Thoughts of the Day: July 22, 2021

A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning:

SHOULD THE SEC EXPAND IF TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA WANT TO JOIN? Okay, amid the report from the Houston Chronicle that both Texas and Oklahoma have reached out to the Southeastern Conference about leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC, let’s start with the obvious. Why do they want to leave a league where they are the two dominant athletic programs for the SEC? The answer is very simple: MONEY! As in starting in 2024 the SEC will have a guaranteed $3 billion coming in from its new deal with SEC and there are no such guarantees in the Big 12.

Last year the Southeastern Conference distributed $44.6 million to its 14 schools from television and bowl money while the Big 12 distributed $38.3 million. That’s not exactly a huge disparity, but that will change in 2024 when the SEC’s new deal with ESPN kicks in, netting an ADDITIONAL $17 million per year per school in the SEC. Meanwhile the Big 12’s contract with Fox and ESPN runs out in 2025 and both networks have declined to extend the current contract. It’s doubtful there will be a two-network solution for the league and if it’s ESPN, how much money will there be available for the Big 12 when so much is dedicated to ESPN and it’s SEC Network affiliate?

Rather than wait anxiously for some sort of answer to the Big 12 problem that the networks seem in no hurry to provide, Texas and Oklahoma reportedly are ready to tie their futures to the certainty of the SEC. When contacted to confirm the report Wednesday, both Texas and Oklahoma issued statements, neither of which denied there is any truth to the Houston Chronicle’s report.

The Texas statement read, “Speculation swirls around collegiate athletics. We will not address rumors or speculation.” Oklahoma’s statement read, “The college athletics landscape is shifting constantly. We don’t address every anonymous rumor.”

Notice that there was nothing in either statement that indicated happiness with the Big 12 or a willingness to work with the league to solve its network issues.

When SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was asked about the report, his reply was, “I’m going to focus on the 2021 season, gentlemen.” As Stewart Mandel of The Athletic noted, Sankey’s statement didn’t include the words, “We’re perfectly happy to remain at 14 teams.”

Is the SEC happy with 14 teams? Perhaps, but would the league be happier if it could expand its national brand by adding two teams that have combined to win 11 national championships in football (Oklahoma 7, Texas 4) and 82 NCAA titles in other sports (Texas 50, Oklahoma 32)? The SEC produced seven national championship teams in 2020 while Texas had three (men’s swimming, women’s tennis and women’s rowing) and Oklahoma one (softball).

ESPN/ABC was silent Wednesday but given its financial stake in the future of the SEC it’s hard to imagine the network hasn’t already been contacted. If anything, behind closed doors, executives are probably giddy because it’s a lot less expensive to add an extra $40 million a year to the SEC contract by adding Texas and Oklahoma than it is to pay for an entire season of Big 12 football games. For some reason (a little sarcasm here) games like Kansas-Baylor or Iowa State-TCU just don’t have the same appeal as Oklahoma-LSU or Texas-Alabama. An SEC Championship Game that included Oklahoma or Texas from the West and Alabama, Georgia or Florida from the East would just about pay the increase.

Now, Texas A&M has already stated that it’s none too happy with the concept of Texas in the SEC. The Aggies love being the only SEC team in the state of Texas . Being in the league has created an unprecedented surge in donations by its well-heeled boosters and an identity A&M didn’t have when it was in the Big 12. There could be further unhappiness, the kind that could wind up in court. Members of the Texas legislature with ties to Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech might threaten legal action to prevent Texas leaving the Big 12 just as Oklahoma legislators with ties to Oklahoma State might also go to court to keep Oklahoma in the Big 12.

If Texas and Oklahoma do leave for the SEC, the Big 12 will die on the vine. It will have to expand. Cincinnati, Memphis, UCF and South Florida should have been added to the league years ago. Adding those four teams now wouldn’t soften the blow of losing Texas and Oklahoma and would almost certainly result in a television contract that is maybe only 1/3 of what the SEC pays its schools.

And, finally, if the SEC expands to 16 teams, how long before the Pac-12 and Big Ten expand? For now, we can only speculate but this has been a summer of change in college sports and the drums of change aren’t about to go silent any time soon. Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC is just the latest salvo.

SAY A PRAYER FOR BOBBY BOWDEN We learned Wednesday that Bobby Bowden has a terminal illness. A man of tremendous faith, the legendary Florida State football coach issued a statement that he’s “at peace” with the diagnosis. If anyone can be at peace with the inevitability of death, it is Bobby Bowden.

The winner of 357 Division I football games, two national championships (1993, 1999) and 12 Atlantic Coast Conference titles, Bowden turned FSU from one of the worst jobs in all of college football into one that never finished worst than fourth in the final Associated Press poll from 1987-2000.

As the sports editor of the Leesburg Daily Commercial, I talked to Bobby the morning he made the decision to leave West Virginia (HBC in Morgantown from 1970-75) for Tallahassee. After telling me he was taking the FSU job, I asked what was the deciding factor?

“I walked down the driveway to get my morning paper when I stepped on some ice and dadgummit, I busted my butt,” he told me. “I checked the weather in Tallahassee and it’s warm and sunny. No snow. No ice. I’m gonna coach FSU.”

In September that year, I had taken a job with the Miami News. A week after the Seminoles lost to Memphis in their season-opener, they faced Miami on a Saturday night in the Orange Bowl. Miami won that game, 47-0.

In the locker room after the game, Bobby had his back against the wall. He kept gently beating his head rhythmically against the wall. He looked at me and said, “This was bad. Next week we’re at Oklahoma.” It wasn’t the mismatch that everyone anticipated. The 4th-ranked Sooners struggled to a 24-9 win. Two weeks later, FSU beat then 13th-ranked Boston College and the week after that, they gave 12th-ranked Florida all it could handle before falling, 33-26. FSU finished 5-6 that year, the only losing season the Seminoles had in Bowden’s 34 years in Tallahassee.

Asked about Bowden, Texas A&M coach and former FSU offensive coordinator/head coach Jimbo Fisher at SEC Media Days said, “He’s one of the greatest human beings that’s ever coached and one of the great coaches that’s ever coached.”

TALKING IT UP AT SEC MEDIA DAYS

Nick Saban on how NIL has changed college football: “The college landscape changed to some degree when players got cost of attendance. We made rules that allowed them to go to summer school on scholarship, which we didn’t use to have. So most players with this additional money and the opportunity to advance their academic circumstance chose not to work. So all we’ve done is create an opportunity for players to work. The only thing is, the question is because it’s not going to be equal, and everything that we’ve done in college athletics in the past has always been equal. Everybody’s had equal scholarship, equal opportunity. Now that’s probably not going to be the case. Some positions, some players will have more opportunities than others. And how that’s going to impact your team, our team, the players on a team, I really can’t answer because we don’t have any precedent for it.”

Nick Saban on how Lane Kiffin changed the Alabama offense when he was coordinator and then became a better head coach at FAU and Ole Miss: “So when he came in, I said, ‘Look, we want to change this. You need to research this. You’re smart. We can do this. He actually did implement that and was the first one to sort of change how we did things on offense. It enhanced our opportunity to score more points. So he did a really good job … a lot of people have sort of wondered what the relationship was, but we never really had a bad relationship because this was always a lot of mutual respect for the kind of play caller he was, the kind of coach that he was, and the job that he did. I actually said and told the people when he went to Florida Atlantic that Lane will be a better head coach than even he is an assistant because he has those kinds of qualities. Obviously, he hasn’t disappointed in the job that he did there or the job he’s done at Ole Miss. So none of this is a surprise to me. And I didn’t hear his comments, so I can’t comment on those, but I can say only from my perspective how much respect I have for him as a coach.”

Jimbo Fisher on the need to expand the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams: “I’m all for it. I think it’s necessary. I think it’s needed and not just because we finished fifth, but I think – here’s the point I want you to ask. Name me a sport in any collegiate level that, that expect for the top five conferences, which are about 60, where the other 60 teams have no chance to win the national championship. There’s not another sport in our world that is not – that can’t happen.”

Mississippi State coach Mike Leach on expanding the playoff to 12 teams: “I think 12 teams is a huge step in the right direction. I personally would like to see 64, and you could format it out pretty easily. But I think it’s a huge step in the right direction and I look forward to it.”

Mike Leach on some of the problems created by the transfer portal and new rules that make it so a first time transfer doesn’t have to sit a year: “… I don’t think all those guys are going to find a place to go. I think in the end they would have been better off where they started than not play, but in some cases, another opportunity, a better opportunity, I think that has to be carefully evaluated. I think that sometimes it is necessary to make a move. I think, also, though, it’s too each to transfer right now. I think that the people used to consider their situation more carefully when they had to sit out a year if they transferred laterally.”

Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea on what would be a successful season for the Commodores after their oh-fer 2020 season: “So won’t place a win-loss record or won’t state a win-loss record; don’t believe in doing that in any semblance. We’ll say that every game we play we’ll have a plan to win, and we’ll measure our results off our execution of that plan to win. There are measurable things that show growth as a team, and there are things that can’t be measured. I think both are important. In the end, I’m a competitor, and I didn’t come to Vanderbilt to do anything other than win. So for me, it’s about how we design this team, how we design our tactics, how we develop as people and as teammates to put ourselves in the best position to win games in the fourth quarter. We can be the best physically and mentally conditioned team in the country. We can impose our will on our opponent late in the game. The vision is that there’s a fourth quarter game where we’re on our sideline looking across the field at an opponent that is wilting under pressure that we’re applying because we are the best mentally and physically conditioned team in the country, that we know on our sideline that we’re ready to pounce, and we understand that their margin for error is so small because of the pressure that we’re applying. Those are the kinds of things I’m looking for and how we measure performance as we get into the heat of this season, is that ability to find ways to win those games late.”

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: The Atlantic Coast Conference is holding its annual Media Days in Greensboro, North Carolina. If you weren’t aware don’t feel bad. With the exception of diehard fans of ACC football and media that would rather be in Hoover covering SEC Media Days, nobody noticed.