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. 

As the Big East attempts to stave off one raid after another, struggles to hold together a fractious lot of current members who are looking elsewhere, and battles to preserve its status as the sixth major football conference in America, much discussion has centered on the likelihood that a Big East devoid of Pitt and Syracuse may lose its automatic bid to the BCS. Presently the Big East has an automatic bid through the end of the 2013 season and right now the Big East along with the SEC, the ACC, the Pac 12, the Big 12, and the Big Ten all receive automatic bids to the big bowl bonanza for their conference champions. The rules have been this way since the formation of the BCS.

If the BCS acted to strip the Big East's automatic bid this would be the first retraction of an automatic bid in BCS history.

I hinted at this in Friday's column, but the BCS stripping the Big East's automatic bid is highly unlikely. Why? There are for two primary reasons that I'll unpack in the coming column: 1. the Big East would have a whopping insider lawsuit against the BCS that could spell antitrust doom for the cartel and 2. Boston College's athletic director told the Boston Globe that ESPN encouraged it to take Pittsburgh and Syracuse from the Big East.

The end result is that the Big East, even in its weakened state, isn't likely to lose its BCS bid. If the league isn't likely to lose its BCS bid then that's a powerful incentive it can dangle to other schools, in non-BCS leagues, to bring them on board as new members. Effectively, then, the BCS bid is a Big East safety net, the net that keeps the conference from plunging into national irrelevance.  

Behold, the greatest tailgate cookie in the history of tailgate cookies.

I defy you to beat the orange pants cookie. It even has the T belt buckle. That's quality.

Sadly, this was the best play anyone in orange pants made on Saturday. UT fans desperately want Dooley to succeed because right now the Fulmer Curse owns the program. Any modicum of good news is savored. Only there really isn't any good news. First Justin Hunter went down on the first pass play of the SEC season, Now Tyler Bray is now out for the season in the second SEC game, the latest victim of the most debilitating curse in all of sports.

You can read about the Fulmer Curse here.

In the meantime, on to the Starting 11.

Knoxville, Tenn.

Barbara Dooley may not want to hear it, but by the end of October her son is going to be squarely on the hot seat at Tennessee. That's if anyone cares enough to put a coach on the hot seat at Tennessee anymore. Last week just 76,000 fans bothered to show up for the game against Buffalo. You know, Buffalo, the team Tennessee paid a million dollars to keep from playing North Carolina.

In football.

A program's biggest enemy isn't anger, frustration, dismay or even hate. It's apathy. And right now the University of Tennessee fan base is dangerously apathetic.

On Saturday night a very mediocre, undisciplined Georgia team rolled in to Neyland Stadium, once one of the fiercest home venues in all of sports, and waited for the once mighty Tennessee Volunteers, a team even more mediocre and undisciplined, to self-destruct. That finally happened on the first drive of the second half when, tied 6-6, Tennessee failed to execute an incredibly complicated play called the "snap."

What if I'd told you in May of 2010 that by October of 2011 Nebraska, Colorado, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Texas A&M, Missouri, Utah and TCU -- twice -- would all be in new BCS conferences? You'd have thought that was a pretty big deal, right? Especially if I told you that every major conference in America -- the Big Ten, the Pac 10, the ACC, the Big 12, and the SEC would all have new members. Yet, because this realignment been gradual -- I'm calling it the quiet storm -- I think the underpinnings of a seismic reconfiguration have, if anything, been underplayed as a collective whole.

In other words, every single one of these moves, pretty much, has been individualized and represented a small portion of what we thought might occur. As a result we college football fans haven't really stepped back and considered the entire picture. We've been so focused on what didn't happen, that we haven't really thought much about what has happened.  

Think about it:

June of 2010: "The Big 12 is going to die!"

Except it doesn't.

ESPN: "The Pac 16 is here!" 

Except it isn't, twice.  

Our guys at Prediction Machine play every game 50,000 times before they make any calls on the spread, fantasy stats, or survivor league picks. You can hear Paul Bessire, prediction Machine Founder, every 1:15 central time on our 3 Hour Lunch radio show. In the meantime the Titans are 3-1 and the Pittsburgh Steelers are 2-2. If the Titans win they go in to the bye week at 4-1 with a three-game homestand coming. If the Steelers win they've helped to forestall early season weakness.

How's it going to play out? The Titans will beat the Steelers a majority of the time.

Now check out the entire box score for this game.

Keep in mind that my guys at the Prediction Machine do box scores this detailed for every NFL game, many college games, and can help you with fantasy sports and survivor pools as well. 

Click here to see their work for other games. Remember that they're 70% against the spread as well.  

My love affair with Barbara Dooley, mother of Tennessee Volunteer coach Derek Dooley, is well established. I've frequently brought her on our 3 Hour Lunch radio show, I lamented her recent radio ban, and I've argued that more Momma Dooley is a Southern treasure. So you can imagine how ecstatic I was this morning to find out that Barbara was on the radio talking football again. This time coming to her son's defense on Athens' 1340 radio station because she believed Knoxville sportswriters talking about Saturday's Tennessee-Georgia game had said her beloved son was on the hot seat.

What did Barbara Dooley do when she heard this criticism? She did what any mother would do. She drove to the radio station, walked into the studio, and defended her son.  

Listen to the Dooley audio here 

Outkicking your coverage... It's kind of a big deal around this website if you hadn't noticed.  When Clay asked the old Deadly Hippos to help him come up with a name for this website, we all kept coming back to this one. 

"It's a triple entendre," we exclaimed... a true rarity. 

"The website name will be too long," said medical malpractic attorney Chris Tardio, the Debbie Downer of the group.

"I love punters!" DJ typed with glee. 

But deep down we all knew what it was really about.  All men know what it's really about.  It's about chicks.  It's about landing a girl who is so much hotter than you, you begin to question if she's legally blind, not right in the head, or just a habitual drunk. 

It's that time again. Gird your loins, ladies and gentlemen, Vinnie Verno is back making college football picks for the week. And I'm not going to lie, this is the best yet. Where else can you mix Pee-Wee Herman, a hobnail boot, a mask, and a Trent Richardson jersey? Okay, aside from every trailer park in Alabama on a Saturday night. Vinnie Verno is the answer. Dive in for his picks against the spread. And in the meantime. do you really want to make money based on statistics, analysis, and a track record of success?

Go check out my guys at Prediction Machine. They're 70% against the spread this year and they'll also break down fantasy, survivor league odds, and more on the site. Check it out here.  

Two Conference Games to Watch   Florida at LSU (3:30 ET/CBS) –

Florida's murderous month of October continues as they face their second SEC West opponent in as many weeks. Despite some early fireworks, the Gators were bruised and battered on Saturday night as they fell 38-10 at home to Alabama, a squad many believe to be among the two best teams in the nation right now. Based on early returns, we can't argue that the Tide is probably among the nation's elite. So what does Florida do for an encore? They hit the road to play the other "best team in the country" in the Bayou Bengals. Rest assured, there's no rougher two-game stretch in the country this season - at least until Tennessee repeats the feat in two weeks. LSU had an early wake-up call in a rare morning kickoff at Tiger Stadium as they sleepwalked through a 35-7 trouncing of Kentucky that was never in doubt. LSU still continues to sputter at times offensively, but there's no denying that the overall talent level across the board will be weighted heavily toward their sideline in every game before the much-anticipated Nov. 5 clash in Tuscaloosa. Defenses like the one LSU trots out simply don't come around often.

  Pre-snap Reads:

Which team overcomes their sudden issues at quarterback the quickest? As of five days ago, John Brantley and Jarrett Lee had quietly put together two of the more impressive early-season resumes among the signal-callers in the SEC. Lee had directed his team to the top of the national polls while efficiently managing an LSU offense that didn't need to put up many points in the first place. Brantley had seemingly shaken off a lot of the issues that plagued him in a dismal 2010 season, and he was adequate if not impressive in the first half against Alabama. Both quarterbacks rank among the nation's top 50 in passing efficiency and had taken firm control of their respective offenses. Two different sets of circumstances may sideline Lee and Brantley on Saturday night, though.

Missouri fans decided they wanted to join the SEC and they would not accept no for an answer. Over the past three weeks the Tigers have inundated the board of curators, administrators, and other athletic department officials demanding that the Tigers join the SEC. A few minutes ago those fans' voices were heard: Missouri officially announced its board of curators had unanimously given the chancellor of the university authority to explore conference options. Welcome to the SEC, Missouri fans, you've fought for a league bid when your administration wanted to stay in the Big 12 and risk the future. 

When the administration was too afraid to act, the Missouri fans stepped up and refused to risk the status quo. What if the Big 12 nears implosion again in a few years -- which it will -- what if Missouri is left standing when this game of conference realignment musical chairs comes to an end? Nope, Missouri fans weren't willing to risk that. 

Not hardly.