WThroughout the week, we will be taking a look back at SEC Media Days 2021. From a behind the scenes look into SportsCall, to the huge Oklahoma and Texas news, we’ll look at all the news and notes from SEC Media Days 2021.
As Wednesday began, the largest newsworthy item in the week had come from something Nick Saban had said while not even at media days, stating that his quarterback, Bryce Young, was nearing one million dollars in NIL deals. Quite a haul for someone who has not yet started a game in college. But that news felt like mere pennies to what was to come later that day: Texas and Oklahoma, two of college football’s most prestigious programs, had contacted the SEC about membership to the conference. More concretely than that, the two bell cow schools of the Big 12 conference were preparing to inform the conference that it intended to leave.
Fast forward to this week and it’s official, Texas and Oklahoma are leaving. The intended destination is the SEC and at this point it is far-fetched to see any sizable road block for the schools joining the conference, potentially by the end of the week. During the latter parts of SEC Media Days it was believed, and became evident, that Texas A&M was less than thrilled, but cooler heads have prevailed, and it is possible the SEC gets a unanimous 14-0 vote on the impending membership of Texas and Oklahoma after all.
Some are not going to be that keen on adding two more powerhouse programs citing the already difficult slog through the conference schedule. I choose to look at it like this, Texas and Oklahoma are clearly leaving no matter what, do you really want the Big 10 to have a viable claim that they have one upped the SEC? If too much competition were of that kind of importance, weaker schools in the conference might be motivated to block, but, money is on the line, and the weaker schools stand to gain just like the strong schools because of the SEC’s payout structure. Another important factor here is the potential playoff expansion. With the proposed 12 team playoff, it is a safe assumption for the SEC to be looking at an average of four teams in the playoff year in year out. Far different than the current yearly debate as to whether a conference can sneak a second team in.
So how will the SEC format everything with Texas and Oklahoma included? There seems to be two main schools of thought right now, one is more of a tweak, one is a complete 180 from anything we’ve seen in college athletics. The tweak would be to simply keep the same base format, and have two divisions of eight teams, with Auburn and Alabama moving to the East and Missouri moving to the west as the most logical alignment. The divisions would be as follows:
West: Arkansas, LSU, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Texas, Texas A&M
East: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
I think in any scenario there must be nine conference games instead of eight, and I think with divisions this large, cross division rivalries will have to end. Playing a team every seven years, and every 14 years at home is borderline insane. Let’s say you are an Auburn fan wanting to see the Tigers play the Texas Longhorns in Jordan-Hare Stadium. Let’s also say your child was born that same year, the next time the Longhorns come to play in Auburn, your child is starting high school, they grow up so fast don’t they?
The other way of doing conference alignment is more exotic and thought provoking. Four mini divisions or “pods” if you will of four teams. There are many potential alignments here but just to give you one example of how it might look, see below.
Pod 1: Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Pod 2: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina
Pod 3: Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas
Pod 4: LSU, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Mississippi State
*Disclaimer, I purposely did not put the teams in alphabetical order to more easily show the headliners of the pods and the potential hierarchy of the teams in those pods*
This is simply one rendition of the pod system and while I’m not necessarily married to it, I think it does a lot of good things. For starters, a lot of the major rivalries in the conference are maintained in each pod. The Iron Bowl, Oklahoma-Texas, Florida-Georgia, and the Egg Bowl are all safe, as well as some smaller rivalries like Alabama-Tennessee and Arkansas-Missouri. Obviously not every rivalry is maintained, but it’s a good number given working with just four teams to a pod. I like that the geography makes sense here and I think the competitiveness to each pod is similar. I think the weakest pod initially is pod 1 but Auburn is perfectly capable of entering the national conversation (four New years six/National Championship game appearances in the previous decade) and Tennessee, while as dysfunctional as it has been, has the program history to claim it will not be like this forever.
Again, there are other alignments that can make sense, that’s just the thought process behind that one. The logistics of it would be nine games, with three games coming from your own pod, and two games from each of the other three pods. It’s possible there’s a better way than that, but I haven’t heard it yet. From there, the winner of each pod could meet in a semifinals, with the winners of those games meeting for the conference championship, or you could take the two highest ranked pod winners and do the conference championship that way. The bottom line, there’s a lot of room to change how we currently do conference alignment.
Of course we have not talked about the implications for the Big 12, which are potentially catastrophic, but as we’re keeping it to items involving SEC Media days, we will discuss that another time.
There is no doubt the Oklahoma and Texas arrival in the SEC could mark a seismic shift in the football landscape, as well as be a career defining moment for SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. The previous two commissioners of the SEC are both well known for big achievements. Roy Kramer who served as commissioner from 1990 to 2001 is responsible for pioneering the conference championship game in college football. While the late Mike Slive helped create the SEC Network, the first full time cable channel dedicated to one NCAA conference, as well as oversaw the expansion of the conference from 12 teams to 14 in 2012, adding Texas A&M and Missouri. For Sankey, the addition of Oklahoma and Texas will be the most significant change in conference affiliation, potentially in college athletics history, and it may only start there. It is not far fetched to say this could be the beginning of the ultimate super conference in which only a couple large conferences remain, or, it could lead to the eventual breakaway of college football from the NCAA. When the dust settles there is no telling how much impact this will have. It’s a legacy decision for Sankey, it’s a competition decision for Oklahoma and Texas, and it’s a pendulum swinging decision for college football. Just another day in the conference where, “it just means more.”
Column written by SportsCall co-host Ryan Lavoie.
