re: OU and realignment

Apologies for length...it's about academics so read at your own risk...

State Universities receive funding in 4 primary ways - from the state, from tuition, donations, and from research. They view athletic departments as marketing arms. ADs help raise donations. ADs help generate applications. ADs help acceptance to admission rates. ADs help in brand awareness. Most state universities do very little advertising outside athletics.

A lot of SEC states have historically been very poor. It's a big cycle. When your state is poor, they give schools little money and you aren't a great school. If you aren't a great school, you don't produce as many future rich alums who give money, you don't get ranked high in USNWR (which matters in getting quality apps) and you aren't recognized as a top school to get research projects. State economies are very dependent on college graduates as top notch graduates build businesses and create wealth. So it's somewhat a cycle of poverty that has existed across the south for decades.

Texas, Florida, VA and NC have all broken out of the cycle of poverty as states for a variety of reasons. Texas in particular did so because of the oil boom that not only boosted the economy, it made the two flagships' endowment massive. The state has reaped the rewards and now has a diverse and healthy economy which generates money and makes running a state a helluva lot easier.

The primary way for a school to gain traction is to produce better graduates. Better graduates improve perception, give money, hire future grads. Easier said that done though. The easiest and most fool-proof way to do this is to admit better applicants. Enter Texas.

In the 90s, Texas passed a bill that if you are in the top X% of your HS, you get admitted to any state school. The effect was rejecting a ton of otherwise top students to the flagships. Those kids go somewhere and increasingly, because of the huge chasm in quality of education from state schools after UT/A&M, they are going out of state (it's been a big political fight on how to fix within the state).

Because of the state wealth, Texas HSs are also generally better than most of the surrounding states so many of these students are better applicants than they can get in-state (plus they often pay OOS tuition, though many get it waved). This has made Texas HS a gold rush for Universities over the last couple of decades.

Many SEC schools already have a very high % of Texas students but they have pretty consistently had to battle Big 12 schools (and others) for that same pool and do so with far less exposure within Texas. If only they could find a way to plant a flag in the state......

AAU matters too but I think most know the southern schools have long been excluded due to politics and perception. They are very sensitive to this perception and adding two well-respected schools like A&M and MU certainly helps. There's more to the AAU side but I won't bore y'all any more.

The academic money and opportunity to improve their Universities (and thus states) dwarfs athletics. The fact that there were benefits on the AD side made it easier. But virtually all of the SEC schools, not just ADs, are reaping huge benefits from our addition. Meanwhile tv money isn't even the primary source of funding for ADs and the SEC schools honestly view the exposure as worth more than the tv paychecks anyway.

I'm not going to tell you that their aren't some fanatics on the Boards of schools who only care about football. There are and them being on board made it easy. But the power brokers in the states and at the universities are focused on entirely different things than fans. The academic issues are much deeper and it's why people still don't get the Maryland/Rutgers thing. And the amount of donations we raised as well as the application numbers for us and other SEC schools has opened eyes in the academic community. Athletics...get the frick on board.

That is definitely an interesting take.

b/c of everyone else had to expand to get the championship revenue why should they not have to?

and correct me if I'm wrong but the ACC's primary concern was being held to divisions, not amount of teams needed to get a title game.

I just dont see a reason to help them out like that.