SEC, Big 12 announce partnership

[FeatheredCock]

The SEC and Big 12 champs will meet in a New Year's Day bowl game annually beginning with the 2014 season, the conferences announced Friday.

The five-year agreement will pit champions of each conference against each other "unless one or both are selected to play in the new four-team model to determine the national championship," according to a statement from both conferences.

If that were to happen, another team from the conference(s) would be selected, ensuring that the game takes place every year.

“A new January bowl tradition is born,” SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said in the release. “This new game will provide a great matchup between the two most successful conferences in the BCS era and will complement the exciting postseason atmosphere created by the new four-team model. Most importantly, it will provide our student-athletes, coaches and fans with an outstanding bowl experience.”

Added acting Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas: “Our goal is to provide the fans across the country with a New Year’s Day prime-time tradition. This is a landmark agreement between two of the most successful football conferences during the BCS era to stage a postseason event. The creation of this game featuring the champions of the Big 12 and SEC will have tremendous resonance in college football.”

We'll have more on the partnership, as we'll get thoughts from Big 12 blogger David Ubben on how this affects the Big 12.

link: http://espn.go.com/b...nce-partnership

 

[FeatheredCock]

SEC Football: New SEC Bowl with Big 12 Won't Have Huge Impact on Bowl Tie-Ins

Arkansas would have appeared in the new SEC/Big 12 bowl game following the 2010 season

Chris Graythen/Getty Images

The SEC and Big 12 announced on Friday that they will create a new bowl game following the 2014 season that will match the champion of both conferences if they are not included in the four-team playoff. If one or both conferences supply teams for the four-team playoff, other teams within the conference(s) would be selected.

In terms of today's landscape, this bowl game would jump up to the top of the SEC's non-BCS pecking order.

So how does it affect the rest of the SEC's bowl tie-ins? Using the assumption that the playoff will take the top four teams of the final BCS standings (or some variation thereof), not much.

Only three times (2006, 2008 and 2011) in the BCS era has the SEC placed two teams in the top four, but it has sent two teams to the BCS nine times. Which means that, more times than not, that at-large BCS bid would be going to the newly created SEC/Big 12 bowl.

Will the bowls lose some of their cachet as a result of this newly created game? Not really. Save for the BCS National Championship Game they're all exhibitions anyway.

What the game does do is reshape the landscape outside of the playoff to give more power to the conferences rather than bowl committees.

Yep. What the SEC and Big 12 have done is create a buffer for BCS at-large teams. Essentially, it's the Rose Bowl without the committee...or parade.

That sound you hear is money being printed at the respective offices of the SEC and Big 12.

Link: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1188332-sec-football-new-sec-bowl-with-big-12-wont-have-huge-impact-on-bowl-tie-ins?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=sec-football

 

[Garnet]

This sound good guys!