(03-31-2014 04:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 09:04 AM)bullet Wrote:  All the SEC teams washed out in the 2nd round in the NIT and CBI.

That doesn't mean much. Motivations vary widely in those events. Some schools are excited to be in them, others are crestfallen and go through the motions. They are for also-rans, after all.

All too true ... sadly even for the NIT, which once meant quite a bit more than a mere consolation prize.

But it is also true that the bottom ranks of the SEC sucked quite badly, which is a scheduling challenge for the SEC schools that aren't in the bottom ranks, which range from good to excellent.

(03-31-2014 04:00 PM)hawghiggs Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 08:56 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  Can you name 1 other SEC team that deserved a bid?

Arkansas. We should have gotten in over Nebraska.

Arky and Missouri both...

(03-31-2014 04:43 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 09:04 AM)bullet Wrote:  All the SEC teams washed out in the 2nd round in the NIT and CBI.

That doesn't mean much. Motivations vary widely in those events. Some schools are excited to be in them, others are crestfallen and go through the motions. They are for also-rans, after all.

All too true ... sadly even for the NIT, which once meant quite a bit more than a mere consolation prize.

But it is also true that the bottom ranks of the SEC sucked quite badly, which is a scheduling challenge for the SEC schools that aren't in the bottom ranks, which range from good to excellent.

Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball? Mississippi State simply lost a long tenured coach to retirement and that hurt the conference. Missouri is under new leadership and they haven't helped the conference as much as we and they had hoped. Georgia finally produced something a bit better this year. Auburn hasn't tried since Cliff Ellis left and now with Bruce Pearl we'll see. It might even be argued that Alabama hasn't mounted a consistent winner since Wimp Sanderson's days.

So while your assessment is essentially correct, we have suffered the let down at three normally successful programs (Alabama, Mississippi State and until this year Tennessee). You could add the decline at Arkansas as another program in the doldrums until their new hire who has the time to build them back up to standards. The SEC is not suddenly weaker at the bottom, it just suddenly (last 10 years) lost its middle.

The priority issue however is a bit further down the chain. The most prominent athletes at a Southern High School choose sports in this order: Football, (big gap) Baseball, (big gap) Basketball. Most of these kids would be great at any sport and basketball doesn't get the girls attention or that of the local newspaper so they choose Football unless they are truly gifted at Baseball. Add to that the fact that most Southern High School basketball coaches are primarily the Football coach and you have the rest of the story.

(04-01-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:43 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 09:04 AM)bullet Wrote:  All the SEC teams washed out in the 2nd round in the NIT and CBI.

That doesn't mean much. Motivations vary widely in those events. Some schools are excited to be in them, others are crestfallen and go through the motions. They are for also-rans, after all.

All too true ... sadly even for the NIT, which once meant quite a bit more than a mere consolation prize.

But it is also true that the bottom ranks of the SEC sucked quite badly, which is a scheduling challenge for the SEC schools that aren't in the bottom ranks, which range from good to excellent.

Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball? Mississippi State simply lost a long tenured coach to retirement and that hurt the conference. Missouri is under new leadership and they haven't helped the conference as much as we and they had hoped. Georgia finally produced something a bit better this year. Auburn hasn't tried since Cliff Ellis left and now with Bruce Pearl we'll see. It might even be argued that Alabama hasn't mounted a consistent winner since Wimp Sanderson's days.

So while your assessment is essentially correct, we have suffered the let down at three normally successful programs (Alabama, Mississippi State and until this year Tennessee). You could add the decline at Arkansas as another program in the doldrums until their new hire who has the time to build them back up to standards. The SEC is not suddenly weaker at the bottom, it just suddenly (last 10 years) lost its middle.

The priority issue however is a bit further down the chain. The most prominent athletes at a Southern High School choose sports in this order: Football, (big gap) Baseball, (big gap) Basketball. Most of these kids would be great at any sport and basketball doesn't get the girls attention or that of the local newspaper so they choose Football unless they are truly gifted at Baseball. Add to that the fact that most Southern High School basketball coaches are primarily the Football coach and you have the rest of the story.

But those priorities haven't changed. Except maybe baseball slipping.
Its really kind of hard to explain why SEC basketball has slipped. Maybe ADs spending so much on football coaches, they have shortchanged on basketball coaches? The slip in basketball coincides with both an astronomical increase in football head and assistant coaches salary and the big run for the SEC in the BCS.

And as you say, schools like Arkansas, Tennessee and South Carolina, have all slipped. It may just be cyclical.

(04-01-2014 11:19 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:43 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 09:04 AM)bullet Wrote:  All the SEC teams washed out in the 2nd round in the NIT and CBI.

That doesn't mean much. Motivations vary widely in those events. Some schools are excited to be in them, others are crestfallen and go through the motions. They are for also-rans, after all.

All too true ... sadly even for the NIT, which once meant quite a bit more than a mere consolation prize.

But it is also true that the bottom ranks of the SEC sucked quite badly, which is a scheduling challenge for the SEC schools that aren't in the bottom ranks, which range from good to excellent.

Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball? Mississippi State simply lost a long tenured coach to retirement and that hurt the conference. Missouri is under new leadership and they haven't helped the conference as much as we and they had hoped. Georgia finally produced something a bit better this year. Auburn hasn't tried since Cliff Ellis left and now with Bruce Pearl we'll see. It might even be argued that Alabama hasn't mounted a consistent winner since Wimp Sanderson's days.

So while your assessment is essentially correct, we have suffered the let down at three normally successful programs (Alabama, Mississippi State and until this year Tennessee). You could add the decline at Arkansas as another program in the doldrums until their new hire who has the time to build them back up to standards. The SEC is not suddenly weaker at the bottom, it just suddenly (last 10 years) lost its middle.

The priority issue however is a bit further down the chain. The most prominent athletes at a Southern High School choose sports in this order: Football, (big gap) Baseball, (big gap) Basketball. Most of these kids would be great at any sport and basketball doesn't get the girls attention or that of the local newspaper so they choose Football unless they are truly gifted at Baseball. Add to that the fact that most Southern High School basketball coaches are primarily the Football coach and you have the rest of the story.

But those priorities haven't changed. Except maybe baseball slipping.
Its really kind of hard to explain why SEC basketball has slipped. Maybe ADs spending so much on football coaches, they have shortchanged on basketball coaches? The slip in basketball coincides with both an astronomical increase in football head and assistant coaches salary and the big run for the SEC in the BCS.

And as you say, schools like Arkansas, Tennessee and South Carolina, have all slipped. It may just be cyclical.

Baseball isn't slipping. It is just subject to many outside forces including the best kids signing AA contracts right out of high school. I'd say baseball is about the same. It is harder to track because power shifts in baseball yearly. I think Florida is down this year, but they have taken 2 from F.S.U. Auburn is up a little. Vanderbilt lost a lot of starters to graduation. Alabama is playing well. L.S.U. is down a pitcher from being at their normal level. Tennessee is a lot stronger. Kentucky opened the season knocking off Virginia. It's too early to tell. I expect the Big 12 and SEC and many of the ACC schools to be just as strong come tournament time as they historically are.

Clearly the SEC has slipped in basketball. And the priorities there are a major cultural factor and have been for a couple of decades now. A kid in the Southeast that is great at basketball doesn't want to play in the SEC unless it is at Florida or Kentucky. He wants to go to a basketball first school where he gets his ego biscuits.

Coaches salaries in football are high, but compared to the profit generated by the sport it would be hard to say they are out of line. It is what it is. We'll see what kind of decisions the Texas athletic department makes in those regards moving forward. You are traditionally known for fielding competitive teams in all sports, but I have a feeling the concentration will be in money sports moving forward just like everywhere else. We'll see.

(04-01-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball?

And given that there are those schools that don't put forth the effort (seriously, there was an SEC BBall game rescheduled because of rain ... the arena's roof leaked) ... for schools like UTK, having those schools on the conference schedule is part of their scheduling challenge.

(04-01-2014 11:40 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Coaches salaries in football are high, but compared to the profit generated by the sport it would be hard to say they are out of line.

The Vols FB coaching costs have got to be causing some kind of squeeze elsewhere in the Athletic Dept. ... but that is not so much a matter of how high the current head coach's salary is, as how many head coach's salaries the Vols are paying at the same time, given multiple consecutive buyouts paying coaches a large amount per year to not coach the Vols anymore.

(04-01-2014 11:40 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 11:19 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:43 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  That doesn't mean much. Motivations vary widely in those events. Some schools are excited to be in them, others are crestfallen and go through the motions. They are for also-rans, after all.

All too true ... sadly even for the NIT, which once meant quite a bit more than a mere consolation prize.

But it is also true that the bottom ranks of the SEC sucked quite badly, which is a scheduling challenge for the SEC schools that aren't in the bottom ranks, which range from good to excellent.

Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball? Mississippi State simply lost a long tenured coach to retirement and that hurt the conference. Missouri is under new leadership and they haven't helped the conference as much as we and they had hoped. Georgia finally produced something a bit better this year. Auburn hasn't tried since Cliff Ellis left and now with Bruce Pearl we'll see. It might even be argued that Alabama hasn't mounted a consistent winner since Wimp Sanderson's days.

So while your assessment is essentially correct, we have suffered the let down at three normally successful programs (Alabama, Mississippi State and until this year Tennessee). You could add the decline at Arkansas as another program in the doldrums until their new hire who has the time to build them back up to standards. The SEC is not suddenly weaker at the bottom, it just suddenly (last 10 years) lost its middle.

The priority issue however is a bit further down the chain. The most prominent athletes at a Southern High School choose sports in this order: Football, (big gap) Baseball, (big gap) Basketball. Most of these kids would be great at any sport and basketball doesn't get the girls attention or that of the local newspaper so they choose Football unless they are truly gifted at Baseball. Add to that the fact that most Southern High School basketball coaches are primarily the Football coach and you have the rest of the story.

But those priorities haven't changed. Except maybe baseball slipping.
Its really kind of hard to explain why SEC basketball has slipped. Maybe ADs spending so much on football coaches, they have shortchanged on basketball coaches? The slip in basketball coincides with both an astronomical increase in football head and assistant coaches salary and the big run for the SEC in the BCS.

And as you say, schools like Arkansas, Tennessee and South Carolina, have all slipped. It may just be cyclical.

Baseball isn't slipping. It is just subject to many outside forces including the best kids signing AA contracts right out of high school. I'd say baseball is about the same. It is harder to track because power shifts in baseball yearly. I think Florida is down this year, but they have taken 2 from F.S.U. Auburn is up a little. Vanderbilt lost a lot of starters to graduation. Alabama is playing well. L.S.U. is down a pitcher from being at their normal level. Tennessee is a lot stronger. Kentucky opened the season knocking off Virginia. It's too early to tell. I expect the Big 12 and SEC and many of the ACC schools to be just as strong come tournament time as they historically are.

Clearly the SEC has slipped in basketball. And the priorities there are a major cultural factor and have been for a couple of decades now. A kid in the Southeast that is great at basketball doesn't want to play in the SEC unless it is at Florida or Kentucky. He wants to go to a basketball first school where he gets his ego biscuits.

Coaches salaries in football are high, but compared to the profit generated by the sport it would be hard to say they are out of line. It is what it is. We'll see what kind of decisions the Texas athletic department makes in those regards moving forward. You are traditionally known for fielding competitive teams in all sports, but I have a feeling the concentration will be in money sports moving forward just like everywhere else. We'll see.

Actually what I was saying was the priority of baseball in HSs vs. basketball was slipping, not in the SEC.

(04-01-2014 12:08 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 11:40 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 11:19 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 04:43 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  All too true ... sadly even for the NIT, which once meant quite a bit more than a mere consolation prize.

But it is also true that the bottom ranks of the SEC sucked quite badly, which is a scheduling challenge for the SEC schools that aren't in the bottom ranks, which range from good to excellent.

Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball? Mississippi State simply lost a long tenured coach to retirement and that hurt the conference. Missouri is under new leadership and they haven't helped the conference as much as we and they had hoped. Georgia finally produced something a bit better this year. Auburn hasn't tried since Cliff Ellis left and now with Bruce Pearl we'll see. It might even be argued that Alabama hasn't mounted a consistent winner since Wimp Sanderson's days.

So while your assessment is essentially correct, we have suffered the let down at three normally successful programs (Alabama, Mississippi State and until this year Tennessee). You could add the decline at Arkansas as another program in the doldrums until their new hire who has the time to build them back up to standards. The SEC is not suddenly weaker at the bottom, it just suddenly (last 10 years) lost its middle.

The priority issue however is a bit further down the chain. The most prominent athletes at a Southern High School choose sports in this order: Football, (big gap) Baseball, (big gap) Basketball. Most of these kids would be great at any sport and basketball doesn't get the girls attention or that of the local newspaper so they choose Football unless they are truly gifted at Baseball. Add to that the fact that most Southern High School basketball coaches are primarily the Football coach and you have the rest of the story.

But those priorities haven't changed. Except maybe baseball slipping.
Its really kind of hard to explain why SEC basketball has slipped. Maybe ADs spending so much on football coaches, they have shortchanged on basketball coaches? The slip in basketball coincides with both an astronomical increase in football head and assistant coaches salary and the big run for the SEC in the BCS.

And as you say, schools like Arkansas, Tennessee and South Carolina, have all slipped. It may just be cyclical.

Baseball isn't slipping. It is just subject to many outside forces including the best kids signing AA contracts right out of high school. I'd say baseball is about the same. It is harder to track because power shifts in baseball yearly. I think Florida is down this year, but they have taken 2 from F.S.U. Auburn is up a little. Vanderbilt lost a lot of starters to graduation. Alabama is playing well. L.S.U. is down a pitcher from being at their normal level. Tennessee is a lot stronger. Kentucky opened the season knocking off Virginia. It's too early to tell. I expect the Big 12 and SEC and many of the ACC schools to be just as strong come tournament time as they historically are.

Clearly the SEC has slipped in basketball. And the priorities there are a major cultural factor and have been for a couple of decades now. A kid in the Southeast that is great at basketball doesn't want to play in the SEC unless it is at Florida or Kentucky. He wants to go to a basketball first school where he gets his ego biscuits.

Coaches salaries in football are high, but compared to the profit generated by the sport it would be hard to say they are out of line. It is what it is. We'll see what kind of decisions the Texas athletic department makes in those regards moving forward. You are traditionally known for fielding competitive teams in all sports, but I have a feeling the concentration will be in money sports moving forward just like everywhere else. We'll see.

Actually what I was saying was the priority of baseball in HSs vs. basketball was slipping, not in the SEC.

Gotcha. I can see that as well and like in all sports it's the fundamentals that are slipping and that is due in part to the fact that so many kids simply don't play in the neighborhoods like before and the kids that get instruction are getting it in travel ball and their numbers are much smaller.

(04-01-2014 12:00 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball?

And given that there are those schools that don't put forth the effort (seriously, there was an SEC BBall game rescheduled because of rain ... the arena's roof leaked) ... for schools like UTK, having those schools on the conference schedule is part of their scheduling challenge.

(04-01-2014 11:40 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Coaches salaries in football are high, but compared to the profit generated by the sport it would be hard to say they are out of line.

The Vols FB coaching costs have got to be causing some kind of squeeze elsewhere in the Athletic Dept. ... but that is not so much a matter of how high the current head coach's salary is, as how many head coach's salaries the Vols are paying at the same time, given multiple consecutive buyouts paying coaches a large amount per year to not coach the Vols anymore.

JR laid out a lot of good reasons for why the middle of the SEC has struggled, but coach's salaries is not one of them. The SEC has 6 of the top 25 coach's salaries in college sports. Cal if #2, Billy the Kid is #6, Bruce Pearl's deal ties him at #14, Mike Anderson is #18, Kevin Stallings is #22, and Anthony Grant is #25. All of those salaries are at least $1.85 million.

If Kevin Stallings and Anthony Grant don't work out, both Vanderbilt and Alabama will spend more the next go around for the right guy. I think Cal, Donovan, Pearl, and Anderson are locked in for a while. I am positive that Missouri will spend more if/when Haith is gone, and I feel pretty sure that TAMU and Georgia will when there time comes, as well. South Carolina and LSU are probably comfortable at their spending levels, as are the Mississippi schools. Tennessee will break the bank for the right person.

The SEC has the second highest average attendance in the country for men's basketball behind the Big 10, so it is not fan support. Being big man on campus probably has a lot to do with it, as JR said. These Kentucky BB players are rock stars in Lexington, but I'm not sure any other school's players get that treatment except the occasional superstar.

(04-01-2014 12:47 PM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 12:00 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-01-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Actually Bruce it is a priorities issue even more so than a scheduling one. Some schools simply focus on football and field a basketball program because it is required. Slive has addressed that and the scheduling issue as recently as last year. But, how do you prove a school is not putting forth an effort in basketball?

And given that there are those schools that don't put forth the effort (seriously, there was an SEC BBall game rescheduled because of rain ... the arena's roof leaked) ... for schools like UTK, having those schools on the conference schedule is part of their scheduling challenge.

(04-01-2014 11:40 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Coaches salaries in football are high, but compared to the profit generated by the sport it would be hard to say they are out of line.

The Vols FB coaching costs have got to be causing some kind of squeeze elsewhere in the Athletic Dept. ... but that is not so much a matter of how high the current head coach's salary is, as how many head coach's salaries the Vols are paying at the same time, given multiple consecutive buyouts paying coaches a large amount per year to not coach the Vols anymore.

JR laid out a lot of good reasons for why the middle of the SEC has struggled, but coach's salaries is not one of them. The SEC has 6 of the top 25 coach's salaries in college sports. Cal if #2, Billy the Kid is #6, Bruce Pearl's deal ties him at #14, Mike Anderson is #18, Kevin Stallings is #22, and Anthony Grant is #25. All of those salaries are at least $1.85 million.

If Kevin Stallings and Anthony Grant don't work out, both Vanderbilt and Alabama will spend more the next go around for the right guy. I think Cal, Donovan, Pearl, and Anderson are locked in for a while. I am positive that Missouri will spend more if/when Haith is gone, and I feel pretty sure that TAMU and Georgia will when there time comes, as well. South Carolina and LSU are probably comfortable at their spending levels, as are the Mississippi schools. Tennessee will break the bank for the right person.

The SEC has the second highest average attendance in the country for men's basketball behind the Big 10, so it is not fan support. Being big man on campus probably has a lot to do with it, as JR said. These Kentucky BB players are rock stars in Lexington, but I'm not sure any other school's players get that treatment except the occasional superstar.

In support of BBB that is why there is a running joke between Bo Jackson and Charles Barkley. When Jackson is asked who was the greatest Auburn athlete he smiles and says according to Charles Barkley it was him. Barkley was appreciated at Auburn, and loved when he achieved in the NBA. Jackson was adored at Auburn and is still beloved. Had Charles been a stud at football he and Jackson would make for a great debate and that is why Charles says what he does. Bo once jumped over a Volkswagon and later quipped that it was not the same feat as a fat Charles Barkley dunking a basketball.

(03-31-2014 12:12 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 12:05 PM)randaddyminer Wrote:  

(03-31-2014 11:28 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Our three best programs got in and did well. Using the NIT as a measure of why more shouldn't have gotten in is about like saying an Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska or Texas should have beaten Little Team Tech in the Liberty Bowl. When programs that expect or desire to make the big tournament wind up in the little one many times (and to their dishonor) efforts flag while the underdog has every incentive to polish of a good year with a victory over a bigger name.

Although your theory is good in other years, it doesn't apply to this years NIT. The four teams the SEC lost to (SMU, La Tech, USM and Cal) all felt snubbed by the NCAA and were playing to get in the NCAA at the end of the season, not the NIT. I doubt those schools were underdogs against the SEC teams (maybe La Tech and USM were slight underdogs because they had to go on the road.)

S.M.U. should have been in the NCAA tournament and were snubbed for those 6th and 7th slots of the ACC and Big 12. My broader point you didn't quote, no power conference deserves more than 4 and the vast majority only merit 3 slots. The tournament has 35 spots that go to the smallest conferences' champs and as political favors to larger conferences.

This is the answer that I was looking for..... The current system is too unbalanced. It would be equivalent to the NBA allowing the western Conference (ACC and B12) to place 13 teams in the playoffs while the (South) Eastern Conference is allowed 3 because the west is considered better using some numerical formula. I agree totally with the suggestion that each power conference should get a certain amount of spots.