Bowen Loftin (Fmr A&M and Mizzou Pres)-Adding Texas would break the Gentleman's Agreement

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If Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC, it would break a long-standing "gentlemen's agreement" between SEC schools that gives conference members "absolute veto power" over the addition of another school from their state, according to a former Texas A&M official.

R. Bowen Loftin, who helped steer the Aggies into the SEC in 2011 while serving as A&M's president, said the oft-discussed unwritten rule was a "specific conversation" during expansion talks in 2010-11 when he was involved. Loftin also served as chancellor at Missouri in 2014-15 after the Tigers made the move to the SEC.

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"There's this understanding among the membership -- at least it was 10 years ago -- that you don't admit a school from the same state as a member school unless that member school's OK with it," Loftin told ESPN.com on Thursday. "We talked about it from time to time among ourselves, that this was the way it was going to be, that if we had another school in Texas wanting to enter the SEC, Texas A&M would have veto power."

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Loftin said the agreement prevented expansion discussion involving teams such as Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Miami, even when the league was targeting the ACC if 16-team superconferences came to pass in the last round of realignment.

"We discussed those specific possibilities," Loftin said. "Florida State was never in the conversation, for obvious reasons. It was clear that they would not be admittable unless Florida wanted them included, and who could imagine that?"

Loftin said most expansion discussion centered on schools such as North Carolina, NC State, Virginia or Virginia Tech, all schools in states with no SEC members.

"I can tell you that, during my time in the SEC from two different schools, that was the understanding we had," Loftin said. "It was unwritten. There's no specific rule you can point to. You can point to the bylaws, talk about having a three-quarters majority to admit a new school, which means four schools could stop it from happening legally and officially. But beyond that, there was this understanding."

Loftin said he and members of the A&M board of regents specifically discussed Texas' membership prospects during expansion talks with Slive, who was commissioner at the time. Slive died in 2018.

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