With rumors swirling in college football right now, future SEC Football expansion doesn’t seem to be off the table.
After Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC, the entire college football world was turned upside down.
Early predictions were that the Big 12 would fold and those remaining teams would need to find a new home. But after they quickly acquired UCF, Houston, BYU, and Cincinnati, it seemed like they wouldn’t go away after all.
But about a week ago, the next domino fell when UCLA and USC announced they were leaving the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten. And that has sent yet another conference, the Pac-12, into the same state of panic Big 12 was in.
This surely won’t be the last bit of news, and many fans are now wondering what the next move will be.
Will the Pac-12 merge with the ACC? It’s been rumored they could form a loose partnership which could possibly include a championship game in Las Vegas.
Will the Big 12 form a super conference? Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado have already met with Big 12 officials and reports say that Oregon and Washington are also interested.
Notre Dame will most likely stay put but that hasn’t stopped Big Ten rumors.
Who knows, maybe the SEC decides to respond to the latest moves by adding even more teams. It has even rumored that Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, and Virginia are negotiating to join the SEC.
So that brings us to the question. If the SEC decided they wanted to make another earth shattering move during this conference realignment frenzy, who would be in play?
4 schools that should be considered for potential SEC Football expansion
A couple things to consider however:
Geography. Because the SEC is the only conference remaining that still has geographical ties and isn’t coast to coast. And it seems likely, based off of their moves thus far, that they want to add programs in the regions close to the teams they already have.
Winning. The SEC knows its worth so to speak and wouldn’t take a team that has no history of success in football. Other sports may be taken into consideration depending on the school, but football is where the money is at, so any school that has a lackluster football program could be eliminated.
And now the most important part, brand. What’s the draw that you can bring to the conference and what can you add that the conference doesn’t have already? Texas and Oklahoma clearly add to the SEC. So for more schools to join they’ll have to meet the same requirements that those teams fulfill.