DESTIN, Fla. — The top-10 preseason rankings are already piling up for LSU in year two under coach Brian Kelly.
Continuity is one of the main reasons. The Tigers are one of just two teams in the Southeastern Conference along with Vanderbilt to return its head coach, starting quarterback and both coordinators.
“Isn’t it funny that continuity is defined as Year Two?” Kelly said here Tuesday after a football coaches meeting at the Sandestin Hilton. “In this ever-changing world, that’s important. Anything you can get that gives you a little bit of a competitive advantage or give you some traction … we’ve got a little more traction.”
Asked about dealing with heightened expectations coming off a surprise run to the SEC West division title in 2022, Kelly didn’t shy away from them.
“I didn’t come down (to LSU) with the thought that this was going to be average expectations,” he said. “We talk to our players about ‘elite.’ If we’re going to talk to our players about being elite, why wouldn’t that be mirrored on the other side? We should have high expectations for our program.”
CBS doubleheaders announced
CBS and the SEC announced the network’s schedule going into its final football season with the conference, including the date of its two annual doubleheaders.
CBS will have a daytime doubleheader on Oct. 14, with games at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. It also will have a daytime/prime-time doubleheader on Nov. 4 with games at 2:30 and 6:45 p.m.
No games were announced, but the latter coincides with the date of LSU’s game at Alabama. Auburn plays at LSU on Oct. 14.
The SEC on CBS kicks off Sept. 16 with South Carolina at Georgia. The network also will have the Georgia-Florida game Oct. 28, and Missouri at Arkansas the day after Thanksgiving on Nov. 24. Its final SEC telecast will be the SEC championship game Dec. 2.
ESPN/ABC/Disney takes over in 2024 with exclusive rights to SEC games.
Gambling draws attention
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Matt Holt, the CEO of U.S. Integrity, is attending this week’s meetings to talk to coaches and administrators about the effect of sports betting.
U.S. Integrity is the firm that alerted Ohio state gambling regulators in April to suspicious betting activity on the LSU-Alabama baseball series. The suspicious activity led to an investigation by Alabama and the firing of baseball coach Brad Bohannon, who reportedly supplied information to a bettor about his team.
“There have been regular visits” by U.S. Integrity to SEC meetings, Sankey said. “This one was a pivot. One of the lessons in life is when things happen you have to adjust.”
One of the talking points here this week was the possibility of SEC football schools starting to issue NFL-like weekly injury reports to stem the “black market” of injury information.
Sankey said the SEC isn’t close to that but is considering it.
“As information becomes more and more in demand because of sports gambling, we’re going to have to think about a sophisticated response to managing our information,” Sankey said.
SEC baseball tourney talk
The SEC’s contract to play its conference baseball tournament at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium — located in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, near where the SEC is headquartered — runs out after the 2024 tournament. The conference could look elsewhere, but Sankey talked of the “incredibly healthy” relationship the league has with the city of Hoover.
“There’s something special there,” he said. “We want to be attentive to our future. I think what we’ve done there is really the envy of a lot of people.”