Greg Sankey’s Sweet Sixteen, the local effect

Yesterday’s news about Oklahoma and Texas putting out feelers to the SEC about a conference switch from the Big 12 managed to be surprising and not surprising at the same time, especially when you reflect that the proposed move, like everything else driving college football these days, is about money.  The Big 12’s deal with Fox is pretty anemic, given the market.  A move to the SEC gives the two schools and their new conference tremendous clout with Mickey (and in turn lets ESPN deliver a nice kick in the balls to a competitor).

How lucrative would that move be?  Lucrative enough that Texas could ditch the Longhorn Network and come out ahead financially.  If you don’t think the parties have already begun feeling out Disney about the numbers, you’re kidding yourself.

My gut feeling on this is simple:  if the money is there, the deal will be done.  That’s all fine for the conference and the schools, but what’s in it for us fans?

What’s in it for us is that this gives Sankey a terrific opportunity to repair the damage done to SEC scheduling by Mike Slive’s move to expand to 14 schools so that the SEC could fix the shitty TV contract Slive had previously negotiated with ESPN.  Best of all, it doesn’t take any three-dimensional chess moves, like pods or other convoluted arrangements, to restore some normality.

It could be done in three steps.

• Flip Missouri to the West and move Alabama and Auburn to the East.
• Go to a nine-game (7-2) conference schedule.
• Eliminate the permanent cross-division game.

Here’s what the conference would look like after step one.

What might the SEC look like if Oklahoma and Texas joined the conference?

MAP: pic.twitter.com/hpnvbbhbWo

— CB969 (@CB969onRBR) July 21, 2021

The geography is sensible.  Even better, look at how many traditional rivalries are preserved/restarted:  Texas-TAMU, Oklahoma-Texas, Alabama-Auburn, Alabama-Tennessee, Auburn-Georgia and Florida-Georgia, for starters.  (As a bonus, we get back what used to be a very entertaining series in Auburn-Florida.)

A nine-game conference schedule for most schools means ditching a cupcake game.  Again, from a fan perspective, this is a desirable outcome.  It’s even more desirable from ESPN’s perspective, as it increases the number of conference games to broadcast.

As for part three, with the geographic realignment depicted above, there’s only one significant permanent cross-division game that’s affected, Florida-LSU, and, judging from Dan Mullen’s comment at SEC Media Days, nobody on Florida’s end will miss it if it’s gone.  The positive benefit from doing that is, even with going from 14 to 16 teams overall, the time frame for a team to cycle through the entirety of the cross-divisional schedule is reduced from six years to three-and-a-half.  Every SEC player will have the opportunity to play against every team in the conference during his college career.

I grant you if the money’s there, the rest of this is irrelevant in terms of decision making, but in terms of good will and fan interest, it’s huge.  Now, if only we could count on the suits not to screw it up…

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UPDATE:

This much we know:
Texas-OU are leaving Big 12. The question is where they will go.

If Texas-OU join the SEC, the conference will have to completely rethink its football scheduling model.

If a vote is ever taken on admitting Texas-OU to the SEC, it will be 14-0 (publicly).

— Tony Barnhart (@MrCFB) July 22, 2021

Hey, a blogger’s gotta do what a blogger’s gotta do.