SEC Could Take Lead In Creation Of Super Conferences
by Beergut on Aug 7, 2010 2:20 PM CDT
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PrintThe Southeastern Conference could be the ultimate power player in conference realignment if Mike Slive chooses to topple the next domino. If you take one of the Big Three away from the Big 12, the whole conference will fall apart. While there is already speculation about A&M leaving the Zombie10 collaboration soon, Slive can change the face of college football today by pursuing a different program: Oklahoma. Oklahoma is in a precarious situation, because their fate is tied so closely to Oklahoma State and texas. If Slive told Oklahoma that they would accept Oklahoma State into the SEC as part of a package deal to get OU, they would help OU solve the problem holding them in the Big 12. With OU now able to play OSU as a conference game, it would preserve their in-state rivalry, while also allowing OU to keep their rivalry with texas as a non-conference game. This arrangement would allow texas to go to the Pac-10, if they so wish to, while making sure both texas and OU still have their financially lucrative game every year during the State Fair. Most importantly, the competitive hurdles (playing OSU and texas as non-conference games) and political hurdles (OU has to take OSU along wherever they go) have been overcome, and OU is now a member of the best football conference in the nation.
With the Big 12 again on the ropes after losing two members, Slive can go after the big target, the Texas television markets and access to their recruiting hotbeds, and bring A&M into the fold. With A&M, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, Slive will now be one member short of a 16-team super conference, and have the necessary leverage he needs to push texas to a decision. With access to Texas already guaranteed with A&M's membership in the SEC, Slive can give texas an ultimatum: Join us or get left behind. If texas still refuses to join the SEC, Slive can add Virginia Tech as the 16th member, and add the Washington D.C./Virginia/Maryland markets to the SEC television footprint. If texas does join, the SEC will have added three of the most valuable college football teams in the nation to their membership, and taken the mantle as the premier super conference. Either way, Slive and the SEC come out winners. The formation of the first 16-team super conference would force the Big Ten and Pac-10 to also expand to 16 teams, but the big prizes of the Big Three would already be off the table. Mike Slive just needs to make the decision to change college football as we know it, and topple that first domino.
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I cannot speak for DD...
but I would be absolutely shocked it Texas ever became part of the SEC. Academia, while many wish to downplay its relevance, will be a rather large variable in the equation. Furthermore, I do not see how landing aTm grants the SEC access into the Texas markets beyond what they already have. No offense, but landing the Aggies is no grand prize in SECville. Moreover, aTm would struggle to finish at 8 wins per season in the SEC. How will they recruit that? Lastly, if the rivalry is preserved with Texas upon aTm’s departure to the SEC, that would leave Texas with one OOC game and then immediately into conference games since OU and aTm will take October and November dates respectively.
"Stats are for losers. I like winning games." ~ Will Muschamp
"I always felt like, and I paid a price for it, that it didn't seem right for one guy to bring me down." ~ The Tyler Rose
"I'm Colt McCoy and I Am Second." ~ Colt McCoy
While I don’t actually think academia is relevant at all with regard to conference, if that is what you are valuing, then Texas A and M is a victory for the SEC. We have been smoking hot academically for 25 some odd years. We are nationally ranked in all sorts of fields. I am on the admissions committee at a medical school. We are on fire.
by longboard8 on Aug 7, 2010 5:23 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
Relevant
I think it is relevant for the school. Reputation is a big deal when it comes to school perception. A&M has a built in advantage of a huge alumni base that trumpets the school wherever it goes, and has a tendency to hire fellow alums. Most schools don’t have this.
As an example, if Kansas were given an offer to join the Ivy League, they’d be crazy to turn it down. They would gain a huge academic boost from that affiliation alone. True, athletics would suffer (primarily football, but other sports as well), but for a large majority of the students and alumni it would be a huge boost in the post school job seeking world.
Maybe such a fit wouldn’t be right for every school, but academia is definitely relevant with regards to conference. No one thinks of the SEC as the smart conference, that title goes to the Big 10 or Pac 10. I think that kind of thing matters. Nebraska, for example, is getting an academic boost right now by switching conferences. Next time professors or university presidents fill out their US News and World Report survey’s they’ll have “Nebraska is part of the Big Ten now….” in the back of their minds, and I’d be shocked if their next ranking isn’t higher because of this switch. I’d love for A&M to get a similar boost if we switch, and that isn’t something that the SEC would provide.
Meat? They're made out of Meat? Meat.
by ihavethemelody on Aug 9, 2010 4:22 PM CDT up reply actions
seriously?
With people like Vince Young, Jamaal Charles, Raymonce Taylor, et al, being admitted to texas, they really have no room to talk about academic excellence.
Academic Excellence
Seriously? You think academic excellence has anything to do with the football players at a school that isn’t a Service Academy, member of the Ivy League, or Vandy? Seriously?
Beergut, you have strong inclinations to “idiot” status when it comes to talking about any program other than A&M, and that comment you just wrote is a great example of it.
But, in case you are being serious (and I can’t honestly think you are), academic excellence refers to the overall academic program at the school, not its football players. The undergraduate education and opportunities a person has available at Texas (or A&M) is superior to a majority of the schools in the SEC. This does not even bring into play the great graduate programs at Texas and A&M, an area not traditionally focused on at most SEC schools.
So, yes, academic excellence is important to Texas, as it is to A&M, and it doesn’t have anything to do with football players.
Meat? They're made out of Meat? Meat.
by ihavethemelody on Aug 9, 2010 4:05 PM CDT up reply actions
It has a lot to do with football players because they are students,
hence student/athletes—why should there be two standards? It reflects poorly on any elite academic univ. that lowers its respective academic standards—especially football that brings national attention and creates a lot of revenue. Elite universities are not supposed to be football factories and Vandy, NU, Duke, are all in the top top twenty in USNAWR, in powerful athletic conferences and none of those schools are dropping their respective academic standards to allow academically unqualified athletes in to make big bucks on football. Univ. of Chicago and Ivies set the precedent for a univ. commitment to academic excellence and how it relates to collegiate sports eighty years ago. Univ.of Chicago, "abandoned intercollegiate football in 1939 because the game hampered the university’s efforts to become the kind of institution it aspired to be. The university believed that it should devote itself to education, research and scholarship. Intercollegiate football has little to-do with any of these things and an institution that is to do well in them will have to concentrate upon them and rid itself of irrelevancies, no matter how attractive or profitable. Football has no place in the kind of institution Chicago aspires to be.
It has been argued that Chicago is different. Perhaps it is and maybe it is just that difference that enabled the university to separate football from education." http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1128811/index.htm The Ivies—dominated college football up into 20’s, reduced football to games of bragging rights between their peers. IMO, if academic excellence is important—again football players are students like any other students, then, go all the way with it and do not lower your respective academic standards, downgrade sports that draw a lot of attention, or just eliminate it.
I agree
that there shouldn’t be two sets of standards , but that doesn’t change the fact that there are 2 sets of standards. Almost every major football program is guilty of it. But there is a silver lining, and that is that many young men who wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity to attend a great school get one.
I also think that having sports programs benefits other students at the university as well, even if the students who are admitted to play have slightly lower academic standing.
Two of the schools you mention (Vandy, Duke) have been incredibly bad at football for years because of their standards. Vandy just had their greatest season in a decade under a coach who just retired, and his getting to that point was incredibly hard and took a lot of luck, and even that season barely made a bowl game. Same goes for Duke, only without the “great” season. Those schools do well in other sports (Lacrosse, Basketball, etc) that are more traditionally “smart” sports, where you can get a recruit who is very bright and the best at his game. I don’t know enough about NU’s football academics to comment, but I would imagine it is similar to the other Big 12 schools.
As a side note, there should be schools where football players who aren’t quite academically ready can go play football. For those students, it’s a job. It’s how they want to make their living. Who is the NCAA (with the billions they make off the players) to decide they have to excel in other areas to play football? It’s not like there is a seperate option for those players to make the NFL to earn their living, and it’s no different from my going to A&M to earn a living after graduation.
Meat? They're made out of Meat? Meat.
by ihavethemelody on Aug 10, 2010 8:41 AM CDT up reply actions
Duke
doesn’t traditionally suck at football b/c of their academic standards, they operate as the same standards as the rest of the ACC. They traditionally suck at football b/c they don’t emphasize success in football like they do basketball. From what I’ve heard from someone who worked at Duke, they are content to be the Baylor of the conference in football, be everyone’s punching bag and collect the bowl distributions other schools earn at the end of the year. The difference, of course, is that Baylor is actually trying to be better.
As for Vandy, I think they are unable to financially compete in the SEC. They abolished their athletic department, and football is now under their department of rec sports (I think), but they don’t have the budget of a Tennessee or Alabama or Florida to compete.
The bulk of a university’s academic ranking is derived from their graduate schools, which is something that is not dependent on which athletic conference you are in. A university can strengthen its graduate schools by putting an emphasis on those schools, something that has nothing to do with athletic affiliation. This is why I am not concerned about the academic reputation of the schools in the SEC or any other conference we choose to join.
All I'm saying...
is, as a native of an SEC city and a student of an SEC school, I want Texas A&M to join and Georgia Tech to come home. The U and Florida State should come, too. There’s a 16-team Super Conference I can get behind, right there.
If I hit a hole-in-one on this grand slam the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.
by jasonkylebates on Aug 9, 2010 6:02 AM CDT up reply actions
no reason to add Florida State and Miami; you already have a presence in the Florida market
There is no incentive for Ga Tech to return to the SEC, save more money, as long as the ACC is stable, because being in a separate conference from Georgia is good for them.
If you’re looking to add television markets, you want to expand in a way that will give you control of two of the Big 3 of Florida, Texas, and California. The SEC already has Florida, the Pac-10 already has Florida. If one of those two conference is able to add the Texas television markets, they win this round of the expansion game. Since you want to add new markets, Virginia Tech makes more sense as an addition to the SEC than Florida State does.
You nailed it Mulliganville. No way UT decides to go with the SEC. Also A&M brings little value if added to the SEC and only further deepens their losing record. Don’t hold your breath aggies.
"You've got to find your inner pirate" - Mike Leach
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