And you thought ESPN loved the SEC before…

Now they have 2 billion more reasons why.

The Southeastern Conference has signed a 15-year deal with ESPN reportedly worth more than $2 billion to televise sporting events, including football and men's and women's basketball.

"This agreement makes the SEC the most widely distributed conference in the country," said SEC Commissioner Mike Slive.

ESPN will have rights to every SEC home football game not on the network package and all league matchups will be shown on some outlet, including at least 20 a year on ESPN or ESPN2. That includes two primetime Thursday night matchups and Saturday night games.

15 years, and 2 billion (that's with a 'b') dollars!?!?! Think the rest of the college football world will get equal billing on ESPN from now on? Yeah, think again. I didn't think it was possible for me to hate ESPN more but they just keep pushing the boundaries.

The real issue at hand is now you have a major network with a tie in to a second major network (ABC) who has an underlining agenda. They just paid 2 billion dollars for a product (SEC) that they need to succeed so they are going to promote them every chance they get, I know I would if I paid that kind of coin. Can we really trust Kirk Herbstreit or Lee Corso when they suddenly start pushing for Florida or LSU at the end of the year when there are only three 1-loss teams left? Maybe, but you get my point it's going to tough to take ESPN as in impartial observer/reporter of college football from this point forward.

Thank you Google: Mandel blasts TNL

Well, “blasts” is a tad of an overstatement but he did question my hygiene. From the latest version of mailbag:

Stewart, seeing as how you're the Internet's premier college football pundit, is there any way you could contact the nation's journalists, bloggers and message-board moderators to orchestrate a complete moratorium on all conference supremacy debates until the end of the regular season? It was fun for a while, but good god. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and count to 10.

--Stephen, Athens, Ga.

But I'm afraid you give me far too much credit in terms of my clout in the realm of cyberspace. Have you read some of the bloggers out there? Here's a little sampling from the first few pages of a Google search involving my name: "SI's Stewart Mandel: I get paid to write 2+2=4" (jonathantu.wordpress.com), "Stewart Mandel is an idiot and I hope UGA bites him in the rear end" (Dawgsports.com) and "Stewart Mandel needs a long vacation" (thenittanyline.blogspot.com). I'm guessing you'd have a better chance getting these guys to actually shave and shower on consecutive days than participate in any idea that originated from me.

By the way when did 6 become the “first few” of anything, because my link was on page six? Anyho, thank you Google, thank you for giving me free intertubes space and thank you for putting TNL on page six of the Stewart Mandel search. He’s referring to this post a long time ago on The Nittany Line. Long story short, Mandel suggested that the Big East was one of the power conferences and the SEC was “the toughest conference in history.” Incidentally, as PSUGirl likes to point out, I was wrong about Central Florida but right about the crappiness of the Big Least. But back to the point at hand, this is one of those moments that I tip my (dirty) hat and clap my unwashed hands in sheer joy. Thank you fans of TNL for visiting daily and often so my Google clout can be raised enough that Stewart Mandel finds me. It’s only a matter of time before my fame swells to epic proportions and Hollywood comes calling to make TNL the movie – the life of a bitter sarcastic blogger. Or something like that… it’s a working title. Now if you’ll all excuse me I’m hitting the town for the night and I think I’ll skip the shower just in honor of this post.
(Big HT: JB in the comment section)

Stewart Mandel needs a long vacation

Our good friend Run from RUTS points out that Stewart Mandel has gone a little on the nutty side (batshit insanity is one of the best tags, by the way) in his College Football Mailbag:

Mailbag: Stewart, you always say that conference strength is cyclical and always seem to defend easily bash-able conferences (i.e. the Pac-10, ACC). So let's see your rank all 11 Division I-A conferences.

SM: Big East: …The top four teams -- Louisville, West Virginia, Rutgers and USF -- stack up with any league outside of the SEC.

USF!?! Huh? I think Stewart has USF confused with USC, and Big East confused with Pac-10. Wow, do you think he re-read his response before hitting submit? Then he starts down the road that's going to make me puke before the season begins the "SEC is GOD" mantra:

1) SEC: Simply put, this year's SEC could be the toughest conference in history. I'm not exaggerating. It's extremely rare for a league to not only boast so many quality teams at the top (LSU, Florida, Auburn, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee) but also so little dead weight at the bottom. Really, it's just Mississippi State. You've got two former national championship coaches, Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban, leading what may be only the seventh- or eighth-best teams in the league.

SEC speed: faster than a speeding bullet

Jesus. Just shoot me now.

Well, that just makes me want to validate this statement, so I'm announcing a new segment: the TNL SEC watch. I'm going to keep a close eye on our conference to the south because after all, why not watch the toughest conference ever? It's going to be the best football ever, right? I'm not going to bother posting about inter-conference matchups, but I'm going to keep close tabs on how the SEC does out of conference, let's see if Mr. Mandel is right. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Stewart Mandel but asinine statements like this cannot be left unchecked, and who better to do that than a lazy, obnoxious blogger who can't write?