DESTIN, Fla. – University of Georgia president Michael Adams, a 15-year veteran of the SEC's annual spring meetings here, expects this year’s get-together to stand out.
“I’m not sure we’ve had a Destin meeting in a long time with as much of a substantive agenda as I expect [this time],” Adams said last week. “… The normal swirl is a little greater swirl this year because of the issues surrounding football.”
The meetings, which begin Tuesday and run through Friday, will draw presidents, athletic directors, coaches and other administrators from the SEC schools. The dominant topic will be college football’s apparent movement toward a four-team playoff that would crown the national champion beginning in the 2014 season.
The SEC is a big backer of a playoff conceptually, and Adams expects the presidents of the conference schools to hash out -- and vote upon -- such details as how the field should be selected, where the games should be played and what the role of the bowls should be.
“I think we will come out of Destin with an SEC position on these matters,” Adams said. “But there are a lot of moving parts here, and I think we have to be respectful of the opinions of the Big Ten and the Pac-[12] and the Big 12 and the ACC and everybody else. . . . I do think we can get closure on a solid SEC position.”
Getting there, though, could be an interesting process.
“This [issue] is one sort of like coaches’ salaries and contracts -- it kind of gets the presidents’ blood moving a bit,” Adams said. “I think there will be some strongly held opinions among the presidents about how those questions ought to be answered.”
Assuming the presidents reach a consensus, SEC commissioner Mike Slive will carry the league's position to a June 20 meeting of the BCS commissioners in Chicago. That will be followed by a June 26 meeting in Washington of the chancellors and presidents who oversee the BCS.
“I don’t think there is any belief that some form of playoff is not going to move forward,” Adams said.
He became one of the early university presidents to advocate a playoff when he pitched an eight-team model four years ago. His view then -– “and I’m still pretty close to it,” he said -– was to maintain the bowl system and incorporate it into a playoff.
“I think the bowls deserve a lot of consideration, given what they have done for us through the years,” Adams reiterated last week. “I don’t think you walk away from your friends.”
Still, Adams made clear that the landscape has changed for everyone involved in college football’s postseason.
The bowl alliance announced earlier this month between the SEC and the Big 12 unmistakably underscored that change.
“I think there was both a protection factor and a leverage factor that went into [the SEC-Big 12 agreement],” Adams said. “Our responsibility is to protect the SEC regardless of what happens nationwide, and that’s what we were trying to do there.”
The alliance provides protection by ensuring that teams from the two leagues –- the conference champs if available, other teams if the champs are in the playoffs -- would meet in an undetermined bowl game that is certain to yield a lucrative TV deal. And the alliance provides the leagues with leverage in playoff politics, balancing the Big Ten/Pac-12 Rose Bowl partnership.
A football playoff won’t be the only major issue on the table at the SEC meetings, where Texas A&M and Missouri will be full participants for the first time. They begin play in the conference this fall.
The SEC this week expects to set football and men’s basketball conference-schedule formats for 2013 and beyond. All indications are that the football format will remain at eight conference games: six against division opponents, one against a permanent inter-division opponent and one against a rotating inter-division opponent. That is the same format previously adopted on a one-year basis for the 2012 season.
Keeping one permanent inter-division opponent is important to Georgia, which wants to preserve the traditional annual game against Auburn.
“I feel real good about that one unless something comes up,” Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said.
Also expected this week: a decision on a format for the 14-team SEC men’s basketball tournament, which probably will include play-in games for the four bottom seeds; the creation of a task force on the issue of safety and concussions in football; and discussion of renegotiating the league’s TV contracts, which eventually could lead to the launch of an SEC cable network.
