OPINION: SEC invites to Oklahoma, Texas intriguing for football but huge business for league and TV

Jul. 30—We have Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Labor, Big Oil. What are we to call the nation's top football conference that adds powerhouses Texas and Oklahoma? Big SEC?

If one needed to be convinced of what's most important about college football in general, and the Southeastern Conference in particular, one needs only to read the news stories about the two Big 12 schools invited to join the SEC.

The stories are not filled with giddy sports writer takes on how an Alabama playing an Oklahoma every year would go, or how the teams that currently find themselves in the middle of the pack (Tennessee Vols, we're looking at you) would fare in a tougher league, or how specific players would perform if they faced Texas and Oklahoma every year and not necessarily Arkansas and Missouri.

No, the stories are all about money and television rights and contracts.

Indeed, we had to roll our eyes at SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey's quaint mention of the words "academic excellence" in the league's news release about its schools' unanimous vote to invite powerhouses Texas and Oklahoma to join the league in 2025.

The vote, he said, was "a testament to the SEC's longstanding spirit of unity and mutual cooperation" and a recognition of the new schools' "legacies of academic and athletic excellence."

Certainly, the Universities of Oklahoma and Texas have turned out their share of topnotch athletes and brilliant students, but the two areas are only rarely mentioned in the same breath.

To be clear, the SEC did not invite the two schools to join it to up their academic reputation. Money, power and control were more the motivating factors.

Before multimillion-dollar network and cable television contracts became common, football at SEC schools on Saturdays in the fall already was a phenomenon. TV contracts only made it more so, because networks were willing to pay the leagues big money when they could get even bigger money from sponsors who wanted lots of eyes on whatever it was they were pitching.

How much are we talking about?

When the SEC's latest deal with ESPN begins in 2024, the league will have about $67 million annually to distribute among its member schools. With money like that, it makes alumni recruiting offices who land gifts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars look like pikers.

The Big 12, on the other hand, distributed almost exactly half of that — $34.5 million (admittedly a down year because of the pandemic) — to its member schools in 2020.

As if those numbers weren't eye-popping enough, ESPN also owns the SEC Network and the Longhorn Network, the home of University of Texas games.

And as if 2025 couldn't get here soon enough (political takes aside), the latest talk has centered on whether Oklahoma and Texas could come into the league any sooner.

The Big 12 has accused ESPN — which also holds the rights to Big 12 games through the 2024-2025 season along with Fox — of attempting to destabilize its conference with secret talks with the SEC and Texas and Oklahoma. ESPN has said it has done no such thing.

If Texas and Oklahoma leave the Big 12 before 2025, according to Big 12 bylaws, they will owe penalties worth the equivalent of a year's conference distribution for every year they leave before the end of the contract.

So is Big SEC big business? You bet.

Back at the University of Tennessee, which voted along with all other league members to invite the two schools, the football considerations also must be getting some thought. Texas and Oklahoma would be the farthest west teams in the conference, so it would be natural for them to go into the league's West Division. If they do, two teams from the West Division would need to move to the East. Geographically, the two candidates who logically would move to the East are the University of Alabama and Auburn University.

That fact itself must give pause to the Vols, who have not had a 10-win season since 2007. Alabama, over that time, has never not won 10 games and has won six national championships. Auburn also has a national championship in that time period. Meanwhile, current East Division members Georgia and Florida have had eight and six 10-win seasons since 2007, respectively, and Florida also has a national championship.

Adding Texas and Oklahoma to the league only ratchets up the pressure on teams like Tennessee, at least with its coaches, players and fans. Internally, where some of that $67 million gets distributed (even maybe to some academic programs), and with more to come with the new league additions, they're laughing all the way to the bank.

Big SEC, indeed.