re: Butch Jones Most Followed Coach On Twitter

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With Alabama and Kentucky both moving away from IMG, it will be interesting to see if the rest of the conference follows suit. Collegiate Licensing was started in Alabama and Host Communications was started in Kentucky. Now that IMG College - the merger of these 2 companies - has moved to ACC country will the old SEC ties begin to die off?

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I don't think so. SEC teams are far too profitable to lose ties with and beyond that I'd cite Dish Network as an example. There's a reason Dish picked up the SEC Network so quickly which guaranteed others would follow suit despite the bluffing and hedging for a deal.

Charlie Ergen, born and raised in Oak Ridge and UT alum and former UT walk-on in basketball founded Dish. Dish is a major sponsor of UT athletics (just see the first few seconds here of a Veterans Day video - though seeing the old unis, footage, and hearing some of the history is really cool if you care to spend a few minutes Vol Veterans Day Tribute ). We do various features like this constantly and the production is always first class in part because of Dish.

So I think those ties with the new IMG company are very strong for many reasons. I realize IMG clouds the picture for the future but I just can't see them breaking ties, especially if the subsidiary that handles it maintains some autonomy and character from the Host days. It's also simply smarter business, imo, to add on as many as they can rather than suddenly drop conference ties.