Jeez, how big a goober do you have to be to swallow this crap for the umpteenth time?
The preference of the SEC presidents is to not expand beyond 16 teams, multiple industry sources tell Saturday Down South.
“We’re positioned at 16 (teams) for a robust future,” an SEC athletic director told SDS. “The need just isn’t there.”
Uh hunh. Right.
A move that could force the SEC to change its stance would be the Big Ten adding Notre Dame and moving to 20 teams by adding Pac-12 and/or ACC schools. If and until then, any thought of SEC expansion isn’t the preference.
The reason is twofold: value and the desire to keep college football intact.
I’m sorry. The desire to do what?
“We talk about value all the time. Well, there’s great value in college football as a whole,” another SEC source said. “I don’t think any of us, in any conference, can ignore that. There’s too much empirical data that shows it.”
If the money’s there — great value, my ass — they’ll keep growing. It’s what they did in 1992. It’s what they did in 2012. It’s what they just did last year! And it’s what they’ll do when the next bag of cash gets dangled. Those Clampetts can’t help themselves.
Get The Picture 
This feels like a “hey, we need to get a message out that actual journalists are clearly going to push back on; someone call a writer at Saturday Down South and see if you can get them to write it” moment.
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‘Robust future’ is exquisitely chosen wording there. Not to be mistaken for ‘long term future’.
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Are you suggesting that it’s doing a shit ton of heavy lifting ?
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all this means is…the sec will be adding clemson, fsu, miami and a player to be named later(ND?) to its membership.
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If they’re serious, maybe they can rescind the stupid in all ways but money invite to Texas and OU. Everyone wants to “do what’s best for CFB as a whole” until it’s time to actually do what’s best for CFB as a whole.
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Slive’s 12 team playoff proposal with six automatic bids is one of the few examples of a conference agreeing to put the sport’s interests above its own.
Ironically, the rest of college football’s response was a prime example of schools acting against their best interests. Unfortunately, it was because of spite and has lead to their current predicament.
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I agree with you about the Slive proposal. It was good for the SEC, but also good for everyone else (maybe not AS good for everyone else, but c’est le guerre). Unfortunately, the Big 10, PAC 12 and ACC decided to turn it into the football versioin of The Prisoner’s Dilemma on the apparently incorrect notion that by blowing it all up, they’d end up ahead. I suspect whatever we end up with is going to suck. Not for everyone, at least not at first. But sooner rather than later.
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No more consolidation of conferences UNTIL the playoff is expanded, then they take more members to gobble up more playoff spots.
They will wait till the acc, pac, and big 12 agree to an 8 or 12 team playoff, then the SEC invites new members kills off a conference “rival” or two and gets more seats at the table.
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Sounds logical to me. That’s why it won’t happen.
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They misspelled robu$t.
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“This time, they really mean it.”…until they really don’t…#$$$$$$
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I read somewhere that, when Notre Dame joined the ACC for sports other than football, they contracted with the ACC that they could not join any conference other than the ACC for football for a number of years (into the 2030’s). Does anybody know if there’s any truth there?
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2036 is the year I’ve seen floating around.
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Contracts are never negotiated out of.
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The only relevant question left is whether Sankey/Warren want an NFL where they lock in like 40 teams, or a March Madness where they throw a puncher’s chance to the little guys. I hope the latter, but the TV $ might prefer the former.
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I think it’ll end up being kind of in-between, around 64 teams.
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Aside from the lip service paid to keeping college football intact, the person making the quote is right about one thing. There isn’t another school the SEC could add right now that provides great “value” other than the whale located in the heart of B1G country in what is essentially a suburb of Chicago. Love or hate the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC (and I’m in the camp of hating the additions), there is no denying that there was great value in adding those two schools to the fold. In my opinion, none of Clemson, FSU or Miami currently present similar value-adds for the conference. And setting aside the value question, who believes that UF in particular and teams like Georgia and Alabama who regularly raid and take some of the best talent in the state of Florida want to give FSU and Miami the recruiting boost associated with being SEC members in that talent rich state?
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If the SEC doesn’t go after them, the Big 10 will.
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For fairly obvious reasons, the B1G would set aside their AAU membership requirement to land Notre Dame. Aside from athletics, Notre Dame is a top 20 school in the US and the only current B1G member (including UCLA and Michigan) that is ranked ahead of Notre Dame is Northwestern. I have a hard time believing that the B1G would set aside their AAU membership requirement for Clemson, FSU or Miami unless there is a dramatic shift in college athletics which makes jaw-dropping move of USC and UCLA to the B1G or Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC pale in comparison.
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This simply means that future expansion is in the works. Chatter such as this usually indicates a smoke screen until the details can be finalized.
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