UF president ready to pitch
Florida president Bernie Machen said on Thursday he'll present some of his ideas for a college football playoff to his fellow Southeastern Conference presidents and chancellors at the league's annual business meetings this morning.
"There are no specifics, it's just the concept of do we want to look at a playoff," Machen said. "As you know, there are more plans than Carter's pills. The plan will evolve if people want to do it, based on the market and restrictions. This week, I received six different playoff plans that have been copyrighted ... like the Joe Blow playoff plan, and I can use it if I give them proper recognition."
Machen said he's happy he was merely given the time on today's agenda to discuss a playoff.
"I think that's an encouraging sign," Machen said. "I've done my homework. We've never sat down and had a detailed discussion about it. I think the SEC is one of the biggest players in college football, and if we made a move in that direction (of a playoff), it would be a significant step that other conferences would have to pay attention to. I hope everybody (all the conferences) would be in for a playoff. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a playoff."
Florida coach Urban Meyer said he didn't know exactly what Machen has up his sleeve, but Meyer emphasized he doesn't want any plan that will hurt the current system of 32 bowl games.
"I'm thinking of Bowling Green, I'm thinking of Utah," said Meyer, who coached at both schools and took them to bowls, and coached Florida to last season's BCS national championship. "The bowls mean a lot to many schools."
Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat, the only SEC president or chancellor to play football at a league school, couldn't agree more.
"We lose sight of the fact that with 32 bowls, 32 teams are going to be winners in the last game of their seasons, and that's a big deal," said Khayat, who played in three bowls as a Rebels kicker in the late 1950s. "You have a great trip, you get gifts like a watch. I still have my two Sugar Bowl watches and my Gator Bowl. I don't have many material possessions that matter, but they do matter."
In high Cotton
There's not a happier group of bowl representatives at these meetings than the Cotton Bowl's.
The reason is simple -- starting with the Jan. 1, 2010 game, the bowl, which matches an SEC team vs. a Big 12 team, moves from rustic Cotton Bowl Stadium to the new 100,000-seat Dallas Cowboys stadium located south of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
"We can't get in that stadium fast enough, we're so excited," Cotton Bowl president Rick Baker said. "It's the last piece of the puzzle for us. We've got a great title sponsor in AT&T, we're televised on Fox, which is the BCS network, and we've got great infrastructure in our city.
"The only thing we've been missing is a stadium that protects is from the weather. Now, we're going to be moving into a $1 billion stadium that's arguably the best football facility in the world. Our best days are ahead of us."
Some of those best days may include the Cotton Bowl becoming a BCS bowl or a host of the national championship game. No current BCS bowl stadium other than the Rose Bowl seats 100,000.
Raising the goals
Steve Spurrier, coach of defending AutoZone Liberty Bowl champion South Carolina, said the Gamecocks have enough talent now to re-set their goals.
"We're going to set winning the SEC as a goal this year," Spurrier said. "The first two years, we were competitive with a lot of the best teams. We were in games and didn't win a lot of them. This year, we're going to raise our goals and see if we can hit them."
One of the keys for Carolina will be quarterback play. Returning starter Blake Mitchell had a lousy spring game (13 for 29 for 150 yards, two interceptions), and freshman signee Stephen Garcia, who reported in January, was arrested twice and suspended for spring practice.
"I think he has changed," Spurrier said of Stephen Garcia. "After the spring game, he called my cell phone and asked if he was back on the team. He was at the team meeting the following Monday, right in the middle of everybody. Hopefully, he has learned his lesson and is a model student athlete from here on out."
Cash and carry
Alabama baseball player Emeel Salem and Vanderbilt track and field athlete Erika Schneble were given the 2006-07 H. Boyd McWhorter SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards on Thursday night. Each will receive a $10,000 post-graduate scholarship. Also, Tennessee swimmer Brad Boswell and Florida softball player Stacey Stevens received $5,000 each as winners of the Brad Davis SEC Community Service Post-Graduate scholarships.
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