It’s never too early to start talking about football as my dear friend Herms reminded me this morning in sending me this story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I suppose it was more of a challenge Herms sent as he is a Big 10+1 apologist and the Modern Gal, for those of you who haven’t been reading this blog from its inception, a Southeastern Conference supporter.
The premise of Doug Lesmerises’ proposal is to pit Big 10+1 teams against SEC teams in a weekend of festivities at somewhat neutral yet regionally relevant sites a few football seasons out and basically let the teams duke it out to claim (or further the debate on) football supremecy and to increase the value of the conferences’ early season nonconference schedules … ahem, no debate — it belongs to the SEC.
I don’t think Jim Delany bit though and I’m about 99.9% certain Mike Slive won’t either, but I say, let’s do it. We’ll let our Vanderbilt take on your Northwestern. Michigan v. LSU? Front row tickets, please. Oh and Ohio State? We’ll give you whichever team you want next in the national championship. How about Georgia? Auburn?
I’ll leave it all at that before I anger any of my dear Modern Big 10-Supporting Friends.
I love this idea, precisely for the reason you mentioned: I would take Vandy over Northwestern any day. Kentucky vs. Indiana would be a great matchup, and one that would end poorly for the Big 11.
Bring it on.
Oh please, how many games has Vanderbilt won lately? The SEC only keeps Vanderbilt around to make the conference’s graduation rates look better.
Jay: Another friend of mine’s reaction to the plan: “Bloodbath. Let’s do it.”
Herman: Well none lately, as there hasn’t been any football played lately. Five if you go back to last season, which my research shows is just one more than your school won. Vandy may be a whipping boy, but they’re our whipping boy.
Actually, Northwestern won six games last year. Count ’em, six!! That’s to say nothing of the the five bowl games we’ve been to in the last dozen years. But Northwestern fans know better than to trash talk too much. We actually hold Vanderbilt in high regard as a peer institution and would love to have their basketball program.
As for the rest of the SEC, well, given that our conferences are 9-9 against each other in bowl games over the last five years, I think SEC fans doth braggeth far too much.