The college football world has been set ablaze by the news that the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns will soon be making their way to the SEC, where some of college football’s most valuable programs play, with Alabama, Georgia, and Auburn football leading the way in the southeast.
Texas and Oklahoma were the #1 and #7 revenue-earning schools in 2018, and their inclusion in college football’s already-preeminent powerhouse conference swings the scales so far in the favor of the SEC that other conferences may already be feeling where this could lead.
Obviously, no conference has felt the devastation quite like the Big 12. Oklahoma State and West Virginia are not quite top dog material, and the conference was already losing relevance in recent years outside of the Sooners. Now, they could disband altogether without major poaches from the Pac-12, Mountain West, ACC, or AAC.
Obviously, the Big 12’s gains would make for major losses for those conferences too. There are independents like Brigham Young and Liberty that could benefit from building new rivalries in a Power 5 conference, but schools have already showed their hand in being willing to negotiate. It’s only a matter of time before more programs go the way of OU and UT.
All of this said, there is one way order could be fully restored. Perhaps the SEC could simply send two teams back to the Big 12 in a trade of sorts. Obviously, college football’s cash cow conference isn’t going to give the Big 12 Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Florida, or Auburn football considering their standing in the sport’s history.
These two SEC programs could make sense heading west instead: