(06-16-2022 11:30 PM)Utgrizfan Wrote:  

(06-16-2022 11:25 PM)Milwaukee Wrote:  .

For every person who expects the SEC to stop expanding, there seems to be someone who expect either a continuing expansion or a merger resulting in fewer than 5 power conferences.

Question: Why do so many people seem to expect further SEC expansion of some kind (either adding members or merging/absorbing other conferences)?

I don't understand it either I feel that the SEC is done expanding for the foreseeable future. The only other expansion I could think of is if the Big10, Pac12 and ACC all decide to gang up on the B12 and destroy it creating 4 "Power" Conferences

Florida State and Clemson are more valuable to ESPN in the ACC by orders of magnitude. Conversely, those two would add no additional TV markets, nor would either come anywhere close to increasing the SEC’s media total media payout commensurate with what Texas and OU are going to bring. Outside of adding Ohio State and Notre Dame no one outside the SEC could move the money needle in a sufficient manner. The only way I could see any ACC schools end up in the SEC is if the B1G swoops in and takes Virginia, Duke, North Carolina, and Georgia Tech from the ACC. Even then, I think, to the extent the SEC then took any of the remaining schools, they’d snag Virginia Tech and NC State for geographic reasons. However IMHO in that scenario it’s more likely that the ACC would backfill with West Virginia, UCF, Cincinnati, and either USF, Navy (FB-only), or, holding it’s nose, UConn. I’ll go with Navy as that might keep ND from breaking its 5 games/year contract.

New ACC North: BC, Syracuse, Pitt, WVU, Navy, Cincinnati, Louisville.

New ACC South: Virginia Tech, NC State, Wake Forest, Clemson, Florida State, UCF, Miami.