NCAA Conference Realignment: A Possible 25-Team SEC Expansion Plan

For months now there has been discussion about the emergence of super conferences. That has been put in motion now with Colorado’s addition to the Pac-10 and Nebraska’s reported joining of the Big Ten.

Conference realignment is here and it’s time for the SEC to be really smart about its next move.

No one has figured out how to make the idea of a super conference work, or who will be included and excluded.

In the SEC, most mentions of potential additions have included Texas and by extension Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Clemson. 

There has also been some talk, at least among fans from the larger schools, of the SEC dropping weaker schools like Vanderbilt and Kentucky.

Creating a larger conference also raises some concerns. Expansion concerns include media coverage, regional and cultural continuity, maintaining key matchups, recruiting footprint, and if adding Texas and Oklahoma, schedule strength, specifically the concern that the conference would become too strong for its own good.

Adding just a couple of teams around the edges of the conference, Texas and Oklahoma for instance, could be destabilizing due to the current divisional structure of the SEC.

Any such move might also require at least one too many within-conference, within-division games in a season, the effect of which would be to limit important out of conference play, which helps to balance schedule strength and improves recruiting by adding out of conference geographic diversity.

Adding just a few teams around the edge would also fail to develop what I think we would all most prefer: a truly super conference.

The problem?

The SEC may be thinking too small.

Let’s work the problem systematically, and then take a look at a potential solution.

Objectives

First, here is my list of objectives for the expansion.

1. Maximize media revenue

Like most problems, this one largely comes down to money—lots of it. The SEC just signed a $3.1 billion dollar deal with ESPN and CBS that pays each school more than $15 million a year with TV rights. In the ACC, Big 12, and Pac-10 the numbers are somewhat smaller but still big. We all want the schools to have this money.

Maximize the media revenue by maximizing gross rating points, adding new markets, and getting existing viewers to watch more games more often.

2. Produce a product the fans want and will pay to support

Do this by:

• Maintaining existing rivalries. Nothing beats crushing that rival other than doing it again.

• Adding teams of the highest caliber, in particular brand name schools that have traditions going back decades with multiple national championships, namely schools like Texas in football, or for that matter, schools like Duke or North Carolina in basketball.

• Creating matchups where each team has a chance to win. No one likes a lopsided game, win or lose.

• Don't make the schedule too tough. Fans want their team to be ranked, and highly ranked with a shot at the BCS national championship game in better years.

• Create road games that are personally relevant or in an interesting and attractive location worth visiting, yet close enough to home to make the trip possible.

• Keep it fresh and interesting. Fans recognize the value of having games with out-of-division and out-of-conference schools, and look forward to them.

3. Provide school's exposure to new audiences in regions that are adjacent to their home turf, allowing them to expand their recruiting base

I’ve never been a recruited athlete or been through the recruiting process, but I understand widening the recruiting base is important. Competition for recruits is good for both the conference and its athletes.

Broadening the recruiting base was so important that it was the basis for conference realignment when Florida State joined the Big East and Miami joined the ACC.

It’s also why USF is now in the Big East, despite being nearly 1,000 miles from its nearest competitor.

4. Ensure the SEC remains the premier sports conference; make it more dominant if possible

If you’re not a premier school or a premier team with an established pedigree, you’re just not getting in. While Miami with its national championships qualifies, Texas Tech, it’s time to consider the Mountain West.

While the SEC is currently the undisputed best in football, can we extend its national title dominance to other sports fans really care about, like basketball?

5. The teams in the SEC are geographically similar and in the southeastern United States

Only schools in the region should be considered. Despite its lack of succession, Maryland might qualify; Missouri does not. Rutgers, Boston College, you need not apply—you’re just not getting in.

6. The schools of the SEC are the flagship universities of the states in which they are located

Unless it’s in the name of the state, any school containing the words North, South, East, West, Middle, Central, or any derivative is not getting invited. South Florida, East Carolina, Southern Miss, Middle Tennessee, sorry. Troy, sorry, you’re out too.

7. Plan for 12 regular season games

This limits the number of teams per division to eight at most, but possibly fewer. There should also be no more than eight games on the conference schedule, allowing for out of conference games as needed, including those vs. teams in the FCS.

8. Don't leave any existing members out in the cold

Vanderbilt, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Mississippi State—this one's for you, but we still need to talk about shared division of revenues. What if we move to a share of success based system?

9. Make sure the mixture of game difficulties results in a realistic mix that allows teams to emerge undefeated and contend for the national title

It's possible to have too much of a good thing and facing Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Florida, LSU, and Auburn might just be it. Expanding the conference without making this combination possible has to be key.

10. Because winning is good for interest, viewership, and development, ideally no team should face a schedule so tough it loses every single game

The schools mentioned in item eight above might press the bounds here in an improved SEC. Let’s see what we can do to prevent it. It turns out there is a way.

If we agree on these objectives and constraints, I believe I have a solution we can all agree on. Let’s take a look.

Proposed Solution

The SEC needs to think big. How big? Five divisions of five teams each. Here are the 25 teams.

Central	South	West	Coastal	Piedmont
Alabama	Florida	Texas	South Carolina	Vanderbilt
Auburn	Florida State	Oklahoma	Clemson	Kentucky
Tennessee	Miami	LSU	Virginia Tech	Wake Forest
Mississippi	Georgia	Arkansas	Virginia	Duke
Mississippi State	Georgia Tech	Texas A&M	Maryland	North Carolina

Take a look up and down each column. Are the regions coherent? Well balanced? Interesting to participating schools and their fans? Will these games keep everyone engaged year after year?

Now, take a look across columns. Do the games look interesting? 

Alabama vs. Texas, Oklahoma vs. Florida, LSU vs. Miami, and many others, all occurring within conference and within the regular season.

This looks like football I want to watch, and football I would pay dearly to support and travel to see.

How do I see this working?

As we have it now, each team plays every team in their division on a home and home basis every year. This would continue.

Teams in the other divisions are played automatically on a round robin basis, once every five years, unless the schools choose to schedule each other more frequently, for instance the annual game between Auburn and Georgia.

The remaining four games would be reserved for out of conference games, including those against non-FBS schools.

The resulting schedule provides games that are close to home, maintains virtually all rivalries, groups like programs, ensures geographic diversity, enhances recruiting footprints for each team, and provides a balanced schedule that's no more difficult than the ones most teams played last year.

Entry into the SEC championship game, the precursor to the BCS national championship game, would be based on BCS rating, with only the highest rated team from each division being considered, virtually eliminating the possibility of rematches.

Revenue distributions should probably reflect the contribution each team makes to the conference, providing a benefit to those schools that figure out how to get their fans involved. I don’t believe working out such a plan would be insurmountable.

So, there we have it—a truly Super Conference.

Each school is a landmark university within their respective states and regions, and not just in sports. These are the schools that virtually define the south, as well as the states in which they are located. It also expands coverage from Maryland to Miami and from Austin to Atlanta, a huge and relatively homogeneous cultural range.

These schools represent nearly all of the nation’s truly first-rate sports programs, at least within my lifetime, a strong enough collection to make sports in the rest of the nation largely irrelevant.

In fact, these universities hold all but three of the BCS champions. It also represents eight of the losers. In basketball over the same period the SEC would have won eight of the 13 NCAA men’s basketball championships and would also have been represented in every single Final Four.

The schedule promises great local games, great road games, and great rivalries. From a fan perspective, the odds are pretty good that the road schedule will contain at least one road trip down to the beach, up to Pinehurst, down to Atlanta, over to Austin or out to Norman, a wonderful new venue for SEC football.

Even key existing rivalries are preserved within each division, from the Iron Bowl to the Red River Shootout, and from the Third Saturday in October to the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.

Each division is balanced or nearly balanced in strength, resolving the major concern of schedule strength and not only for the powerhouses but for some of the weaker schools as well. Keeping everyone in the game, and interested in the game, benefits us all.

This is an inclusive and powerful set of schools that are peer institutions; they belong together in a conference.

They help define the new south.