SEC May Still Be In Expansion Mode (Poll)

Expansion still may loom in SEC

By Seth Emerson
semerson@thestate.com

Posted: Tuesday, Jun. 15, 2010

After a flurry of activity, the Big 12 was apparently saved on Monday.

At least for now.

Monday morning, it looked like the SEC was close to adding Texas A&M. By noon, that school, along with Texas and Oklahoma, had elected to stay in the Big 12, which last week lost Nebraska to the Big Ten and Colorado to the Pac-10.

But there are two reasons expansion still could loom in the SEC.

The first is the Big Ten. Its commissioner, Jim Delany, has indicated it would be happy staying at 12 now that it has Nebraska and can hold a football championship game.

But if the Big Ten decides to add more teams, that could have more of an effect on the SEC, since the leagues compete for TV markets and recruits.

Long-term, the Big 12 could still be a tenuous alliance. And the super-conference idea is not dead, according to Mark Nagel, a professor at USC and the associate director of the College Sports Research Institute at the University of North Carolina.

"We're still eventually going to get to that four 16-team conference setup," Nagel said. "It may die this year or for the next couple years. But I think that'll always be bubbling under the surface."

Nagel points out that there is a big disparity in revenue between the power schools and others, and expects them to eventually tire of sharing money. Plus, so many talks happened over the past few months that it would be easy to re-start them.

"If everything kind of stops right now, how soon does this start off again officially? I don't know," Nagel said. "My guess is it'll continue to go on unofficially."

When it looked like the Big 12 was set to break up Friday, East Carolina athletics director Terry Holland posted a message that predicted Texas and Oklahoma would keep the league intact. He was apparently correct.

"If Texas holds the Big Whatever together, the Pac 10's ‘quick strike' will come back to haunt them because they are now committed to finding at least one more member who can add value to the Pac 10," Holland wrote. "Colorado's main value was as ‘bait' for Texas, Oklahoma, etc ... in order to create real value for the Pac 10."

The SEC would be happy with the status quo. But Nagel sees more long-term benefits to expansion, thanks to new media. For instance, rivalry games being put on the web are becoming a huge revenue stream.

"If the Big 12 stays in place in some form, we'll settle back down for three or four years, and we'll see how the television revenues and ratings play out," Nagel said. "Conferences always try to get bigger or better."