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If Texas is really ready to go $7mm or more per year, their effective list is almost everyone in college or pro football.

I think the coaching choice is going to be driven by the timeline. If you look at the guys playing in the BCS championship game, it is in their best interest to string Texas along. One of them will be able to leverage the win and Texas into a huge payday.

If Texas is looking to get someone right away, you can scratch the NFL guys and the two coaches in the BCS championship game.

Of the remainder, would it hurt to try and money whip someone like Urban Meyer?

At the end of the day, I think it will most likely be a tier 2 guy. The most likely tier 2 candidates are

1) Briles
2) Smart
3) Fitzgerald
4) Franklin

I think that Franklin and Fitzgerald have a bit of an advantage because of the academic handicap that they have been working under, their background will impress Bill Powers.

There is a fairly influential group of alumni that are avid supporters of Briles. He is one of the best spread guys in the country. He knows Texas, is well respected by the high school coaches and it makes you wonder what he could accomplish with better talent and resources. Kirby Smart has come up recently as well. He has been very smart about his career so far, in terms of waiting for the right job. Texas has the resources for him to compete for a championship and it is likely he puts his name in the hat.

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ESPN is taking a bath on that boondoggle and has adequate motivation to shunt what should be a game of regional or national interest into a lower tier to prop up their bad investment.

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Nope they are making money this year. When they got Comcast they now have 60% of the state. The next shoe to drop is Time Warner in Houston or Dish or Direct TV. It is all incremental profit for ESPN at this point.

BTW I agree with you, I wouldn't want my team to be blacked out either. If LSU played Texas, the game would be an ABC/ESPN game in Baton Rouge and a Fox game in Austin. There is no way it would fall to the LHN.

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I don't see that from a SEC perspective.

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You should, the SEC is pushing harder then any conference for it.

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Great, but no one wants to do a home & home with Texas if Texas is going to restrict their home game to a network no one wants to pay for.

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That is a misconception. The LHN games are the tier 3 games (think pay per view games that wouldn't be picked up by the networks). LSU is a huge draw and would be televised nationally.

The Division 4 concept is closer then people think. There are a lot of reasons to do it but at the end of the day the driving force is money.

I am guessing of course but it will eventually turn into something like playoffs in other sports and you would go from 4 to 8 to possibly 16 games.

The multiple 8 team leagues is an idea to actually benefit bigger conferences like the SEC. If the SEC was in two 8 team leagues that played round robin, then they would get two teams into the playoffs every time.

The 5 conference champs plus three at large would be a plan that is advantageous for a team like OU or Texas. Neither has to play a conference championship game so winning out is all that would be needed.

On a side note, one of the potential negatives for this structure is non conference games. As a Texas fan, I have always wanted to do a home and home with LSU. Would there be motivation for either school under this playoff plan to ever play each other? It would all be about winning the conference.

"As far as recruiting, no offense, but I'd take the top recruits from Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana any day over the top kids from Texas. Texas high school football produces too many soft kids who run the spread -- AL/GA/LA produce the monsters who have made the SEC what it is today."

No offense taken, this is just a conversation. If you look in the NFL right now there are more players from Texas then any other state followed closely by Florida. The NFL talent includes 10 current QBs for example.

One of my personal knocks on Mack is that while he recruits the Rivals list well, he doesn't necessarily develop talent well. In addition I think that he spends too much time in Texas and not enough time recruiting border states.

If you take a more industrious coach who pulls 15 top 50 kids from Texas each year and then pull 1 or 2 kids out of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana ect... it could be a very different result.

1) If Texas beats Baylor and is co-champ of the conference, i am not sure that Brown goes.

2) Assuming Brown does go, it is foolish to think that any coach out there might not be in play. There are people at Texas pushing and the right coach could end up being the highest paid coach in college or pros.

3) It is not a question of matching imho. If Bama loves Saban (for instance) why not pay him $8mm per right now? If Texas comes hard after Saban or Meyer or anyone else, there is a chance they get their guy. Big money, big facilities, ESPN network, fertile recruiting, no significant in state competition, Austin is a heck of a town.

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You are exactly right. He is a great player evaluate. Also a great guy. There were people at A&M that wanted him to remain as HC regardless of how they preformed on the field just because he was such a good leader of the young men

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When he was with the Texans, his kids went to school with mine. He and his wife adopted a war orphan from Central America, no parents loved their kids more.

I am going with Art Briles. I don't think that Gundy will leave OSU because 1) He played there 2) He thinks he can win it all there 3) Pickens and other alumni will pay him whatever they need to to keep him.

Briles on the other hand is looking for bigger and better things. Just a little history, Houston was warmed over dog crap forever until Briles came in and righted the ship. A lot of Sumlins immediate success was due to Briles and the work he did. Briles is a spread guy and one of the best in the country at it. At Baylor, he has always had issues getting enough good kids so he tends to put his best players on offense. At Tennessee he will have the facilities and support to field a complete team. It would be a great hire for the Vols.

I know there is a ton of football left to be played so this is very premature.

Hypothetical 1) If Bama wins the SEC Championship game over the SEC East and gets invited to the BCS championship game, does the Sugar Bowl get to pick who they want from the SEC or do they have to take the loser of the SEC championship?

2)Same situation, is there any way that the Sugar Bowl would ever pick a SEC team with an equal record over LSU?