re: Biggest Conference Realignment Regrets

This whole thing about "expanding the SEC's footprint". I can see how that matters to the money guys, but it doesn't matter at all to me as a fan.

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Ga Tech will never be allowed back in the SEC. Why would anyone with a grain of sense want that? They can’t come close to filling their minuscule stadium, have horrendous facilities, won’t spend $ upgrading, and have the biggest bunch of “superior people” - that’s how the Tech nerds and geeks describe themselves - to be found anywhere. They left the SEC because they thought they were too good for us. Now they whine 24/7 because they get no respect. Believe me NO one wants to go to that crappy stadium or be exposed to the most miserable fan base you will ever encounter

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Look at the State of Texas! The Big 12 were so dumb to add TCU and WVU and it just not make any sense. Too many teams in one State is not good and does not help with T.V. market. All you need is just one school in a State. That right there is your answer.

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This whole thing about "expanding the SEC's footprint". I can see how that matters to the money guys, but it doesn't matter at all to me as a fan.

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But it does matter to you even if you don't realize it. Do you want LSU to keep ahead of most schools it the nation in the facilities arms race? Do you want LSU to continue to have the ability to spend more on recruiting that most other schools? Both of those directly lead to LSU consistently having high recruiting classes.

Look at it this way. The total population of the original SEC states is roughly 55.5 million people. The total population of the 4 expansion states is roughly 42.9 million. If those 4 schools were not part of the SEC the value and bargaining power of the SECN would be nearly cut in half. Do you really want the Big 10 to have such a massive advantage in TV money that schools like Minnesota and Purdue would be able to build far better facilities and have far larger recruiting budgets than all the other SEC schools?


If we could somehow put the TV money genie back in the bottle and go back to the way conferences were set up in the 80s I would love it. But we can't. That time is past. Schools weren't willing to negotiate TV deals as an entire D-1A block and wanted freedom to do it themselves and eventually in conference wide blocks (b/c they realized there was way more to be made that way). There is now too much money involved and if you are on the have not end of the money train you are going to get lapped multiple times over by the schools sitting up front with the haves.