss to Ole Miss followed, but the Razorbacks built some positive momentum to get back in the bubble discussion with wins against Michigan and Vandy.

After last night, it's fair to say that the Hogs' bubble has burst.

Arkansas fell to LSU last Saturday and just had their doors blown off 81-59 by a rebuilding Georgia team that's barely outside the conference basement. It was the first time the Bulldogs even made it to 70 points in nine games of conference play, and they had been held below 60 points five times by SEC teams. Mardracus Wade was the only Razorback starter to make it into double digit points with 15.

Arkansas has been very good at home; even its only home loss came in its one game in Little Rock rather than in Fayetteville. However, the Hogs have yet to win a game outside Bud Walton Arena. They have three more chances to finally get a road win, and two of them (at Tennessee and at Auburn) are certainly winnable for this team. Given the results last night though, I wouldn't pencil in any W's just yet.

The Razorbacks should be safely in the NIT barring any kind of collapse, which is certainly a step forwards in Anderson's first year. That they were even in the bubble discussion for a while after missing the postseason entirely last season is definitely a positive development. However, the past two games sent a clear message to the selection committee: don't worry about us anymore.

If there was any lingering doubt out there as to who the best team in the SEC is, Kentucky put it to bed with its emphatic 78-58 win over Florida last night in Rupp Arena.

The Wildcats' offense was stellar, shooting 52.7% from the field and 60% from three. Their defense was just as good on the other end, stifling the Gators' offense to the tune of 34.9% shooting from the field and 22.2% from downtown. Kentucky's play was crisp and made everything easy for itself and difficult for the visitors.

Florida, meanwhile, displayed many of the worst bad habits from any given Billy Donovan team. Guards were out of control, shooters jacked up bad threes, and the defense lost assignments at the worst possible times. It was a particularly bad night for senior Erving Walker. He shot 0-7 on the night, failed to make it to the free throw line, and had two turnovers versus just one assist.

Kentucky's Anthony Davis, meanwhile, had another brilliant night. His 16 points were two shy of the game high, and he controlled the paint on defense with four blocks and a number of other changed shots. Doron Lamb had the 18 points for the Wildcats (tied with UF's Kenny Boynton for the game-high) and was a particularly lethal four-of-five from beyond the arc.

It's important not to read too, too much into the game's outcome. The Wildcats have yet to lose in Rupp under John Calipari, and they can make games spiral out of control for their opponents there in ways that don't happen elsewhere. Plus, this team is going to hammer anyone and everyone when it makes 60% of its three pointers (season percentage: 37.9%). Florida has a troubling habit of playing poorly on the road that it will have to correct down the stretch, but it's not the bad team that UK made it look like last night.

That said, it's completely fair to ask whether this team will lose again the rest of the way. It still has road games at Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, and Florida plus another home matchup with Vandy, so it's not like the schedule is a complete cakewalk. Still though, when this team is on, it's unbeatable. Its only loss to Indiana is looking more like a glitch in the Matrix than anything.

Last year's Kentucky team made it to the Final Four on sweat, grit, and a bit of overachievement as a 4-seed. This year, it's probably going to be a tournament favorite as a 1-seed (if not the No. 1 overall seed). If last year's run to Houston was a bit of a bonus, falling short of a run to New Orleans this year would be a disappointment.

If I could put my finger on one reason why I don't like Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, it's that he comes off like the worst kind of politician. He's devoted solely to his conference and rarely acts like he cares about the big picture. He reeks of condescension while sometimes engaging in spin doctoring. And now, he's jumping on the bandwagon of an inevitability either to make it sound like it was his idea all along or to guide it in a direction that suits his desires (or both).

A college football playoff is coming. It's a matter of when, not if. Actually, it's probably not even a matter of when anymore, as "after the current BCS contract expires" is a pretty sure bet.

Yesterday, the Big Ten leaked details of a possible plus one playoff plan that would fit most of the conference's desires. I say "most" because, based on past comments by its power brokers, one of those desires is actually not having a playoff. The top four of the BCS would be skimmed off the top and entered into a separate bracket. The semifinals would be played on campuses, while the final would rotate around sites that bid on the right to hold it.

Most importantly for the Big Ten, this playoff takes place entirely outside of the bowl system. Having the final be bid on by disparate sites rather than rotate among the BCS bowls preserves the Rose Bowl, and preserving that is arguably the conference's top priority. You could even argue that it enhances the Rose Bowl over the current BCS, because it won't be overshadowed every four years by a BCS National Championship Game being played on the very same field a week later.

Honestly, I really like the idea of bidding out the final. Currently, schools essentially pay for the right to play in bowls via ticket guarantees. Sometimes the fan bases pick up the entire tab, but often the schools get stuck with giant bills for unsold tickets. This strikes me as backwards. The bowl committees should pay the schools or conferences first and then be on the hook for making that money back via selling all the tickets on their own. That's how pretty much every other non-in house ticketed event works. This idea of bidding out the title game also fits right in with the Big Ten's and Pac-12's exploration of possibly running their own bowls, another way to cut some leeches off of the surface of college football.

I've seen a lot of praise for the idea of playing the semifinals on campuses, and rightfully so. The on-campus experience is one of the big things that makes college football so awesome. However, I'm disappointed to see so many people acting like the Big Ten came up with the idea. It is part of the years-old Death to the BCS plan, and it's been kicked around in informal debates for far longer than that.

The idea of southern teams having to play up north in the cold is an appealing one to the Big Ten constituency, but it's largely overblown. For one thing, look at a map of all the I-A schools, or even just the current BCS schools. There are a lot more schools outside of heavy snow areas than in them.

Plus, let's hunt through the BCS's history. If we assume that the top four of the standings wouldn't change if we had this plus one plan—and that's a very poor assumption given how voter manipulation works*—on only five occasions would a team have been sent to a place with an average January high temperature more than 10 degrees colder than home. Two of those would have been Colorado (47°) being sent to Nebraska (35°) and Miami (74°) being sent to Tallahassee (63°). Only three times, with two SEC teams plus Oklahoma getting sent to Ohio State, would a team have played somewhere with average January snowfall greater than two inches above what they get at home. In fact, 21 of the 28 on-campus games would have been played in places that average less than two inches of snow in January, period.

This plan, by the way, is generically a "seeded plus one" because the top four teams get pulled off to the side and seeded after the regular season. I expect to see other conferences float other plans, some of which might be an "unseeded plus one". In that case the bowls would play out largely as they are now, and then the top two teams after the bowls get pulled out to play a championship game. Now you can keep those two terms straight if you haven't heard them before as the debate unfolds.

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For the second time in five years team that went 9-7 in the NFL regular season made the Super Bowl. This time, that 9-7 team actually won the thing. It's enough to make a die hard college football fan scoff at the pro league's standards for who gets to be called champion.

Before going further, it's worth noting that the NFL is fundamentally different than the college game when it comes to scheduling. NFL teams play 16 regular season games instead of 12, so they have more opportunities to pick up losses. Plus, they don't get to stack a third or a fourth of their schedules with cupcakes who are outclassed in every conceivable way. If college football had 16 regular season games and only competition between the top 32 teams, there would not be too many zero- or one-loss champions there either.

That said, there's no reason to blindly accept a team with a .563 winning percentage as a rightful "champion" unless you're a Chan Gailey enthusiast. Rejecting that premise does not mean, however, that you reject the concept of a playoff. It just means that the NFL's playoffs are too large.

On that level, 12 of the 32 teams make the postseason every year. That comes out to 37.5% of all the league's teams. If college football did a bracket of an equivalent size, it would have 45 teams in it. Cut the field down to just the current 67 in BCS conferences plus Notre Dame and you still get a field of 25. Not even the status quo-hating Dan Wetzel and friends who wrote Death to the BCS are promoting a playoff that large.

I want to see a playoff in college football, but I don't want to see a 7-6 team or 8-4 team in it. If they keep the bracket at a reasonable (i.e. smaller than the NFL) size, we never will see such a team in it. In fact, look through the archive of BCS standings. Not that the BCS formula is perfect, but you'll notice a pattern that there is generally a big gap between either No. 7 and No. 8 or No. 8 and No. 9.

Once you get past the top seven or eight teams, you find that teams don't really have realistic claims towards being a championship candidate. On purely competitive grounds, capping the playoff at eight teams (or less) shouldn't be controversial. It, of course, will always be controversial who gets a shot at the title and who doesn't, but that's a cut off point that should be able to find a consensus. Expanding beyond eight is difficult anyway because teams can only play one game per week.

I think ultimately though, this all boils down to a fairly fundamental argument. Is college football its own sport that should only be concerned about its own competitively purity, or is it a fundraiser that subsidizes nearly every other sport that schools sponsor? While in practice it is both, I fear that more and more, the powers that be see it solely as the latter.

It's too late for men's college basketball; its tournament accounts for roughly 95% of the NCAA's income. It's no wonder they floated a plan to go to 96 teams two years ago. Increasing March Madness revenue is far and away the easiest way to increase the NCAA's operating budget, something that's important in this day and age when investigations are getting longer, more numerous, and more expensive by the year. The schools could all chip in some more dues money, or they could fabricate a "First Four" to try to wring out a few more dollars.

The BCS is happy to act like the cartel it is, and even the staunchly anti-playoff Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany doesn't believe the current system maximizes profits. However, in this weak economy with state and federal education budgets in jeopardy, many programs can't afford to leave postseason money on the table while leeching money from their general university budgets anymore.

Starting up a playoff would generate more money. If those in charge then look at it as nothing more than a piggy bank, then we'll never be safe from bracket creep. Hopefully the advent of other revenue streams like conference networks and online streaming deals can stave off that temptation and keep the field small.

It will never feel right to crown an 8-4 team as champion anymore than it feels right to see a 9-7 team take home the Lombardi Trophy.

Former Florida head coach Urban Meyer has gotten a lot of heat from some fellow Big Ten coaches over his recruiting tactics. Specifically Meyer, and hold back your horror here for a second, went after recruits that were committed to other schools. I know, I know. It's a good thing I first heard about it while sitting down.

Bret Bielema is upset, which is understandable given that he lost an offensive line recruit to Meyer on signing day. He's even decided to cry complain to Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany about it. Mark Dantonio called Meyer unethical. Meyer responded to the complaints thusly:

"You're pissed because we went after a committed guy? Guess what, we got 9 guys who better go do it again," said Meyer. "Do it a little harder next time."

Translation: "U MAD BRO?" Meyer has crossed over into Lane Kiffin territory in terms of agitating fellow coaches in his conference. I'm glad we could all share this moment.

I'm a little confused at all the outrage, because I thought we got all this settled when Rich Rodriguez got to Michigan. There was no real gentleman's agreement not to go after committed recruits. There was some complaining about RichRod doing that initially, but it all died away. What has changed?

My guess is that these other Big Ten coaches actually think Meyer can win at Ohio State. He won at Bowling Green despite never even having been a coordinator before becoming a head coach. He made Utah the first ever BCS buster. He won two national championships at Florida and easily could have won a third if it wasn't for Nick Saban.

I think the consensus up there was that Rodriguez was not a serious threat to win big after his first year. He was seen a force of change initially, which is why people got all rankled about his recruiting, but then 3-9 killed that quickly. It became a given that his system wouldn't work in the Big Ten, and everyone settled down. His system would, in fact, work in the Big Ten, as it was his poor defensive coaching choices that did him in.

Meyer is a threat to win. He also comes with the stigma of having worked in the SEC. All I hear from Bielema and Dantonio is: "Can't you see what's happening? He's trying to make us just like the SEC!!"

Guess what? The Big Ten is just like the SEC, only it's covered itself up in some kind of abrasively arrogant, faux genteel wallpaper. While Delany is the troll pulling all the strings, the conference is probably best personified in Jim Tressel. Tressel used his sweater vest and boring personality to hide the fact that he's a ruthless competitor who was willing to break rules to try to get ahead. They're pretty much all like that, only they prefer to have a veneer of sanctimonious righteousness covering it up.

Meyer is up front about his commitment to winning, as is everyone in the SEC. As is most everyone in the country, for that matter. It's especially rich to hear Bielema, who dropped 83 points on Indiana and went for two while up by a huge margin late in a game, act as though he's not a win-at-all-costs type. (Note: Former OSU LB Brian Rolle says Wisconsin recruited him up to signing day despite having committed to the Buckeyes. He was a freshman in 2007, which was Bielema's second year at UW. Busted, Bret.)

I think these coaches aren't just threatened by the idea that Meyer will dominate the conference with Ohio State as Tressel did before him. I think they're also worried that he'll finally put an end to the bankrupt idea that the Big Ten really is all that different from everyone else.

Alabama came into the day on top of all of the recruiting rankings, and it finished it still on top of three of them. So, we can safely say that Alabama is your Mythical Recruiting National Champion once again. Here are how all the conference's teams ended up in the four major rankings as of 7:30 NSD evening.

Remember that Rivals only publishes its top 50 and ESPN only does a top 25. The numbers in parenthesis are the teams' ranks in the average player ranking standings.

These could change as a few more players decide what they want to do. Highly rated WR Stefon Diggs is waiting for a while to make his final decision, and he's considering Auburn and Florida among others. Rivals also isn't counting Josh Harvey-Clemons as a part of Georgia's class yet. He committed to UGA earlier today and has told media he still is a Bulldog, but his grandfather is apparently nowhere to be found at the moment. He needs his grandfather to sign the NLI as that's who his legal guardian is.

Note: I've updated the Rivals ranks as Harvey-Clemons's NLI finally made it to Georgia on the morning of 2/2. Auburn and Texas A&M fell one spot in the overall standings and A&M and Tennessee fell one spot in the average rankings as a result of Georgia leap-frogging them.

For now though, this is where they all stack up. Congrats to all.

The big day is finally here. Will Alabama hold on to its lead and be pronounced the unanimous recruiting national champion once again? Will Florida pick up several late commitments to make a run at the title? Will top recruit Dorial Green-Beckham sign with Missouri or Arkansas? Will Vandy actually finish in someone's top 25? Will Auburn sign more than 15 players?

Story lines abound. Here is a schedule for commitments. We'll be doing some updates periodically through the day.

8:00 am: Tennessee has picked up 4-star JUCO WR Cordarrelle Patterson over several other SEC schools.

9:10 am: Justin Taylor, former Alabama commit and 2012's first oversigning controversy sparker, declined Bama's grayshirt and signed with Kentucky. The Tide picked up two more players though, in DT Korren Kirven and DL Dalvin Tomlinson.

9:35 am: Top OLB prospect Josh Harvey-Clemons has chosen Georgia over Florida and FSU.

10:08 am: The SEC has missed out on a couple of top players. CB Tracey Howard picked Miami over Florida, while DT Eddie Goldman chose Florida State over Auburn and Alabama.

10:20 am: Consensus top recruit in the nation WR Dorial Green-Beckham has chosen to stay in state and go to Missouri rather than head south to play at Arkansas.

10:30 am: Florida flipped Rivals 5-star DE Dante Fowler from Florida State, making him the third 5-star of the class so far. Georgia also flipped 4-star DE Josh Dawson from Vanderbilt. Dawson was one of four 4-star players Vandy had committed.

11:20 am: LB Kwon Alexander made his commitment in style, removing his jacket and revealing his LSU-themed bow tie and suspenders underneath. Texas A&M, after having lost some commits of late, picked up highly rated WR Thomas Johnson. Ole Miss finally got some good news, picking up S Trae Elston.

12:10 pm: The SEC loses three. JUCO WR Courtney Gardner, a longtime Arkansas commit, went with Oklahoma instead. Top DE Leonard Williams chose USC over Florida and others. LB Torshiro Davis has flipped from LSU to Texas.

12:20 pm: Highly rated Tampa WR Nelson Agholor has chosen USC over Florida and others.

2:02 pm: Auburn is on the board by securing WR Ricardo Louis, who has wavered between AU and FSU in recent weeks.

2:09 pm: Chizik strikes again! OT Avery Young is now a Tiger too, after having considered Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

The consensus top recruit in the country WR Dorial Green-Beckham has eschewed the post-National Signing Day routine of recent top recruits and chosen Missouri over Arkansas and Oklahoma. It's a huge pickup for Gary Pinkel as he guides his program into the SEC next year.

At 6'6", 220 lbs, he's been compared to other big receivers in recent years like A.J. Green and Julio Jones. SBN's recruiting guy Bud Elliott has this to say about him:

Fun fact: Green-Beckham was offered by every team to win a national title in the last quarter century.

He doesn't have the agility and flexibility of a 5'10" slot guy, but for his size (6'6" 220), it is quite special. Green-Beckham catches the ball very well and has excellent speed. Equally impressive is his consistent physicality. Green-Beckham doesn't allow the poor competition (and this is some poor high school football) to drag down his game. And those around him say he is a good kid -- quite the opposite of the stereotype that is the prima donna receiver. He is an immediate contributor in the SEC.

It's a bit of a stretch to say that he'll personally make Missouri an instant contender in the SEC East, but he'll make a tremendous impact if he lives up to his billing.

Atlanta running back Justin Taylor became news well beyond his three-star rating when, earlier this month, he found himself being offered a grayshirt after having been committed to Alabama for almost an entire year. Alabama was up against the SEC's new 25-player cap, and as Taylor had missed his senior year to an ACL injury, Nick Saban wanted him to defer enrollment until January 2013.

Taylor today signed with Kentucky, an event that would have been unlikely under the old system. Taylor most likely would have signed with Alabama, as the school would have been able to take on up to 28 players. If Saban found himself with more than 85 players heading into fall camp, Taylor would then have been offered a grayshirt. Because he would have signed a financial aid agreement with Alabama as a part of his national letter of intent, he'd have to sit out a year in order to transfer elsewhere.

Because of the new rule, he was able to open his recruitment back up and find a new Kentucky home. The rule won't help any players who will get offered post-NSD grayshirts because their school signed enough to go over the NCAA's 85-player roster cap but didn't go over the SEC's 25-player signing class cap. However, it did work for Taylor and Kentucky, and that's at least some movement in the right direction.

National Signing Day is nothing if not a day of hope. Your school signs a group of players who have never turned the ball over, never committed a boneheaded penalty, and never been suspended for a violation of team rules. Somewhere in there could be a group of All-Americans that leads the team to unparalleled glory.

Of course, part of fulfilling that destiny is the simple act of sticking around. Consider the cases of two of the SEC's middle teams in 2011, Auburn and Florida.

The Tigers have had a remarkable amount of attrition from their recent classes:

Remarkably, 43 percent of Auburn's 2009 and 2010 signees are no longer on the team, or never joined the program in the first place. That's a brutal percentage, especially as Auburn sits with the SEC's fewest 2012 commitments and two new coordinators who inevitably will weed out some veterans.

That article catalogs what happened with all the players who have left. There is no one common theme. Some players have had horrible injury luck, some never qualified, some left after suspensions, and some were dismissed after being arrested on armed robbery charges. Even more players are still there but have yet to make a significant impact.

At Florida, eight of the 21 from the 2008 class and four of the 17 from the 2009 class left the team in some way or another before the 2011 season (another from '08, OL David Young, left the team recently after missing the whole season with injury).

The 2008 class produced just four significant contributors in Jeff Demps, Will Hill, Janoris Jenkins, and Caleb Sturgis, and it produced two more solid rotation guys in William Green and Omar Hunter. Also, OL Matt Patchan has been good when healthy, which is not often. Hill and Jenkins, of course, were off the team by the '11 season. The 2009 class produced most of the 2011 offensive line rotation plus defensive starters Jon Bostic, Josh Evans, and Jelani Jenkins, but it was so small post-attrition (just 13 players) that it can't make more of an impact on the team.

Florida's attrition is not limited to just those two problem classes, unlike the case at Auburn where every member of the 2011 recruiting class is still around. Urban Meyer's 27-member 2010 class is down eight players already, largely due to transfers for various reasons. Will Muschamp's 19-player 2011 class is down two as well after two early enrolees left during the spring of last year for understandable reasons.

Auburn will sign a relatively small group of players this year because it had a tiny senior class. Florida will have a much larger class because it was way down on numbers. Both are rated highly in terms of average stars, so they both probably should produce a number of important contributors.

The key for both programs is making sure that those players are contributing for the ones they actually signed with.

We're now just under a week out from National Signing Day, so let's take a look at where all the teams are at present.

First up, here is how each school is doing in the overall rankings. The figures in parenthesis are the change from last week's update. As a reminder, Rivals only publishes its top 50 and ESPN only publishes its top 25.

Because the different sites have their different ways of calculating things, there are a lot of conflicting results. Georgia fell four spots in Rivals while remaining about even in the others. LSU jumped five spots in Scout's rankings while losing ground in Rivals and ESPN.

All of the services have Arkansas and Mississippi State moving up, while Auburn, Missouri, and Ole Miss slid in most or all the rankings. There aren't a lot of big moves as many of the players who are going to commit before signing day have done so, while most of the rest are going to wait until the big day to announce.

Here is the same table for average rank. Average rank is not available for ESPN's rankings.

There is a lot less movement in this one as we're dealing with averages instead of raw numbers. I don't understand how some of these results come about though. Scout has Missouri falling three spots in the overall rankings while rising four spots in the average rankings. The only change for them in the last week was them flipping a three-star safety away from Houston. Mississippi State is up across the board in all the rankings after only adding a single three-star linebacker. It just goes to show how jumbled up teams are in the middle of the rankings.

The only thing that all of the services seem to agree upon is that Alabama and Florida are among the very best in the country and Kentucky has the worst class in the conference. Even Scout, which is the only service not to have UK last among SEC teams in the overall rankings, has the Wildcats' class last in the league in average rank.

I still don't understand LSU's game plan from the national championship game. Alabama's defense was good, historically good even, but the Tigers did themselves no favors with the way they tried to move the ball in that game. There is no good reason why LSU should have finished that game with under 100 total yards.

At the Senior Bowl, former LSU TE DeAngelo Peterson shed some light on what went wrong:

"We felt like we had a good game plan that would work, that would help us do things... The game plan was to spread the ball out, get the ball to me, get the ball to Rueben (Randle), let Russell (Shepard) run the ball every now and then, give the ball to our running backs."

All right, I'm with DeAngelo so far. But what went wrong?

"The play-calling bothered the whole offense... I feel like the coaches didn't use the game plan. They were doing stuff that we never did all year... In that game, Russell played like two plays, Rueben had like one ball, I had one ball. I think they went away from the game plan. ... I feel like if they had went to the game plan and given the playmakers the ball, they would have done something with the ball."

According to Shepard himself via his Twitter account, he participated in three plays. Randle had three catches for 13 yards, and Peterson had one catch for seven yards.

Peterson's account lays the blame on the coaches, which is where most post-game blame went to. That Les Miles never subbed Jarrett Lee in for Jordan Jefferson will be one detail from the game that will never be forgotten. The coaches kept trying to stretch the field horizontally, something that was never going to work against a defense as fast as Alabama's.

And speaking of doing stuff they never did all year, the first time LSU ran its signature toss ISO running play was with about eight minutes left in the game. That's the Tigers' bread-and-butter play for the whole offense, much less the rushing game. When they had one bonus play to beat Tennessee in 2010 after the Vols had 13 men on the field, they ran that play and won. Why it took so long to run the play that they do best defies explanation. It's not a bad idea to try to mix in new things for a bowl game to surprise the opposing defense, but you never abandon the basics in doing so.

How much blame to lay on Miles and how much goes on Greg Studrawa and Steve Kragthorpe is still an open question. Everything ultimately goes through Miles, but he doesn't actually call all the offensive plays. I can remember seeing some comments after the game on Twitter from Louisville fans telling everyone that now we can understand what they went through for three years, so maybe that's a clue.

Regardless, LSU's offensive coaches lost the game for the team more than the players did. It's enough to make me think long and hard about LSU's presumptive place near the top of the polls for next year.

College football sources told @CBSSports there's "strong support" to increase bowl eligibility to 7 wins in 2014

— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyCBS) January 25, 2012

Bowl games are, in concept, a good thing for the sport of college football. While I want to see some sort of playoff system put in place, I do not want to see bowls go away. More football between at least decent teams is a good thing in my book, and players get to load up on swag and visit places they might not otherwise go to. Win-win-win.

The problem is that the way the bowl system is set up is bad for college football. Bowls generate value, but a lot of that value is captured by the individual committees that put them on. Only creative accounting methods allow every bowl bound school to come out in the black.

Every year, some number of teams take heavy losses on bowls thanks not only to travel expenses but pricey ticket guarantees. Part of accepting a bowl bid is a school agreeing to be on the hook for thousands of tickets for the game. Inevitably, some schools can't sell out those ducats and have to take losses of $1 million or more. The only reason why this can go on is that bowl payouts go to conferences, who then divide them across all of their members. The higher-paying bowls and high-turnout fanbases basically subsidize the bowl trips taken by teams in low payout bowls and who have low fan turnout at the game.

By raising the bar for bowl eligibility to seven wins, about seven bowls will cease to exist as a result. I'm sure this will largely get spun as a way to ensure quality games and make bowl bids more of a reward than a gimme, but really it's probably not. It's likely that it's a way to cut off games where both schools who attend take a loss but where the bowl committee profits handsomely.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is part of a trend to cut bowl committees out of the postseason entirely. Step 1 is cutting out bowls that don't make any schools any money. Step 2 is schools and conferences putting on their own bowls.

When you think about it, there is no reason why college football bowls need to be put on by independent organizations. Look no further than the Fiesta Bowl scandal and Sugar Bowl scandal to see what some bowl committees are doing with the money they make. Bowls are profitable enough that ESPN got in on the game a few years back and now owns several of the smaller ones. Conferences are fully able to put on conference championship games at neutral sites, so a little haggling with each other over teams and sites shouldn't be too big of a stretch.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 have already made some noises about doing their own bowls, and it fits in with their existing strategies of making themselves more vertically integrated. I expect other leagues to consider it too. No other sport leaves money on the table by not running its own postseason. That college football does so makes absolutely no sense, and I expect that within a decade or so we'll see that the power brokers have done something about it.