{"id":2080,"date":"2013-12-11T08:30:45","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T16:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2080"},"modified":"2013-12-11T08:30:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T16:30:45","slug":"go-to-hell-sec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2080","title":{"rendered":"Go to hell, SEC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, the days of my disrespect for the SEC are certainly coming to a middle.\u00a0This is something that\u2019s occurred to me more than once in the 20 years I\u2019ve been associated with Vanderbilt University. \u00a0It\u2019s reaching a point where the question has to be asked: what benefit do we actually get from being in the SEC?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
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National exposure?<\/em> \u00a0Not at all. \u00a0Our appearance against Georgia on CBS was our first appearance on the SEC\u2019s flagship over-the-air broadcast outlet in two decades. Go back and watch the intro and see how much you see of Vanderbilt over that iconic theme music. \u00a0How about ESPN? Well, our prime-time matchup against Ole Miss to open the year – and quite frankly one of the best games of the year if you\u2019re anyone but a Vandy fan – got shoved all the way back to an 8 PM Thursday night kickoff. \u00a0And then we got slagged for not having the stadium packed 45 minutes before kickoff. \u00a0No, most of our \u201cnational exposure\u201d involves the 11:30 AM slot on the old Jefferson-Pilot syndicated package. \u00a0Our season opener next year has already been handed off to its replacement, the SEC Network – which come August may actually reach fewer households than the syndicated package would have.<\/div>\n
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Access to premium bowls?<\/em> \u00a0Apparently not. \u00a0The \u201cprestige\u201d bowls only go about 6 deep. \u00a0Unless you make a BCS bowl, you\u2019re going somewhere between Atlanta or Dallas. \u00a0Forget about a bowl in California, or the secondary bowl in New Orleans, or something other than January 1 in Florida – nope, you either land on New Year\u2019s Day or you land in some cold landlocked place in driving distance of Nashville.<\/div>\n
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Quality competition?<\/em> \u00a0Sure, you\u2019ll get to play half a dozen ranked teams every year, all of whom will be favored in Vegas, in the media, and in Birmingham. \u00a0The most stunning thing about this season for any Vanderbilt supporter is that the officials actually reviewed the 4th down spot in Knoxville and overturned it when it proved to be a bad spot. \u00a0But every year, you\u2019ll get to play Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Tennessee and Ole Miss and now Missouri and God help you if you schedule a slightly easier non-conference schedule, because you\u2019ll be tarred and feathered for having the temerity not to play a road game against a top-5 out of conference opponent.<\/div>\n
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Reputation?<\/em> Well, we get to share in the SEC\u2019s reputation – except for the championship caliber football. \u00a0Nobody gives us credit for that, but they\u2019re more than happy to lump us in with soft scheduling and psychotic redneck fans. They certainly don\u2019t credit us for selling out our bowl allotments in both our previous seasons, even when it meant traveling 5 miles to the same bowl game we\u2019d attended four years earlier. \u00a0We didn\u2019t fold our tent; we showed up and represented, and it got us nothing for our trouble.<\/div>\n
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Support from the conference?<\/em> Not happening. \u00a0We went to the same bowl in 2012 at 8-4 that we went to in 2008 at 6-6, because the Gator Bowl claimed that they didn\u2019t want a rematch of Vanderbilt and Northwestern. \u00a0And then this year, they passed us up at 8-4 for a Georgia team at 8-4 which we beat\u2026and rematched them against Nebraska. \u00a0ACC commissioner John Swofford was on the phone, metaphorically throwing hands on behalf of Duke to make sure they didn\u2019t get shafted out of the Peach Bowl in favor of Miami. \u00a0SEC commissioner Mike Slive\u2026yawned.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Support for other sports?<\/em> Eh. Everything we did in baseball and basketball, we did ourselves; this conference is about one team in basketball and it\u2019s not ours. \u00a0Meanwhile, baseball finished 3rd in the nation in 2011, which was good enough for 3rd in the SEC East. \u00a0Everything that Corbin and Stallings and Balcomb and their fellow coaches accomplish happens without a lick of help from Birmingham.<\/div>\n
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Money?<\/em> \u00a0The Big Ten has brought home more cash per member school than the SEC for years, only changing now because of expansion and projected playoff revenue. And they only have to split it 12 ways rather than 14, and they were ahead of everyone else on the conference channel scheme. Laugh at the advertising, but it turns out Barbasol and Ro-Tel have mad cash to spend. \u00a0Contrary to what the people on 21st Street in Birmingham would have you believe, there are other conferences that can stack the cash too.<\/div>\n
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Academic achievement and reputation?<\/em> \u00a0Don\u2019t make me laugh.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Think about it. \u00a0The Big Ten was five years ahead of the game on their network, and they have almost national coverage to go along with record revenue – setting aside the fact that every member bar Nebraska is also a member of the AAU, the prestigious academic consortium (until the expansion to 14 teams, Florida was the only other AAU member in the SEC not called Vanderbilt). \u00a0The Pac-12 has launched SEVEN channels, including a regional network for each of their traditional pairings that provides coverage for nearly every sport, not just football and basketball. \u00a0The ACC offers the likes of Duke, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, UNC and UVA – all nationally-regarded academic institutions that seem to do all right for themselves sports-wise. \u00a0Hell, it\u2019s only been a few years since Wake actually went to a BCS bowl. \u00a0That\u2019s right, Wake !-ing Forest went to the Orange Bowl. \u00a0If you go back and looked at the schools with comparable records in my original post about the chip, most of them were 5th or 6th in their conferences. \u00a0Depending on how you measure, we were 7th or 8th\u2026and we wound up in the 10th bowl slot for our troubles.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
We\u2019re here<\/em>. \u00a0We\u2019re a founding member of this league. \u00a0We\u2019ve paid our dues. \u00a0We have every bit as much right to be in this league as Arkansas and South Carolina have, never mind the Johnny-Football-Come-Lately crowd from out west. \u00a0And yet, Texas A&M gets to hop up to the Peach Bowl, and Carolina gets to hop Missouri into the Citrus despite finishing behind them for the SEC East crown, and a 6-6 Mississippi State gets to go above us in the pecking order. \u00a0We\u2019ve delivered our two best football seasons in almost a century, we\u2019re squarely in the middle of the conference rather than scraping the bottom or barely hanging on for bowl eligibility. We sold out our entire allotment for our bowl games in 2011 and 2012, despite the disappointment of staying home last year. Nothing matters to the SEC but football, so we did our part to be credible, and it has earned us absolutely nothing but the bare minimum required; if the Compass Bowl could somehow have taken Tennessee at 5-7, they wouldn\u2019t have hesitated.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
If it were up to me, next year we\u2019d take the SEC logo off the uniforms. Instead we\u2019d put a nice black-and-gold poker chip, with a star-V on it, right on the back right shoulder. Because the SEC doesn\u2019t deserve to share our uniform. Everything we\u2019ve accomplished as a university has happened without the help of the SEC – in fact, has mostly been accomplished in spite of the SEC. \u00a0We don\u2019t own one iota of respect, or support, or allegiance to an organization that has not one iota of those things for us.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Our team. \u00a0Our triumph. \u00a0Anchor Down. Go Seminoles. Go to hell, SEC.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, the days of my disrespect for the SEC are certainly coming to a middle.\u00a0This is something that\u2019s occurred to me more than once in the 20 years I\u2019ve been associated with Vanderbilt University. \u00a0It\u2019s reaching a point where the question has to be asked: what benefit do we actually get from being in the … <\/p>\n

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