Yesterday afternoon news officially broke that ESPN had signed Paul Finebaum to a five year contract. The deal calls for 100 TV appearances a year and a simulcast of Finebaum's radio show on the upcoming SEC Network, set to debut in August of 2014.

It's a smart decision that fills up several hours of programming year-around on the upcoming SEC Network. Putting radio shows on television works pretty well already and is a cost-effective duality. ESPN pioneered the strategy in sports with multiple shows now airing daily and NBC and CBS have followed up on the decision, placing Dan Patrick and Tim Brando front and center on the NBC Sports Network and the CBS Sports Network. It would be a pretty big shocker if Fox didn't also have a radio show on television when FoxSports1 and FoxSports2 debut this August.   

But the biggest aspect of this deal is the message that the SEC is sending to the college sports universe. 

Joe Paterno and Penn State officials conspired to protect Jerry Sandusky from prosecution in 2001 after Mike McQueary reported seeing Sandusky raping a young boy in the football locker room. That's the only conclusion that any reasonable person can draw from CNN"s blockbuster Friday night report uncovering multiple emails discussing the Sandusky incident between Penn State president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley, and vice president Gary Schultz.

Based on the emails it appears that Joe Paterno was the driving force behind the decision not to report Sandusky to authorities.

According to athletic director Tim Curley the decision not to report Sandusky was made after a meeting with Joe Paterno. "After giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe (Paterno) yesterday, I am uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps."

Curley, a former Penn State football player under Paterno, buckled under the wishes of his old coach, calling an audible that led to a conspiracy of silence. A conspiracy, that was he still alive, would probably lead to criminal charges being filed against Joe Paterno.

It's scorching.

It's always hot in the South but an awful lot of y'all reading this mailbag today will be doing so in cities that have never been hotter in recorded history. Think about how crazy this is for a minute. Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Louisville -- which are all top 15 markets for OKTC -- could all hit record highs today. How do you think Al Gore reacts to this? Secretly don't you think he's rooting for the craziest weather patterns every year? I mean he went all-in on global warming. If he'd just ignored global warming -- and if Palm Beach didn't have butterfly ballots -- he'd have been elected President.

So he has to secretly celebrate bad weather. Like when the 1972 Dolphins break out the champagne every year.

Our beaver pelt trader of the week is my 20 month old son who came into my office as I was writing this mailbag, picked up the Athlon preseason magazine and said, "I wanna read 'bout football."

It would warm my heart if it wasn't already too hot to warm my hot any more.

Godspeed, heat survivors.

You know how the television networks always claim they aren't involved in conference expansion?

Yeah, they're lying.

How do we know? Because yesterday we finally got our conference expansion smoking gun.

The Oklahoman uncovered memos from Chuck Neinas that specifically name networks, executives, and assess their opinions on Big 12 expansion. The network TV consensus from ESPN and Fox? Only Notre Dame is a positive addition to the Big 12. Quoth the Neinas memo: “Both representatives of ESPN/ABC and Fox Sports indicated that Notre Dame's involvement with the Big 12 Conference would increase the value of the conference relative to future television and also improve the image of the conference nationwide.”

Oh, there's more.

“Our television partners agreed that the only new member that would enhance the Big 12 value for television was Notre Dame,” Neinas wrote.

Damn you Alabama, just when I think your fans can't get any crazier, this video arrives.

Yes, it's really an Alabama fan in a number 14 jersey singing along to "Call Me Maybe."

I mean, there are no words.

The level of diabolical genuis that even leads to this idea percolating inside any mind is just...well... it's downright extraordinary. 

Seriously, you have to watch this. 

Then we have to buy the Alabama van and go pick this guy up.  

This is just a comedy pyramid.

Kate Upton has no discernible talent.

She can't act, she's not a very good dancer, and she doesn't have the traditional body of a supermodel.

But what she does have is a very specific set of assets.

Namely, two of them.

Her boobs.

And her boobs are enough to probably make her fifty million dollars or more.

God bless those glorious, natural boobs.

The BCS is dead.

Long live the BCS.

Yesterday college football's slow revolution came to a predictable close. Back in January SEC commissioner Mike Slive said that he saw a playoff coming. Nearly six months later, it's a reality. We know most of the details -- there will be a selection committee, the semi-finals will be played inside the existing bowl structure, and the top four teams will be chosen. Given the political parameters, I believe that college football's oldest generation got everything right.  

Except for one thing.

The playoff doesn't start until the 2014 season.

Which is confusing the hell out of an awful lot of fans. In this day and age how many industries announce a drastic improvement and then table its implementation for two years?

Our beaver pelt trader of the week is easy this week.

We've got multiple winners -- it's the old guys in charge of college football -- Mike Slive, Jim Delany, Jim Swofford, DeLoss Dodds, and Chuck Neinas.

As I wrote yesterday, we all owe them a debt of gratitude for the way that the've brought together a four-team playoff.

And we also have LeBron James, NBA champion.

Now we're off and running to the mailbag.

Three years ago I asked SEC commissioner Mike Slive whether he foresaw a college football playoff anytime soon. He grinned and shook his head, "I think," Slive said, "you'll have to wait for us to die off." The "us" in question was his generation of college football power brokers. Yesterday a four-team playoff became a reality and those same men who Slive once said needed to die off led the charge for change.

Slive will receive much of the credit for college football's playoff, and deservedly so, but that misses the point. This was a win for all the old guys out there, a generation who wouldn't change, suddenly did the right thing and evolved with the times, strengthening their sport in the process.

Since the process began Slive has wanted neutral site games, he's wanted the top four teams over conference champions, and he's favored a seeded four-team playoff.

All of those goals have been attained.

Make no mistake, in a life full of victories this is the biggest victory of a Slive's professional life. The most lasting and permanent change, this is college football's version of Nixon going to China, the Berlin Wall coming down, an existing world order that many said would never be altered collapsing. Yes, this is Slive's final valedictory to the sport he loves but it's also something more, a triumph of aging men who put aside their own personal interests and finally buckled down and did what was right for college football. The Big 12's Chuck Neinas is over 80, Mike Slive will turn 72 in a little over a month, ACC commissioner John Swofford is 64, the Big Ten's Jim Delany is 64 as well. Toss in Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds who is 72 and you've got a collection of powerful men nearing retirement age.

Harvey Updyke's trial is about to begin in a courtroom near Auburn University.

It's been about eighteen months since Updyke first gained prominence as Al from Dadeville, the Finebaum caller who poisoned a tree and set loose a maelstrom of media coverage and indignation. Since that time I've gotten to know Harvey pretty well. I've talked to him on the phone a great deal, I've met him at Alabama games, and -- while I'm no psychologist -- truth be told, Harvey is a pretty decent guy. Odds are if y'all met him at a family barbecue or got stuck in a line beside him at the DMV he'd strike you as pretty ordinary too. Like a lot of us he's a huge SEC fan. Unlike a lot of us he did something really, really dumb when his favorite team lost a football game -- he tried to kill trees at Auburn.

I understand that was an offensive and deranged act, but it wasn't the crime of the century that requires we lock him up and throw away the key.

I'd be shocked if Updyke is a threat at all to society now.