| 16 May 2010
With everyone oooing and cooing over the talk of potential SEC and Big Ten Conference expansion, the fans only need to look at one thing ... the Big Ten is playing catch up.
The SEC has no need to expand. No need at all.
So what is all of the expansion talk really about? This is simple to understand.
The Big Ten wants/needs to expand for one simple reason: revenue. More succinctly, television revenue. Due to the landmark SEC-ESPN and SEC-CBS television contract, both networks swept their opponents. Sure, ESPN was a given to come out on top, but most folks do not understand what happened for CBS. CBS has almost always been the bride's maid to ABC ... until this year. CBS beat ABC by roughly half a percentage point. While that appears to be a squeaker on paper, it really is not. For CBS to clear the ABC hurdle at all took a minor miracle. That miracle was the network's contract with the SEC.
With talk flying around the internet that the Big Ten wants Texas, Notre Dame, Missouri, Nebraska, and (uhhhhh) ... Rutgers ... ? ... at this moment, it is still just that: talk. These things never go the way most people expect them to.
Texas would come with strings attached. For a conference the size of the Big Ten, that might not happen ... or it might. Missouri and Nebraska would be minor additions from relatively weak television markets. The allure of these two teams appears to be their proximity to the rest of the conference. Rutgers would be a laughable addition at best. So what does that leave? Notre Dame.
Yeah, quit laughing. Notre Dame would bring their own world-wide fan base and a nice television contract network. This is what the Big Ten is really after. Face it, the "Big Ten Network" is an utter failure. Sure if you want to catch the Northwestern game that you missed or some irrelevant interview with a swimmer you have never heard of, then the Big Ten Network has you covered. I give the BTN another year or so and it will be gone. It has to be sucking the life blood from the Big Ten coffers to keep up. BUT, if the conference is able to expand, tweak the programming of the network and it could turn it around.
The bottom line of any conference expansion can all be traced back to the same point. Just follow the money. If the Big Ten adds a team like Texas while not getting the big fish in Notre Dame, then the conference has not achieved what they need. Texas would add a revenue stream to the Big Ten that does not currently exist, but Notre Dame would add a revenue river.
So how does this affect the SEC? In the short term, it has no effect at all. The Big Ten is simply playing catch-up.
When the SEC expanded in 1992, many folks said "this is crazy", "this will never work". Eighteen years later has shown that it not only worked, but has become a dominant negotiating chip for the conference.
The Big Ten still has no championship game ... but currently has enough teams to do so ... they just need some larger names on the marquee to boost the television revenue.
Talk of the Big Ten expanding to 16 teams is INSANE.
So should the SEC look at expanding?
Why would it? The SEC already dominates the landscape. Year in and year out, the other conferences are chasing shadows trying to catch-up ... I say let them continue to chase the shadows. If the SEC needs to do anything, it needs to contract back to around ten teams.
The toughest football already exists here .. why water it down by making it even tougher? The team that wins the SEC Championship has typically played for the BCS Title already, why mess that up?
Conferences such as the Big Ten see the money being generated by the SEC and they realize they are falling further and further behind. Let those conferences water their sports down with teams outside of their region ... making a fan's (the true fan) life a living hell trying to figure out how they are going to get to the game.
The bottom line is easy: if you really want top notch conferences ... then why not this:
Allow each conference to retain their chosen 'plank holders'. In the case of the SEC, that would be Alabama, Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia, Kentucky (gotta have basketball coverage), Florida, LSU and Ole Miss. Do this nationwide until the (what is currently known as) the PAC-10, Big-12, Big-10, SEC, ACC and Big East are full. That is all we need.
The only question is who do you keep and who do you cast away?
Once the plank holders are chosen, then scrap the remainder of every conference, essentially creating a large draft pool. Then allow the conferences to 'draft' the remainder of their members creating 12-team leagues. That should leave somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-plus teams that go undrafted. These teams would become your mid-majors. Face it, if these schools had been steeped in tradition and strong enough to begin with, they would have been drafted.
Honestly, most of this IS tongue in cheek, but seriously as fans we need to realize that the almighty dollar has taken over. All of this expansion talk has nothing to do with us, but rather money.
Collegiate conferences are all about the bottom line ... if expansion occurs, there will be winners and losers all around. Why not try something crazy? What do we have to lose because with expansion, as fans, we will lose more traditional rivalries. Mark that one down because it will happen.
