Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Mike Slive had a laundry list of impressive accomplishments achieved during his decade of running the Southeastern Conference. What lies ahead for the SEC is quite a bit vague, but the commissioner indicated Monday that the good times should continue to roll.

“We may look back and say we were a witness of a golden age in SEC athletics,” he said in addressing the Little Rock Touchdown Club.

Slive’s stopover in Little Rock and the Embassy Suites was exactly that — literally a puddle jump before a quick return to the league office in Birmingham, Ala., where the SEC continues to work out its future television rights.

With the additions of Texas A&M and Missouri in creating a 14-team league this fall, the SEC has more to offer.

“We are in deep negotiations with ESPN and CBS now,” he said.

Slive insisted with a simple “no” that the sports network powers are not insisting on a nine-game conference schedule for each league team, though an additional SEC game instead of a nonconference creampuff would seem to make that TV contract even more valuable.

It also would allow more opportunities for teams to see more opponents on a regular basis from the opposite division. The current 6-1-1 schedule structure (six common division opponents, one annual common interdivisional game and a rotating interdivisional game) developed out of the SEC’s spring meeting in Destin, Fla.

“We want to keep an open mind, and if it’s in the best interest of the teams,” Slive said. “There are a lot of different options before you went to nine (game schedule).”

After trying to come up with a 2013 schedule with new rival games, including Arkansas playing Missouri of the SEC East annually instead of South Carolina, the league chose to go with a stand-alone, one-year schedule again, as it did in 2012, Slive said. Nonconference contracts were the big issue, he said, as some teams were locked in for 2013 and made the league changes impractical for one more year.

So, Arkansas and Missouri seem more likely to begin meeting regularly in 2014. But Slive didn’t promise anything.

That season will also herald the beginning of a four-team national college football playoff, which Slive has advocated since 2004, when undefeated Auburn was denied a spot in the BCS Championship Game because Southern Cal and Oklahoma also were unbeaten.

Also, the SEC and the Big 12 will begin their Champions Bowl, to be played Jan. 1 the night following the Rose Bowl.