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. 

Trust me, Missouri fans, your fan campaign to push the Missouri Tigers in to the SEC has been a complete and total success. Now you've got to keep up the SEC fight for just a couple of more weeks. I told you earlier this week I'd give you an update based on what I'm hearing so here it is: You're still the front-runner to be the SEC's 14th. Even more so than you were a week ago. Indeed, your board of curator meeting on Tuesday just happens to be the day before the SEC athletic directors will be meeting on Wednesday. Coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.

Let's dive in and consider the situation that Missouri faces so you guys have better information to combat those who would argue that Missouri's fate is hemmed in by the buyout that would be owed under the Big 12 bylaws, by lawsuit threats, or by other nonexistent issues. Missouri factions that don't want to leave are saying the cost would be $40 million and that a lawsuit would ensue that could cost even more. Please. That's not the case. The actual cost to Missouri for jumping to the SEC would be in the neighborhood of $12 million. And if the school really fought it could end up being nothing at all.

Let's discuss these details so you're armed with actual facts as opposed to propaganda from those who don't want the Tigers to leave.

I have it on good authority that Tim Tebow isn’t starting anymore and is now third string quarterback behind two other players, Kyle Orton and Brady Quinn. (That’s what we sports people do, you see. We exchange sports-like information with our other sporty colleagues. It’s just a thing we do. It’s not a big deal.)   But since it’s no secret that there isn’t a shot in Hell of me actually knowing who these two men are, for the sake of this piece I immediately Googled both gentlemen. Now I don’t readily proclaim to be a sports expert (except when it comes to Black Thursday), but I will boldly make the assessment that it probably isn’t a good thing if this person is starting before you:

Yesterday's column laid out why Texas A&M and, potentially, Missouri make so much sense for the SEC. Because the league is going to start its own network. That's why new markets make so much sense. New markets make very little sense when you're talking about a nationally distributed game. All that leads to is more people watching your games. That's great, but it doesn't immediately redound to the SEC's immense benefit via subscriber fees like a network does. But if you add 31 million additional people in Texas and Missouri to your conference footprint you can start to see the plan forming -- an SEC Network is coming. And it's most likely to be in partnership with ESPN. This column is going to tell you why that's true.

But first a statement from ESPN on yesterday's column about the coming SEC Network and who the league might partner with: "The (SEC) agreement can not be reopened and there are no outs."

(But OKTC has been told that there is a contractual provision that can increase or decrease payout if the formation of the league changes).

But statements like these show you why ESPN is going to be the SEC's network partner. ESPN wants and needs to remain connected to the SEC.  

The agreement ESPN referenced is the much-talked about fifteen year deal with CBS and ESPN that runs through 2023-24. We're a little over three years into that deal and already it's outdated. How so? Well, listen to most media and they'll tell you it's outdated because subsequent to this deal the Pac 12 got an insanely lucrative deal. They'll say that the SEC's motivation behind adding Texas A&M and a 14th team is to reopen that deal with ESPN to get more television dollars based on those additions.

I think that's incorrect, I believe that when the SEC and ESPN sit down to assess what a 14 team SEC is worth to ESPN, an SEC Network majority owned by the SEC and minority owned by ESPN will be born.

This week Vinnie Verno is back making picks so you can make money. Giving y'all a head's up in advance, Verno guarantees that Alabama will cover -4 against Florida. He promises to burn his Julio Jones jerseys if it doesn't happen. Run for the hills Alabama fans.  

Even still. remember, he did win the baby back last week.

As always, if you want a real handicapper with a winning rate of nearly 70%, you need to check out my guys at Prediction Machine. They're absolutely killing this year.

The SEC has always protected its local multimedia rights packages. That's why comparing television revenue was always comparing apples and oranges. The SEC sold its tier one and tier two television rights to CBS and ESPN, but all the schools retained their tier three -- or local multimedia rights -- packages. That means that every year when you see the announced television revenue comparisons between the SEC and the Big Ten, for instance, what you're seeing is an uneven comparison. Because unlike the Big Ten and the Pac 12 -- which specifically give over all rights to the league -- every SEC school has retained the rights to sell its local multimedia packages.

So has every Big 12 school. Indeed, that's the hang-up with Texas, the Longhorn Network is a third tier rights package paid for by ESPN. While the $15 million a year has gotten a lot of attention, Texas's deal isn't astronomical relative to other SEC schools. For instance, the Florida Gators receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million a year from the Sunshine Network for their local multimedia packages. The issue with the Longhorn Network was what it did -- take the local multimedia rights and make them national. See, no one had really thought that the value existed for games like these prior to Texas's deal with ESPN.

 The money for the Longhorn Network was why Texas didn't fit in the Pac 12.   

Those local multimedia packages have different values but the Big Ten and the Pac 12 distribute all monies evenly. While the SEC distributes all of its tier one and tier two -- CBS and ESPN -- money evenly, the tier three rights are left up to the individual schools.

Yahoo's Dan Wetzel is a good friend of mine. He's a college sports muckraker. I make dick jokes. But when we get together on a podcast I rapidly pull him down to my level. We discuss where Nancy Grace's nip slip ranks in the pantheon of nip slips, Trent Richardson's wheels, the idea of an SEC final four, and break down the three biggest games of the weekend: Bama at Florida, Clemson at Virginia Tech, and Nebraska at Wisconsin. We also dive in to Texas A&M to the SEC and what it means to the league, discuss who we think should be the 14th team selected for the conference, and discuss the failure that is Lane Kiffin. 

Basically, y'all are going to love it. And you know you need something to stream to kill another day at work. 

Click here to listen.  

Plus, we discuss grandma keg stands. In particular, I'm asking y'all to come up with any other event where the approval rating crests at college -- just about everyone approves of a keg stand for college age kids -- rapidly declines to virtually a zero percent approval rating for a 45 year old man doing a keg stand, and then surges back to 100% approval rating with grandmas doing keg stands. 

In other words is there anything else in America that has a similar approval rating curve? From 100% to zero and then back to 100%.  

Two Conference Games to Watch  

Alabama at Florida (7 CT/CBS) –

Jedi master faces padawan in the Swamp on Saturday night in a prime-time matchup that could ultimately feature the two divisional front-runners in the SEC (although, in Alabama's case, LSU still will have something to say about that). As much as Nick Saban and Will Muschamp have downplayed their time working together at LSU and Miami, you know they both want this one badly. Alabama is coming off a dominant performance at home against Arkansas, while Florida dismantled Kentucky in easy fashion in Week 4. The nightcap of CBS' college football doubleheader should be a close game and could decide if one or both of these teams eventually make a trip to Atlanta. This begins a murderous month of October for Florida. A loss here could be the beginning of an ugly stretch for the Gators, while a win proves they're a real contender for the East right now.

On August 28th, 2011 Alabama running back Trent Richardson was pulled over for speeding in Chilton County, Alabama. The Crimson Tide star was going 85 in a 70 and the officer noted that he blamed the "large rims" on his vehicle for the speeding violation. What was the vehicle? A 2011 GMC Yukon which retails for in the neighborhood of $40,000 even without the added expense of new rims. Raise your hand if it makes sense that an "unemployed" athlete at Alabama with two children, no job, and a non-wealthy family could afford a brand new SUV. Put your hands down Alabama fans. Trent Richardson could be flying in his own private jet and you'd talk about how it's perfectly reasonable for him to avoid traffic this way. 

For the rest of us Richardson driving a brand new SUV raises an awful lot of questions. 

Especially when you consider that most of his money was already going to suit payments.    

LSU went to Morgantown on Saturday. While there they came, they saw, they conquered and their grandmas did keg stands longer than your grandmas can do keg stands. That's what LSU does, on the field and in the stands, it sees your petty boundary lines, laughs at them, and leaps well past them. I've known this since my Dixieland Delight trip to Baton Rouge back in 2006. As we stood in line for a port-o-potty an LSU fan decided to pee off the upper deck of Tiger Stadium. Everyone scattered, it was as if a mortar round had landed in the tailgate area, but no one was surprised. Not one single LSU fan said, "I can't believe someone just peed off the upper deck of the stadium."

LSU fans expected someone to pee off the upper deck. 

Because it's LSU. Whatever expectations you have of normalcy? Leave them behind when the Tigers come to town. By God LSU is first on the field and first in the hearts of college football fans everywhere who relish insanity, carnivals, and downright fun.

So shake off the Monday gloom, it's Grandma keg stand time.

Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Nick Saban owns Bobby Petrino.

I think he carries him around in his fancy straw hat.

Arkansas's head coach, now in his fourth year with the Razorbacks, has flirted with big wins that would announce Arkansas's ascension to the top of the SEC. But more often than not Petrino has been unable to get Arkansas over the proverbial hump, win the game that brands the Razorbacks as something other than a trendy upset pick in the league. Come September there sits the Alabama Crimson Tide, the winningest program in the South, and come September there sits another early season loss that knocks the Razorbacks from the national picture.

If it seems like we've seen it all before it's because we have, Nick Saban owns Bobby Petrino like Steve Spurrier used to own Phil Fulmer.