Thoughts of the Day: July 27, 2021

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:

AMID ALL THE SEC EXPANSION TALK, SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE GATORS

Edge rusher Brenton Cox Jr., who has been recovering from surgery for a fractured foot, says he is doing so well with his rehabilitation that he will be ready to go when Florida faces Florida Atlantic in the season opener in The Swamp on September 4.

On his second day of running since the surgery, Cox tweeted out, “When we snap against FAU, I’ll be ready. I’ll be out there.”

Cox, who had 4.0 sacks, 9.5 tackles for loss and 18 quarterback hurries in 2020, is an essential defender if the Gators are to rebound in 2021 from the statistically worst defensive year in school history.

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Former Gators Kelsey Stewart, Michelle Moultrie and Aubrey Monroe will be on the medal stand today at the Tokyo Olympics as the USA softball team goes for the gold against Japan. In Sunday’s final game of group play, Stewart hammered a walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh inning to give Team USA a 2-1 win over Japan.

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Former Gator Caeleb Dressell swam the opening leg of the USA’s gold medal winning 4X100 freestyle relay team. Natalie Hinds picked up a bronze for her leg of the 4X100 freestyle relay. Current Gator Kieran Smith got a bronze for the 400 freestyle.

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Redshirt freshman Wyatt Langford earned second team honors for the Charlottesville TomSox in the Valley League at first base after hitting .345 with three homers and 20 RBI in the collegiate summer league. Wyatt had 10 multi-hit games and hit eight doubles and two triples. Wyatt is expected to compete for the starting catcher job at UF next spring.

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Ventrell Miller, who has led the Gators in tackles the last two seasons, has been named to the preseason Butkus Award watch list. Miller had 88 tackles in 2020 and has 158 tackles, 15 tackles for loss, 7.5 sacks and one interception in his UF career. The Butkus Award is given annually to the nation’s top linebacker.

Named to the Jim Thorpe Award preseason watch list was cornerback Kaiir Elam, who had 39 tackles, 11 pass breakups and two interceptions in 2020. The Jim Thorpe Award is given annually to the nation’s top defensive back.

TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA ARE A DONE DEAL, NOW WHAT’S NEXT?

Any chance the Big 12 had for a Hail Mary that would keep Texas and Oklahoma in the league ended Monday morning when the two schools announced they will be departing, destination the Southeastern Conference. There will be a formal announcement, perhaps even by the end of the week. Make no mistake about it, this is a rubber stamp. If you think that any of this caught even one SEC school by surprise, then think again.

Now, the discussions on adding Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC was on a strict need-to-know basis, but the people at the top of each school’s food chain knew exactly what was going on. Texas A&M is credited with leaking the story and spent a couple of days in Hoover, Alabama at SEC Media Days acting as if someone had stolen their puppy. But notice what happened over the weekend. The A&M president basically said, “Bring it on, Texas!” What does that tell you? That the outrage was all feigned, orchestrated to make the Aggie Nation believe their administration and athletic director were standing up to big, bad Texas and the equally heartless Greg Sankey. The Friday “How dare they!” dissolved rather quickly into Saturday’s affirmation that the SEC is about to grow by two schools.

Texas and Oklahoma will have to pay an exit fee, estimated at $76 million apiece, which is no small chunk of change but will probably be covered once a few well-placed phone calls are made to some of the oil gozillionaires who are prominent boosters at both schools. The 2021 season will be their swan song in the Big 12 and both will be joining the SEC for the 2022 season per Matt Hayes, whose sources are among the best in all of college sports media.

It does make sense for Texas and Oklahoma to depart the Big 12 as soon as possible, not just to save the animosity that would build up with two additional lame duck athletic years in a league they will soon depart, but also for the Big 12 which is attempting to stave off extinction. The longer the Big 12 waits to add the teams it will need to remain a viable league, the more likely it will sink to Conference USA or MAC levels.

For Texas and Oklahoma to join the SEC for the 2022-23 athletic year, ESPN will have to buy out the last two years of the television contract held by CBS. That’s actually a small price to pay when the value Texas and Oklahoma bring to the SEC is taken into account. This is why we know ESPN was in on the negotiation to add Texas and Oklahoma when it began some six months ago. Had ESPN, which already had a deal with the SEC that will pay $300 million a year for 10 years starting in 2024, been blindsided nothing would have surfaced that Texas and Oklahoma want to join the SEC. There will be a new contract, that’s all. It will kick in a couple of years earlier and will include payouts to two more teams, that’s all. Matt Hayes does write that the new deal could pay out as much as $70 million per SEC team.

The Big 12 doesn’t have a single option that can make up for the revenue loss or the prestige that Texas and Oklahoma bring in football, but as long as it can remain a league it does have autonomous voting rights as a Power Five conference within the NCAA. Because of that, schools from some of the other leagues will listen when the Big 12 comes calling.

Probably the biggest problem for the Big 12 will be finding schools that are a geographic fit, particularly if Kansas and Iowa State bolt to the Big Ten, as has been suggested, and West Virginia goes to the ACC. Television money will certainly be reduced but travel expenses will almost certainly be increased. If expansion includes the likes of Arizona and Arizona State from the Pac-12 or South Florida and UCF from the American Athletic Conference it will help reduce the television impact even if those four schools aren’t exactly national powers. One thing the Big 12 can count on is any school from the American or Mountain West will gladly listen since even the league’s reduced payouts will be far more than they’re making right now. The entire American Athletic Conference paid out $73.2 million for all the schools in the conference at the end of the 2019-2020 athletic year. The conference total is less than any two Big 12 schools made from their contract.

PAUL FINEBAUM SPEAKS …

On the possibility of further SEC expansion: “I don’t think it can get too much larger for a very specific reason – money … Right now you have 14 schools sharing the pie. You add two more they have to be guaranteed that not only will they make an extremely large amount of money, but everyone else won’t lose any. Once schools start making a lot of money, they only care about one thing, making more. So you have to be a little bit careful.”

On why going from eight to nine conference games in the SEC is a possibility: “You can go your entire cycle at any school and not see someone from the other side, and if you add two more, that’s going to be even more problematic.”

On BYU as an option for the Big 12 and Pac-12: “There’s one other school out there who I thik is very valuable that could help either the Big 12 or the Pac-12 and that is BYU. I said Notre Dame is the biggest name out there; BYU is pretty close to being the second biggest.”

A YEAR OF MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS IS AHEAD

We’ve been hearing about the four 16-team super league concept forever, but that would cut out the Group of Five. When Greg Sankey and the College Football Playoff working group revealed their 12-team expansion proposal one of the key elements was ensuring the Group of Five would have chances to be a football Cinderella.

There may be four 16-team super conferences in the very near future but they won’t be the only conferences involved in the playoff, not unless they wish to be taken to court as a monopoly or unless the Group of Five schools decide to form their own division and stage their own playoff. There is much more money to be had as part of the 12-team expanded playoff so don’t expect anyone suggesting a separate playoff for the Group of Five. It can be successfully argued that there may never be more than two or three teams at the most from the Group of Five capable of winning a playoff game, but that doesn’t change the fact that they will have to be given their shot and their slice of the revenue pie. The NCAA’s lack of success in the courts should serve as adequate warning that the courts aren’t going to stand for monopolies and cartels to exist, so the playoff will expand and the Group of Five, however it is reshaped by mergers and acquisitions, will be included.

The format that has been proposed and is almost certain to be adapted will include the champions of the six highest ranked conferences and six at-large teams. Whether we will have five power conferences or that number is trimmed to four with a merger, the expanded playoff will have six conference champs. This is why we should expect leagues merging and expanding within the Group of Five. Schools in the right Group of Five conferences might enhance their chances of (a) making the playoff and (b) making more money.

There are currently 130 teams in Division I, among which several have no business playing Division I football other than paychecks. I am of the opinion that within two years we will have somewhere between six and eight 16-team leagues that will contend for the six conference champions that make the playoff.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Jay Bilas, who is the leading college basketball analyst for ESPN, suggested Monday that Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips needs to get on the phone immediately to call Greg Sankey to discuss merging the ACC with the SEC. Bilas pointed out all the natural rivals that would play in such a league but he doesn’t go into how you would pull off scheduling and the logistics of a 30-team conference (16 SEC, 14 ACC) that would stretch all the way from Boston to Austin. ESPN is going to be paying the 16 teams of the SEC more than $65 million a year with reports that the total could exceed $70 million. The ACC is stuck with its contract that paid out $32.3 million last year until 2036. I understand why Bilas would love to see the SEC share the wealth with their country cousins but I can’t imagine there is anyone in the SEC who thinks it’s a brilliant idea.