Tony Barnfart

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South campus pales in comparison to north campus.

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I was on south campus for the first time in ages Saturday and actually thought it was really pretty. The trees seem to have grown up and gotten big and it was just green and pretty everywhere compared to what I remember. Sure, some of the 60s architecture will never be north campus cool, but I was pleasantly surprised....and this is somebody who spent 90% of my time north of Baldwin Street after freshman year.

I look at Vanderbilt and Alabama as kind of equally shitty polar opposites. Following Saban will be suicidal, and "tradition" is more of a fan's asset. But Auburn may be the "worst" job in the conference given their place beside the death star. Georgia is tough to beat for the combo of resources and a fan base conditioned to coming up short and having a modicum of patience. I think Mark Stoops has a GREAT job at Kentucky too. You can be competitive and make a stack of money and live in the same place while all the pressure is on John Calipari.

I could see the subscription world inversely tracking the stadium attendance, we-need-butts-in-the-seats-world...….not in some conspiratorial way that artificially drives live attendance, but right now there is kind of a growing disconnect in price/demand between the two. The in-home experience is increasingly awesome and extremely cheap for the experience and convenience it provides. Meanwhile, mediocre to poor seats in the stadium for the most part cost too much money at their advanced (non-scalped) face price+donation.

It would take some pretty big data points to sort of get your head around, but I could definitely see a future where the price point for nose bleed seats is comparable to a season TV subscription.....or maybe your TV subscription price is lowered if you also buy nose-bleed seats. In any case, the march of non-traditional streaming TV and their big data metrics are going to collide right at the time live attendance declines hit freak out mode when all the boomers are too old or have passed away.

4 of the 6 original SEC East teams have PERMANENT ACC in-state opponents on Thanksgiving weekend. A 9th conference game would create 10 PERMANENT opponents for this not-insignificant portion of the conference and force them to choose between (1)abandoning their historic rival or (2) the ability to have any scheduling flexibility.

Your desire to nationalize the sport for dubious reasons of fairness do not trump our interest in preserving things we deem valuable, monetarily or otherwise. This isn't difficult.