Texas A&M and SEC Expansion: How the Aggies Won the Realignment War

It appears that the realignment train has finally pulled into the station. Larry Scott and the Pac-12 ended all of the conjecture by refusing to expand past 12 teams. Without expansion in the Pac-12, the University of Oklahoma and University of Texas were forced to remain in the Big 12. Now that conference realignment is over, it is time to take a look at the winners and the losers.

The Winners

Texas A&M is definitely the big winner in all of this. The Aggies are moving to the best athletic conference in the country and away from all the drama in the Big 12. When the news got out about their impending move to the Southeastern Conference the Aggies were ripped in the media.

Now that the country has seen what the Aggies have to deal with on a yearly basis, they are much more understanding. 

The bottom line for A&M is that they are going to end up where they have wanted to be all along,

The Atlantic Coast Conference also has to puff their chest out a bit after the events of the past week. Pittsburgh and Syracuse will join the ACC possibly in 2014. The addition of Pitt and Syracuse make the best basketball conference in the country even better. It also adds two historically strong football programs to a conference that only offers Florida State and Clemson on the gridiron right now.

With an increased exit fee of $20 million, the league should remain strong for a long while.

Iowa State avoided the cutting room floor again. The Cyclones may have been able to find a home in the Big East, but nothing is for certain. The Big 12 is a much better conference for ISU geographically and will be much more lucrative than the Big East. The small matter of not defaulting on $40 million in bonds is a nice feather in the cap too.

The Losers

Baylor showed the whole country what they are all about. They get to remain in an automatic qualifier conference, but does anyone in the NCAA respect them or trust them? Oklahoma's president David Boren even mentioned Baylor's actions as one of the reasons for OU's wandering eye.

Everyone in the conference admonished Baylor when they reneged on the waiver to sue. The conference wanted to let A&M move to the SEC so they could go about the business of replacing the Aggies with another school.

By going back on their word, Baylor embarrassed themselves as a university and needlessly wasted two weeks of everyone's time.

Oklahoma found out that having a top-notch football program only goes so far. Your options are very limited when you have a limited television footprint and your academics are not strong.

The B1G rejected Oklahoma because of their academics, and the Pac-12 was not interested in a school that could not increase its television revenue.

Texas always fancies themselves as the belle of the ball. The clock struck midnight, and they turned into a pumpkin rather quickly. Texas was rejected by three different conferences.

The B1G did not want to deal with the unequal revenue issues associated with Texas' Longhorn Network. The ACC had a tentative deal in place but backed out when Texas laughably started making demands prior to being voted into the conference. The Pac-12 schools did not want to deal with the drama and said, "Thanks but no thanks."

For a school with an ego the size of Texas, it had to be rather humbling to be publicly rejected three times. 

It appears that college football Armageddon has been staved off for another year. Now everyone can go back to watching football.