SEC Expansion: The SEC Proving They Are the Most Powerful Conference

Barring any legal issues, Texas A&M will be the 13th member of the SEC.

For anyone that has followed the story, this is no surprise because the Aggies have been trying to get out of the Big 12 for a while.

So the question is why does the SEC want the Aggies to join the NCAA, the most powerful conference? It is not so much about who they bring in, but how big the conference will increase.

Which leads to the next question that should have an answer in the near future. Who will be the next member of the Southeastern Conference? There have been talks about Clemson, Missouri and Virginia Tech being one of the next teams to jump ship and join the SEC, but there is no telling which team will join unless a school announces they want to leave their conference.

Clemson is a likely choice to join just because of location. They already have good rivalries with Georgia and South Carolina and they are one of the few ACC teams that have a SEC type of atmosphere when it comes to game day.

Virginia Tech is not out of the question either. They could look at it as a challenge for themselves to join a conference that is competitive week in and week out.

Missouri is a team that is interesting because they are kind of like Arkansas when it comes to recruiting players and TV markets. That should, and will be one team that everyone will pay close attention to over the next year.

If the Tigers of Missouri do go, what will happen to the Big 12. Losing the Aggies as well as Nebraska and Colorado prove the conference is on a downward spiral, which means Texas and Oklahoma would have to find a new home.

Both the Sooners and the Longhorns would not join the SEC because in reality they do not need to. Both teams generate a lot of money and while it would not hurt the schools to join the SEC, it would only benefit them slightly.

What could happen is some of schools in the Non-BCS conferences could join the Big 12 such as Boise State and TCU. Both schools have been trying to gain national attention and a good way to do that is to join a BCS conference.

This all started last year when Nebraska and Colorado decided to leave the Big 12. Now Texas A&M has done the same thing and because of how everything is going, it is only a matter of time for a team to announce their plans of joining a new conference.

Because of the move, the SEC is getting stronger and is on its way to being the most powerful conference in the country. Nobody knows who is going to make that next move, but if anything about this is certain, five years from now, college football will never be the same.