16 Team SEC and The TCU Horned Frogs

Before I get bored by the SEC and expansion, I might as well send what amounts to an open letter to Mike Slive about what he should be planning. 

The following proceeds from the assumption that the University of Texas is bound and determined to become Left Coast, and that OU will follow the Texas marching orders, which means Oklahoma State and Texas Tech will too. Obviously, if OU decides to break from being led around by Texas, everything changes. If OU agrees to join the SEC alongside A&M, Texas would be all but unintentionally suicidal to go Pac.

I have noted that A&M and WVU would be an ideal pair to add to the SEC: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/405006-the-value-of-tamu-and-wvu-to-the-sec . I have noted that Missouri also would be an ideal pairing with A&M: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/405712-missouri-as-an-sec-member . But each of those expansions would be to 14. What if the Pac sets the precedent of 16?

A&M, Mizzou, and WVU would then seem to be to givens in a 16 member SEC. The question would be: who gets the final slot?

I say the best choice is TCU. After all, if the SEC has 2 Dawgs (both hideously ugly) and 1 Hawg (ugly but in a magnificently feral way), it is only fitting that the SEC also have a pestiferous Frawg.

The SEC is not the ACC: the SEC does not care for private schools, with their almost always small football fan bases. Classic Amon G. Carter Stadium, for example, seats only 44,000, and even with great teams in the MWC, TCU cannot average full capacity.

But there is more to the matter than just football attendance. If the SEC expands to 16 and has A&M, it will need a second school in TX to help counter balance Texas and TTU in the Pac.

Baylor, left out of the Pac dream because the Left Coast cannot abide church-related schools, would seem to be the obvious first choice, but its location, only 90 miles from Bryan/College Station, which made the Battle of the Brazos, makes it worth next to nothing to the SEC.

Houston is a large state university, with a resurgent football program. Again, location is bad for the University of Houston. The city is only 100 miles from College Station. If you have A&M, you have Houston in every sense.

Fort Worth is 170 miles from Bryan, and it is a whole other part of the Lone Star State. The Dallas/Fort Worth TV market is the most important in TX, including for its production of football talent.

TCU, even with its now Top 5 football team, would be more important to a 16 team SEC for its location than for its wins and certainly for its fans. The simple fact is that if SEC teams are visiting TCU to play conference games, the DFW TV market, which already has droves of Aggies and large numbers of Razorbacks, would become roughly half SEC.

The SEC with A&M and TCU would make the media and recruiting crown jewel of the additions to the Pac (DFW) a 50/50 battleground. Texas and the new Pac would be checked.