Texas and Oklahoma will, effective 2025, become the 15th and 16th members of the SEC. Perhaps because we’ve had a decade to live with the consequences of profit-above-all-else expansionism, the public at large has greeted this round of conference realignment much more skeptically than it did the last. It’s not a surprise that Big Ten and ACC fans have recoiled at the thought of a 16-team, hulked-out SEC. What has been unexpected is the resistance coming from within the SEC footprint.
To better understand the averse reaction — which isn’t coming from the whole South Carolina fan base, but definitely a substantial portion of it — let’s revisit the prevailing logic from the conference realignment of the early 2010s:
1) Add new media markets to your conference footprint
2) Get more lucrative TV contracts
3) TV money gets distributed to the members schools
4) Woohoo everybody’s rich
5) ?