Talking points: the politics of division

Tennessee football

• [crickets]
• There is the harrowing experience of fellow Vol fan and blogger Ghost of Neyland at 3sib. Stop by and tell him you're glad all turned out well.

Tennessee basketball

• Bruce Pearl called John Calipari a couple of weeks after Cal took the Kentucky job to thank him for the secondary effect of increasing the Tennessee staff's salaries despite the fact that no one from the University of Memphis actually ever called Pearl. Pearl said he wouldn't have talked even if they had called. Market activity does have a way of triggering market adjustments across the board.

SEC

• Nick Saban is schooling Alabama fans, telling them they played a role in last year's embarrassing Sugar Bowl loss:
  

  There's very little interest from our fans, our players or anybody else to play in the Sugar Bowl, which to me is a tremendous opportunity. I tried to tell everyone, you're only going to remember one thing about this game and that's the outcome. So there's no interest, there's no passion and everybody is embarrassed because of how we played. Well, it's because you didn't have any passion for it, you didn't have any interest in it, you didn't have any enthusiasm to do it, and that's across the board. And that's not right. We go to a BCS bowl game, everybody ought to be positive and enthusiastic about what we're doing.

  For the record, I think he's mostly right. Symbiosis, people.
• SB Nation blogs Team Speed Kills (SEC) and The Rivalry, Esq. (Big 10) have launched a series on the ten best games between the SEC and the Baker's 10. The Rivalry, Esq. kicked things off with the 2007 Capital One Bowl between No. 10 Wisconsin and No. 12 Arkansas, and Team Speed Kills followed up with the 2006 Outback Bowl between No. 9 Florida and Iowa, during which the Hawkeyes were totally ripped off of a chance to tie the game due to a bad call on a recovered onside kick.

NCAA

• Dawg Sports rebuts an argument from Dr. Saturday and MGoBlog and by asserting that division only complicates matters on the question of conference superiority in the NFL Draft. Team Speed Kills rebuts Dawg Sports' rebuttal.
• Hail to the Orange is embarrased at "the ever-expanding glut of University-sanctioned merchandise."
• The NCAA tells Mark Richt he can't go honor a recruit with a 5.12 GPA who has made nothing but straight As since kindergarten with his presence at graduation. Rules just get in the way sometimes, eh?