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If Vandy leaves in the 60’s, does it change 1990’s realignment?
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Fighting Muskie Offline
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Post: #21
RE: If Vandy leaves in the 60’s, does it change 1990’s realignment?
(08-07-2022 05:15 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  
(08-07-2022 04:54 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  
(08-07-2022 09:36 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  
(08-07-2022 06:50 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  
(08-06-2022 04:01 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  I sometimes reflect on the "Vanderbilt-SEC relationship" of the 1970s compared to the "Vanderbilt-SEC relationship" of today. It's a very different dynamic at this point (as would be expected). There was a certain charm to the 1970 VU, when Memorial Magic was a huge deal for our hoops program and our small football stadium didn't seem so underwhelming and outdated (as it is today).

Leaving the SEC in the 1960s (F-Muskie's hypothetical) could have been a possible disaster for Vanderbilt, though I suppose we could have ended up in the ACC at some point.

Vanderbilt independence probably goes about as well as it did for Tulane.

At first, I think they build an Indy schedule with other academic minded indies:

Tulane, GT, Richmond, William & Mary, Villanova, Holy Cross, Army, Navy

Along with some academically focused ACC and SWC schools:

Rice, SMU, Duke, WF, UNC, UVA

And maybe some SEC holdovers:

Ole Miss, Tennessee, Kentucky

Basketball and Olympic sports end up in the Metro. Depending on the timing of Big 8 expansion, Tulane and Vandy either join the SWC in the early 90s or become part of a Metro/C-USA football league.

One thing is for sure—once they leave the SEC, there’s no going back.


This all sounds about right. Vanderbilt and Tulane/Rice/SMU have a lot in common. We would actually be well suited for the future AAC.

I suppose, after being raided by the SEC, the 6 SWC teams would have an expansion pool of:

Tulane, Vanderbilt, Tulsa
USM, Memphis, Louisville, Cincinnati

Now, there’s a good chance that at least the first two private schools would get added.
However, if Tech and Houston were to get picked up by the Big 8 right away, they could go full Magnolia:

SMU
TCU
Baylor
Rice
Tulsa
Tulane
Vanderbilt
Air Force
Navy*
Army*

That would have been been kind of fun.

And that's a hypothetical league in which Vanderbilt could compete in football.

Vandy, Baylor, and TCU probably emerge as the top teams in that league but I think there’d be a lot of parity, which would make for interesting football.

Hopefully the prestige factor would keep the members committed instead of chasing other leagues. They might have smaller alumni bases but those alums would tend to be wealthier and I think that would be attractive to advertisers—think the kinds of ads you see when you watch golf.
08-07-2022 05:24 PM
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orangefan Offline
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Post: #22
RE: If Vandy leaves in the 60’s, does it change 1990’s realignment?
(08-06-2022 08:05 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Let’s pretend for a moment that Vanderbilt also decides to follow GT and Tulane and exits the SEC in the early 1960’s for competitive and academic reasons.

I venture to say they soldier on with 9 schools—no immediate expansion.

The 1990 rolls around, Penn St has just joined the Big 10 and somebody in the SEC office found the ncaa rule about CCGs. They are shopping for 3 schools.

Does this change the disposition of the schools the SEC is courting?

On the eastern flank, East target #1 Florida St likely still looks at the situation and decides to go to the ACC, leading East target #2, Clemson, to also stay put.

On the Western side, this is where I think things could have gotten interesting. I don’t know the details of why Texas and A&M didn’t budge in 1990 but perhaps the 14 or 16 member mega conference was a turn off. This move would only mean a conference of 12, with all 3 new adds coming from the west. Texas & A&M could have brought a friend—Arkansas, Tech, or Baylor. Ann Richards isn’t governor yet so Baylor has no sway. Maybe West Texas politicians require Tech to be in the deal, maybe they don’t. But your SEC could have looked like this:

East: Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Auburn
West: Ole Miss, Miss St, LSU, Arkansas, Texas, Texas A&M

The impact:

The Big 8 can only add 2nd rate Texas schools and/or BYU/Utah is they try to expand their footprint.

SC and Vanderbilt are both out there wandering for a different home; both are likely trying to get out of the Metro. SC maybe succeeds in returning to the ACC, maybe they don’t.

The SEC made a run at Texas and Texas A&M back in 1990, and failed. If those schools had been willing to join at that time, Arkansas and So. Carolina would likely have been left out.

I agree that a 9 school SEC would have worked well as the conference didn't play a full round robin anyway. However, if the SEC looked to get itself back to 10 during the 1970's, Miami, Florida St. and So. Carolina would have been obvious targets. Even though Miami did not rise to national prominence until the 1980's, it was Florida's season ending rival until 1980. So. Carolina did leave the ACC for the "greener grass" of independence, but it may have been open to joining the SEC during the 1970's as an opportunity to raise its football program. Finally, by the early 1970's Georgia Tech may have had remorse about leaving the SEC and wanted back in since it obviously joined the ACC in 1978.
(This post was last modified: 08-08-2022 11:56 AM by orangefan.)
08-08-2022 11:55 AM
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Post: #23
RE: If Vandy leaves in the 60’s, does it change 1990’s realignment?
(08-07-2022 01:02 PM)Just Joe Wrote:  
(08-07-2022 11:50 AM)Poster Wrote:  
(08-07-2022 10:18 AM)Just Joe Wrote:  Texas, Texas A&M, FSU, and Miami would still have been prime targets. Ultimately, for reasons stated above, I don’t think it’s politically feasible to get UT/A&M by themselves in 1990 and FSU/Miami would still make the choices they made to go ACC/Big East. So I think Arkansas and SC still get invited.

As to the #12, I initially thought Virginia Tech, but Beamer had only been in Blacksburg for three years and hadn’t really done anything special yet. West Virginia was a much stronger and established independent under Nehlen, I think they get the spot. From there, I guess the question is who the BE adds as #8 for FB, although 8 may not have been required at that point.




They just would have taken Arkansas and stopped at 10. All the choices except for South Carolina would have been bad, and even South Carolina wouldn’t have been valuable enough to take as #11 without adding a #12.


Va Tech was a joke in those days. WVU would have been considered a poor geographic fit in those days (they’re almost in Pittsburgh), and they might have preferred the Big East to the SEC anyway. I’m not going to get started on anybody else.


I guess South Carolina would have gone to the Big East in place of Temple. The Big 12 would have been the first conference with a title game in 1996.

The entire point of that expansion was getting to 12 for a title game. A D-1A conference title game was Roy Kramer’s baby, taking advantage of and obscure NCAA rule created for smaller conferences. They were going to 12.



Roy Kramer was the Vanderbilt athletic director before becoming SEC commissioner. If Vanderbilt left the SEC in the 1960s, then I doubt that Roy Kramer would have ever been SEC commissioner.

The guy who was conference commissioner instead of Kramer might not have cared about a conference championship game, and in fact might not have been aware of such a thing in the NCAA bylaws. (IIRC Kramer had only heard of conference championship games because he was a Division II head coach before becoming Vandy AD.)

Even in the extreme off chance that Kramer somehow became SEC commissioner, he probably wouldn’t have thought it was worth it to add South Carolina and some school like ECU to get to 12. Especially when no other Division I conference had a title game at that point.
(This post was last modified: 08-08-2022 03:49 PM by Poster.)
08-08-2022 03:43 PM
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