Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners might join the SEC

The Game Room
1

Only speculation at this point. But it would make things wildly interesting if true.

I understand this won’t be popular for similar reasons that the European Super League wasn’t welcome, but as a Horns fan I’d love this. Not only would it revive the moribund Horns-Aggies rivalry but the Big 12 had gone stale and this could create a super-SEC. With the college playoff field potentially expanding to twelve teams, UT would still stand a decent chance of making the playoffs every year nonetheless (Oklahoma is always a shoo-in no matter what). The only downside would be that Texas could officially kiss any hopes of winning a conference title goodbye; they’ll never get past the likes of Bama.

What I don’t understand is why Oklahoma State would be upset. If OU and UT leave, then Oklahoma State would be kings of the Big-12 (well, what’s left of it.)

2

Im against any conference so big that teams dont play each other once a season.
Perhaps the NCAA should eliminate the traditional conferences and create 8 conferences of 12 teams where the champions play in an 8 team tourney to decide the national championship.

3

It’s no more ridiculous than Notre Dame and Louisville being in the Atlantic Coast Conference. And, as noted, would bring back one of college football’s great rivalries, Texas vs. Texas A&M.

So sure, why not?

4

The problem is that UT can pretty much dictate terms in the Big 12, but not so much in the SEC. The Longhorn Network will probably be a big sticking point. It’s a cash cow for UT, but I can’t see the SEC agreeing to let them keep it.

5

Shouldn’t that be ‘a cash steer’ for UT? :ox:

6

They potentially lose two very lucrative rivalry games. You can say oh they can always play each other OOC, but people said that about Penn State and Pitt as well.

Secondly the TV deal the rump Big 12 would get would be terrible.

7

In my opinion, Texas pretty much ruined the Big 12 by setting up the Longhorn Network to mainly benefit Texas. Now they are stuck in a conference that barely has relevance.

8

Be careful what you wish for. Considering the caliber of the competition that you would be facing, your chances of winning a conference title would dwindle to almost zero.

9

Yes, they would because, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king.” The problem is that it would still be “the land of the blind”. Does anyone care who the MAC champion is or the Sun Belt champion is?

10

It’s already friggin’ low as it is.

UT loves to buy into the myth that it’s still a national powerhouse team. That may be true again someday, but I’d wager it’s more likely they occasionally have a good year or two between long periods of irrelevance.

11

What’s left of the Big 12 would be teams whose level of play at football is lower, and who would have less prestige. There could very well be some top high school players who want the chance to play for OSU or TT against Oklahoma or UT. Now that the opportunity to play against those schools would be gone, that would make recruiting even harder at a mid-tier school like Oklahoma State or Texas Tech.

I mentioned my recommended solution in the thread about paying NCAA athletes. Where this seems to be headed is realignment of the teams to different levels based on skill. Why not have a top level where Texas and Oklahoma play against Texas A&M and the other top SEC (Alabama, Florida, LSU, Georgia and such) schools along with teams like Notre Dame, Clemson, Ohio State, and so on. The next level down would be a division with the teams left over from the Big 12 break up, like Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, and schools from other conferences that play at similar levels (Pitt, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Vanderbilt, Washington State, Arizona, etc.). That seems to be where things are headed any way, so why not formalize it? Each division would have their own championship, and a school like Oklahoma State wouldn’t be going into every season knowing their season is already over before the first game is even played.

As for the athletic directors not wanting to comment, IMHO that strongly implies this isn’t some made up rumor which could be easily denied.

12

Politically, this just isn’t possible. Go ahead and tell Texas Tech and Oklahoma State that they’re “the next level down” and watch politicians from those states explode. These are almost all public universities that are accountable to state governments, and no state is going to sit by while one of their schools is “relegated.”

13

The NCAA already has divisions, and the lower levels are full of public schools from those same states, including my hometown Texas A&M - Kingsville Javelinas. I don’t know of anyone who wants to see them playing against bigger schools. The reality is that the schools in the lower half of the FBS have no shot at competing for a championship. The schools at the top want to be in their own super conferences. The de facto division is likely going to happen anyways. It’s just a question of whether the Texas Techs and Oklahoma States of the world prefer to remain big fish in a pond with giant fish, or to swim over to a different pond where they can compete against other big fish while the giant fish compete amongst themselves.

14

Yeah, that’s exactly what they did that broke the camel’s back, after years of rather arrogantly treating A&M and the rest of the SWC like crap, they finally went too far, and A&M gave them both fingers and bailed to the SEC, putting themselves on a longer-term upswing, and leaving UT flailing around in an arguably second-rate conference with Oklahoma.

I’m not interested as an Aggie in bringing UT into the SEC. I mean, it would be entertaining to see them show up and acting like the SEC should be glad to have them and that they are the biggest fish in that pond, and get checked hard by the rest of the conference, but in the long term I’m not convinced it buys the SEC much really, and as far as my own school is concerned, having UT in the Big 12 is a better bet for us; we have a recruiting advantage versus them in-state by virtue of being part of a better conference, and we get more attention from the sports press than we used to, now that we’re not in UT’s shadow. Adding UT would likely make things a lot more difficult for us in that sense- recruiting and everything else sports-related would become more challenging, as it would be a direct choice between A&M and UT, not a more complicated one between the schools AND conferences.

And OK State is seeing what happened when the SWC broke up- four teams (A&M, Tech, Baylor and UT) joined with the Big 8 to form the Big 12 and stayed relevant. The other teams (SMU, UH, TCU and Rice) all took an immediate drop in prestige, and ended up in second-tier conferences, with only TCU clawing their way back into the big time. UH, Rice and SMU are all still mired in the AAC or Conference USA. OK State doesn’t want to go from being a Power 5 school to being the biggest turd in the Conference USA bowl, just because UT & OU bailed and left them in the lurch.

It’s a big piece of their internal mythology; they have it in their heads that they should be a perennial top 5 team, and that something is seriously wrong if they’re not, even though that hasn’t been the case in a long time.

That’s why I’m against it as an Aggie; the two schools (A&M & UT) are finally on something approaching a level playing field in terms of recruiting, money, popularity, etc… and I’m loath to upset that applecart in favor of our biggest in-state rivals who rode that gravy train for more than half a century already. (although in an academic and legislative sense, the two schools are staunch allies versus everyone else in the state, so there’s that to consider I suppose).

15

Steers have had a couple of their components removed, so “cash bull” might be a better analogy…

16

These things cycle. I remember when Alabama was pretty bad before Saban got there (a few 4 win seasons and even a 3 win season in the decade before Saban).

17

Right. I’m under no illusion that UT will be anything other than brutally kicked around in the SEC by superior teams - for a few years at least. But in the long run I think it would improve Texas; sink or swim.

They’d perhaps never win a conference title (as I already mentioned in the OP) but in a 12-team playoff system, that title would be a gravy-on-top thing and the real goal would be getting into the playoffs and hoping for luck once in there each year.

18

Texas would do fine in the SEC, there are plenty of bad teams in that conference to feed off of.

19

Not so much… Bevo is a steer. :slight_smile:

20

Although an an angry bull on the sidelines of a college football game could be very entertaining.