Oklahoma and Texas Joining the SEC and What it Means For College Football
By: Justin Donofrio
The rumors of Oklahoma and Texas going to the SEC are swirling and it really is not surprising. Starting next week. Oklahoma and Texas will start the process of joining the SEC. They need 75% of the vote to get in. Out of the fourteen universities in the conference, they need eleven votes to get accepted. Right now, the only school definitely voting no is Texas A&M. They left the Big 12 a few years ago to create their identity because they were always Texas’s little brother. The one other school that would vote no is Missouri. I don’t think anyone else in the SEC would not want the biggest brands in college football to join. This is not the first team both schools have ventured out and tried to find another league. Back in 2010, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas and Texas Tech all just about left to join the Pac 10. It makes sense for Oklahoma as they have one six straight Big 12 titles and want a new challenge. Also, we have seen Oklahoma struggle especially defensively in the College Football Playoffs against Alabama, Georgia and LSU. Now if they go to the SEC they will get those types of players that end up at SEC schools. Texas has been in the middle of the pack lately in the Big 12 but going to the SEC improves their brand even more. Another reason would be if other teams are coming into Texas and beating them out for recruits and being the SEC they have a better chance to keep guys home. For both schools as well they will get more money for being in the SEC from the TV deal with ESPN which starts in 2024 a 10 year contract for around $300 million. This only makes both of their brands even bigger.
What this could mean for the rest of college football is that the sport is one step closer to the power 5 conference’s splitting away from the group of 5 and the NCAA. Now with the new NIL rules in effect, it’s not an amateur sport anymore. The SEC turns into a super conference with 16 teams. I believe that the ACC, Big 10 and Pac 12 conferences could go to 16 teams as well. This is going to start a whole new wave of conference realignment. The last conference realignment was all about adding new teams in new areas to get more eyeballs on the new conference networks, like the ACC Network and SEC Network. Now with people cutting cable and streaming is becoming the new way to watch TV, conferences want to build their league stronger enough where if conferences go on streaming services people are going to pay to watch. Last week, the president of the NCAA Mark Emmert said that the NCAA holds too much power and wants to restructure. In college football the NCAA doesn’t really govern anything in college football they leave it to the conferences. The NCAA is a lot more involved in college basketball. I also think that this could mean the beginning of the end for the Big 12 because they don’t have another big marquee team. The sport of college football is about to change forever.
Justin co-hosts a weekly podcast called Sports Talk with R & J. It airs Wednesday’s at 2pm with Clovercrest Media Group. You can learn more about it here:
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