Prepare to be judged. (Getty Images)

We continue our curious streak of SEC West news with this tidbit out of Tuscaloosa: Reports are circulating that Alabama GA Derrick Crudup Jr. was arrested last week for misdemeanor drug possession. (We regret to inform you that you’ve all already been beaten to the “Roll joints!” joke by intrepid reader @BobbyBigWheel.)

Al.com has posted a university response signifying Bama’s ascension to the summit of the non-quote-quote art form: “Alabama spokesman Doug Walker said the athletic department is ‘aware of the situation and will take the appropriate action at the appropriate time.’” From such a famously PROCESS-oriented institution, we’d expect nothing less.

An SEC television network could be a thing! (Again!) From Sports Business Journal:

The 14-team conference has been negotiating with both networks this year after the SEC expanded with Texas A&M and Missouri. That triggered a clause in the SEC’s deal that allows the league to go back to the negotiating table with its partners [...] The bigger negotiation is with ESPN, and talks appear to revolve around an SEC-branded cable channel that could launch as early as 2014.

For viewers of a certain age, this reemerging possibility triggers one thought and one thought only:

Is the SEC Network going to get Dave, Dave and Dave back together?I hope so.

— CAPS LOCKA FLAME (@matt_T) May 21, 2012

I suppose this would be the ideal time to bring our secret Jefferson Pilot Sports Preservation Society aboveground. #teamdave #allofthem

— Holly Anderson (@SIHolly) May 21, 2012

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The Volunteers are looking to outrun the actual and metaphorical storm clouds gathering over Neyland.
(Holly Anderson/SI)

Man plans, God laughs

Tennessee’s Derek Dooley estimated at last summer’s SEC Media Days that he’d be taking the field in the fall with a roster composed of 70 percent freshmen and sophomores. He’s got 19 returning starters for 2012, mostly juniors now. But is that a positive, given last season’s gutting, galling results? Dooley paused for a moment in his office on the afternoon of his third spring game as head coach of the Vols. “You know, that’s a good question.”

The Vols went 5-7 in 2011. Tennessee’s last 5-7 season, in 2008, followed a 10-win 2007 campaign and division title for Phil Fulmer. It was his second losing season in 16 full years as UT’s head coach, and it got him fired. Dooley is now 11-14 in two seasons on Rocky Top, where new university leadership thought a fourth head coach in five years might be a bit much. But in six years? Almost sounds reasonable in these impatient times, where coaches like Turner Gill are being canned two years into massive rebuilding projects like Kansas.  Three years is almost certainly not enough time in which to judge Dooley’s reign in Knoxville given the maelstrom of misery he inherited, but if Tennessee doesn’t turn it around on the field in 2012, it’s almost certainly all he will get.

“We’re not there yet,” Dooley told SI.com, tracing the scars on the Volunteers left by Fulmer’s ousting and Lane Kiffin’s subsequent bolting. ”But all those anchors are in the past. Between three head coaches in three years, five strength coaches in that short time, a change in the presidential level, a change at the athletic director level, the NCAA cloud hanging over our program, and of course all the attrition. It put us in a challenging position, but the good news is, that’s a thing of the past. We have a lot more maturity. We’re a little bit older.

“And sometimes, when you have a really bad season, there’s the embarrassment pushing you, of ‘We don’t want this to happen again.’”

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Paul Johnson and Jon Barry won the 2011 Chick-fil-A Bowl Challenge charity golf tournament. Paul Johnson is clearly as bewildered as we are to learn he excels at the serene sport of golf. (Abell Images)

The Chick-fil-A Bowl’s annual charity golf tournament kicks off this weekend, forcing 16 ACC and SEC skippers to mute their phones (probably), partner up with celebrity alums from their current programs and battle for scholarship dollars in the carefully sculpted wilds of Georgia. The pairings for the main event have been released. We have some thoughts.

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Well, that clears THAT right up:

Fan: “Can you explain how it was decided A&M to SEC West and MU to SEC East?” Slive: “No.”

— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) March 27, 2012

Former Tar Heel Deunta Williams accused the SEC of paying players after the NCAA issued sanctions against North Carolina Monday. (AP)

It’s Bitter Recriminations Tuesday in the great state of football, as the UNC fraud-and-bennies case is festooned with punishments and the snit-pitching engine gets fired up. Our quote of the day, via the Charlotte Observer:

[Former Tar Heels safety Deunta Williams] said the NCAA was out to make an example of North Carolina and that the organization ignores what happens at SEC schools. “What happened at Carolina is child’s play compared to what happens at the SEC,” Williams said. “The SEC pays for players. I’m not afraid to say it, but the NCAA doesn’t go after them.”

SEC commissioner Mike Slive may bear a strong resemblance to a Christmas elf, but before you accuse him of running a wonderland workshop of illegal benefits, Mr. Williams, consider that the 2010 season, hampered at all turns by this investigation, began with your Tar Heels losing to LSU by less than a touchdown despite playing without the services of approximately eleventeen athletes (including you). If the SEC was forking over little origami swans made of money at the same time you were accepting those free trips to California, take heart that it wasn’t very good at it.

Assorted bits of light reading to speed you through your Friday.

• Fear the Fruit. Delta State’s “Fear the Okra” campaign continues to delight and horrify in equal measure.

• Welcome to the College Football Hall of Fame Tent, sponsored by Coca-Cola. We prefer to think this is just a power play enacted as sort of a protest movement against those who would block the enshrinement of Stephen Garcia’s hair.

• What, no Sam Bradford? Starting Monday, you can vote for RGIII’s EA Sports sidekick.

• All in the graven idol game. Auburn’s Heis-men statues will be unveiled at the Tigers’ spring game. We’re holding out for a statue of Pat Dye.

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Ken Ard resigned his post as South Carolina's Lt. Governor following an ethics scandal that included spending campaign funds on a hotel room for the 2010 SEC Championship Game. (AP)

Bear with us as we celebrate a rare but relevant political detour Friday! Emphasis added for reasons that will quickly become obvious:

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) – South Carolina Lt. Gov. Ken Ard has resigned from his position following an almost year-long ethics scandal.

Ard’s ethics trouble began shortly after he was elected in 2010. Campaign disclosure forms showed he had been using campaign funds for things like a hotel room for the 2010 SEC Championship, gas, food, meals, airfare across the country, postage, advertising, phone services, and consulting.

And all he got for his troubles was an ethics investigation and a highly public pantsing of his team at the hands of Auburn. Look, we’re not cheerleading political corruption over here, but YOU try finding a hotel room within comfortable driving distance of the Georgia Dome, especially when the season’s already started and particularly on a government salary. Alabama fans book up everything within 20 miles five years in advance, just in case. MARRIOTT POINTS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP, PAAAOWL.

It's not often Nick Saban talks about his feelings -- or smiles. (US PRESSWIRE)

Alabama intends to put multiyear scholarships on the table, which is super fun for us because it means we get to hear about Nick Saban’s feelings:

“We’re going to offer four-year scholarships,” Saban said. “Our whole conference is going to do it, all the schools, I think.

“And we’re happy to do it.”

We will, of course, take any excuse to repost our all-time favorite Saban anecdote, from the 2008 Georgia-’Bama game, but this is a particularly opportune moment:

There even were conflicting reports that he smiled in the victorious locker room.

“Yes, he smiled and told us he loved us,” Reamer said.

“No,” said cornerback Javier Arenas.

“Maybe,” laughed quarterback John Parker Wilson.

“I’m excited,” said Saban, looking not the least bit excited.

Obie gets to take off the suit (probably), but staging December and January games can be a full-time gig. (AP)

We joked Monday about how we would’ve loved to work for the Fiesta Bowl during the John Junker heyday, because who doesn’t enjoy attending $30,000 birthday parties? But you, gentle readers, may be as surprised to learn that bowl employees work more than four days a year as our own mother was to learn that we work more than four months. While recuperating from the crush of bowl season, Campus Union spoke with bowl worker bees and executive types busy putting bows on their 2011 games while laying the groundwork for the 2012 postseason. Here’s what we learned.

Months of moving parts

Every postseason college football contests maintains a year-round calendar of sorts, though we were surprised on both ends of the spectrum by just how many and how few year-round employees are retained by certain games. (For comparison’s sake: The Outback Bowl employs five year-round staffers; the Music City Bowl has nine, most of whom double up with duties to the Nashville Sports Council; and the Orange Bowl has 30, with plans to bring on an additional nine full-time positions this year to accommodate preparations for hosting the BCS title game.) The timeline varies wildly based on available personnel, resources, the organization’s presence in the community and how the game approaches its own team selection process. The first scout I personally laid eyes on last season was a very nice lady representing the Champs Sports Bowl in Morgantown in Week 3 during LSU-West Virginia. Both squads, of course, would go on to win their conferences and play in BCS bowls, but that early in the season, bowl scouts share the same disadvantage as the rest of us: All they have to go on is preseason rankings and their own prognostications.

Still, for a game like the Chick-fil-A Bowl, which draws from two of the more voluminous conferences, scouting all potentially eligible teams in person in a single season is a daunting task. Volunteer CFA scouts go out in Week 1 to begin assessing various SEC and ACC squads, though the bowl’s selection committee does not convene until November.

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