(02-13-2020 06:39 PM)usffan Wrote: Instead of the people deciding what their dream conference is, imagine instead that somehow all conferences were given the chance to essentially reboot. In this imaginary world, I would have to assume that the first coalitions that would start to re-form would be around the core of the Big Ten (focusing on large midwestern state schools), the SEC (I'm thinking Alabama/Auburn/Florida/Georgia immediately form an alliance), the west coast (USC/UCLA/Cal/Stanford/Oregon/Washington), the southwest (Oklahoma/Texas) and Tobacco Road (UNC/Duke). The question becomes, now freed free to form conferences of the size they wish and without legacy programs, what do you think would become of these conferences?
Personally, I would think the Big Ten lets Rutgers, Maryland, Nebraska and Northwestern and becomes a 10 team conference.
The Pac-12 lets Oregon State and Washington State go and also becomes a 10 team conference.
The SEC has a more substantial reorganization, letting the Mississippi schools, Arkansas and Vanderbilt become free agents and makes a play for Clemson and FSU (both of whom I think would jump at the chance), becoming a 12 team conference. The unknown is what becomes of Mizzou and Texas A&M, because...
I think the Big 12 would drastically change, with Nebraska and Arkansas joining up with Texas, Oklahoma, OK State and Kansas. That's 6 teams, and they'd be able to pick up who they actually want. Could they entice Mizzou and TAMU back for that? Not sure.
The question becomes what becomes of the Tobacco Road schools? I think FSU and Clemson would jump in a heartbeat. Who would they pick up? For sure they'd get back together with Maryland. But how else it would play out would be interesting...
USFFan
There is nothing wrong with the Mississippi schools in the SEC. Both are usually competitive in all sports, both fan bases travel very well, and we like them. Somebody has to be the middle ground in any conference.
The issue in the SEC is Vanderbilt refusing to spend what it takes to upgrade facilities and to compete in the 3 major sports. They don't even field a softball team preferring instead to offer bowling.
We love their academics and they have a great history with us and we don't want to kick them out, but they are the bottom of every statistical metric possible for revenue athletics and if not for visiting fan bases their sporting venues wouldn't be even more weakly attended than they are. They have however won national championships in Women's bowling and Baseball.
Missouri, God bless them, just has problems. They have great folks who have been welcomed at all of our venues and have reciprocated the favor, but they've gone straight down in the SEC. Their once great hoops program is struggling, their baseball has been average and after Pinkel they have failed to remain competitive in football with sagging attendance, sagging donations, and all of that is on top of several campus issues that have beset them.
The simple fact is that there is nobody in the SEC their fans want to play.
Those are the two bottom feeders on revenue, attendance, and competitively.
Now if you replace those two with Clemson and Florida State it makes for a helluva conference. But it also destroys the remaining value of the ACC. I'm not sure how you put them back together without Florida State and Clemson.
The SEC could have taken Florida State on 3 different occasions in the 80's and passed. That's where the SEC dropped that ball, leaving Papa Bowden with a chip on his shoulder.
Who you get to pair with them is another matter. Clemson's administration wasn't ready for the move in '92 when we were interested and South Carolina took their place. The Gamecocks have grafted in pretty well. Virginia Tech was interested in 1990 but was considered an outlier. West Virginia applied twice and we passed. In 1990 A&M was interested. I suppose if you were to rewrite the SEC's history we would have added Arkansas, South Carolina, Florida State and Texas A&M to have gotten to our 14.