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Gamecock trustee: count cross-division games less
One South Carolina Board of Trustees member has a proposal to solve the "problem" of his Gamecocks missing out on the 2011 SEC championship game to Georgia, despite beating the Bulldogs head-to-head: make East division games like that onecount more than the cross-divisional games that cost Carolina the East title. That board member, Chuck Allen, recently asked Gamecock athletic director Eric Hyman to request the SEC count intra-divisional games as a full game in the standings and cross-divisional games as only a half-game. If put into practice, the change would have given the 2011 Gamecocks -- 5-0 against the East, but just 1-2 against the West, including a road loss to an Arkansas team Georgia missed -- a trip to Atlanta.
?This (proposal) takes the randomness out of the non-divisional schedule,? Allen told the Anderson (S.C.) Independent Mail. ?It doesn?t eliminate it, but it does reduce it. It just seems fair that the team that won all its division games would be the division champ.?
Per Allen, Hyman is expected to pass on the proposal when the SEC convenes to develop a schedule for 2013 and its permanent cross-divisional rotations. Allen (and Hyman) are no doubt just as unhappy with the league's cross-divisional matchups for 2012, though, as they were for 2011, since the projected gap in the difficulty of the Gamecocks' and Bulldogs' respective West opponents has only gotten worse; Carolina will take on the Razorbacks and defending SEC champion LSU (both of which feature in Bruce Feldman's early 2012 top 10) while Georgia gets Auburn and Ole Miss.
?When I talked to (Hyman) his response to me was that he never contemplated it and so he said, ?Yes, it sounds like a good idea,'" Allen said. "'If you?ll put it in writing (Hyman said), I?ll use it as a vehicle and take it to the conference meeting and we?ll introduce the proposal, argue for it and see what we can do.??
According to the SEC, though, what the Gamecocks "can do" in the way of overhauling a system that's been in place since the league's 1992 divisional split is "not much." League associate commissioner Charles Bloom said point-blank he does not expect the measure to gain much traction.
?The philosophy of the league has always been that all conference games are weighted the same,? he told The State newspaper.
Con t'd ...
BB73;2092935; said:The Gamecocks believe they were screwed out of the SECCG because of the uneven schedule against SEC West teams for themselves and UGA. So naturally, they propose a rule change.
There's little chance it gets implemented, and if it did, it would probably screw then from the other side next time, since those things even out over time. And the cross-division games are less important now, since with the 14-team league, there are only 2 of them instead of 3.
CBS
Or don't, and you'll play for a NC.darbypitcher22;2093274; said:Win all your league games.
You'll play in Atlanta.
Easy as that.
Mark Ennis @Mengus22
"This is a corndog." RT @SEC_Chuck: Mizzou officials in B'ham today for SEC Orientation: twitpic.com/8b5nxx
Retweeted by Tony Gerdeman
Mark Richt worked hard in pursuit of five-star Valdosta, Ga., linebacker Josh Harvey-Clemons ? at one point he may have even tithed hard ? and as of this morning, it looked like his efforts had paid off: Harvey-Clemons announced on live television that he planned to attend to Georgia, at which point Richt to the opportunity to wax rhapsodic about the crown jewel of his new class:
"I'm sure glad he became a Bulldog," Richt told ESPNU during its live recruiting broadcast. "He's a great kid and he's so versatile. He can play inside linebacker, outside linebacker, he can rush the passer and, quite frankly, he's quite a wide receiver, too."And so everyone went home happy, another strong Bulldog recruiting class in the books. Or so it appeared until a little 5 p.m., when the UGA athletic offices closed for the day without an official letter of intent from Harvey-Clemons. When the university sent out a list of 18 new signees, the No. 1 player in the state was nowhere to be found ? apparently, because his grandfather was nowhere to be found.