The SEC is looking to start its own network

Want to know why a conference that is already the most powerful college football conference in the country adds two new schools it doesn’t necessarily need? It does so because now the SEC can renegotiate its television contracts with both CBS and ESPN, the two networks that own the rights to SEC football games in the fall.

As you’d expect, given the television deals that have gone to the Pac-12 and the Big 12 in the last year, the SEC will be looking for more money from both ESPN and CBS for the right to broadcast games, though that’s not the end goal here.

According to Sports Business Daily(subscription), the SEC is once again looking into the idea of starting its own SEC Network, much like the Big Ten currently has.

read more: cbssports.com

Mitch Barnhart on successes, challenges of UK athletics

I’ve shared a few snippets of my conversation last Friday with Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart. You can read his thoughts on basketball scheduling here and the new contracts for the basketball coaches here.

And now here’s everything else from a long, wide-ranging chat. Barnhart talked about what has been a remarkable year in UK athletics and the challenges ahead, including state funding for a football stadium renovation, patience with the football staff, and the latest on the future of Rupp Arena.

Enjoy. The remaining Qs and As with Mitch Barnhart:

How good has this year been for you and your department, considering a men’s basketball national title, women’s Elite Eight appearance and top-10 baseball, volleyball, men’s tennis and rifle teams?

Read more: blogs.courier-journal.com

No reason is good enough for Kentucky-Indiana to end

Last season, Kentucky and Indiana combined to produce, arguably, the two most memorable games of the 2011-12 college hoops campaign.

The great border rivalry seemed on the verge of returning to the level of its 1970s, early ’80s heyday when it crackled with electricity.

So, of course, the powers that be have snuffed it out.

In a move that seemed to catch UK off guard, IU issued a news release Thursday afternoon saying, simply, Indiana will not play Kentucky next season

Post-Spring Storylines to Follow in SEC

Arkansas’ coaching search.  With each passing day it becomes more likely that the Razorbacks will keep an “interim” tag on Taver Johnson, use the remainder of the year to find a long-term replacement for Bobby Petrino, and make that decision official following the 2012 regular season.  I believe that course of action to be the wisest.  While Petrino is a low-down scoundrel and rotten human being, replacing him as a football coach will be difficult and Arkansas needs to find the right coach, not the right-now coach.  Not only would a coach hired before the start of the season have an incredibly condensed time frame with which to learn the team and instill his system, looking for a head coach to start immediately would dramatically limit your pool of candidates.  I simply can’t imagine a current head coach ditching his program post-spring to take another job.  I know there exists little which is ethically “off limits” in major college football, but I don’t see an “A” list coach doing that to his team.  Because of that, if you want to hire a permanent replacement to start immediately, you reduce your candidate pool to coaches out of work and assistants – Arkansas can do better.

Read more: chuckoliver.net

Once a coach, always a coach

Three years ago, my mother, a very young 70 at the time, decided it was time to retire. She’d spent her entire working career at the same place, a tiny high school in suburban New Jersey.

Hired out of college as an English teacher there, she finally left, one master’s degree and more than 40 years later — or, as I used to joke, just before they renamed the building after her — as a guidance counselor.

And she was terrified, convinced she’d be bored and worried that she’d never have enough to fill the hours she used to cram with work.

Read more: espn.com

Spurrier says only SEC division games should count

Let me preface this by saying that I actually like Steve Spurrier. He is a great coach, he changed the SEC with what he accomplished at Florida and he doesn’t cheat (although “suspending” former quarterback Stephen Garcia five times without forcing him to actually miss a game certainly set new standards for enabling and being disingenuous).

But Spurrier’s latest idea is beyond looney.

read more: blogs.ajc.com

Doc: Do not call them ‘student-athletes

The five graduates appeared on the podium to announce their departures from the prestigious Kentucky School of Basketball. They flipped their metaphorical tassels on national TV. All that was missing was Pomp and Circumstance, and the expected job offers from the best professional basketball corporation in the world.

The live TV announcement provoked mild nausea and illustrated nicely how out of whack we are when it comes to sports. Imagine if ESPNU offered similar air time for MIT graduates: “Here they are, ladies and gentlemen, your future Nobel laureates, atom smashers and students of the human genome!’’

Read more: news.cincinnati.com

Position U. pass catchers: A look at the 2012 draft

While the number of wide receivers drafted basically has held steady over the past five drafts, the number of tight ends has changed drastically.

There have been between 28 and 35 wide receivers selected in each of the past five drafts. But just 12 tight ends were selected last season, a drop-off of eight from 2010 and seven from ’09. Indeed, while there were 55 tight ends drafted from 2008-10, there were just 12 selected in both ’11 and ’07.

Interestingly, though, while there were 35 wide receivers drafted in 2008, there weren’t any first-rounders; that was the first draft without a wide receiver taken in the first round since 1990. Meanwhile, there was no tight end drafted in the first round last year; that was the first time that had happened since 1999.

Read more: sports.yahoo.com

Kentucky Wildcats players set to reveal NBA draft intentions

OKLAHOMA CITY National player of the year Anthony Davis isn’t giving away whether he and four teammates from national champion Kentucky will declare for the NBA draft at a news conference Tuesday.

But with the possibility that all of his starters could leave college early, coach John Calipari said: “My guess is we’ll need a new batch.”

SMU target Larry Brown assembling coaching staff, looking at Kentucky asst

As SportsDay’s Kate Hairopoulos reported earlier today , it’s becoming increasingly evident that Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown is SMU’s top choice to become its next men’s basketball coach.

The feeling seem to be mutual. After Brown visited with SMU officials over the weekend, he came away with a glowing report of his time on the Hilltop. And now Brown seems to be recruting assistants he could bring to Dallas with him.

According to Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski , Brown is seeking help from Kentucky head coach John Calipari and Creative Arts Agency agent William Wesley in putting a potential coaching staff together.

Sources told Wojnarowski that current Kentucky assistant Rod Strickland, a longtime NBA point guard, has been discussed as a possible candidate to join Brown at SMU should he land the job.

Read more: dallasnews.com