How Texas and Oklahoma moving to the SEC could affect the landscape of college football

Chas Phillips

Photo: University of Texas Athletics

On July 21st, it was reported by the Houston Chronicle that the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma were reaching out to the SEC in attempts to join the conference. This revelation poses a multitude of questions and possibilities for the future of the conference and the programs. These range from television rights, conference realignments, scheduling changes, recruiting implications and more. While nothing about this situation is certain, there are some things that we already know will change if Texas and Oklahoma were to join the SEC.

First, scheduling; How would two teams leaving the Big 12 and joining the SEC even work in the tight college football schedule? For the Big 12, which would be down to 8 teams if Texas and Oklahoma were to leave, the current 9-game conference schedule where teams play all other conference members once in the regular season would be seemingly impossible. Therefore, this results in two hypothetical scheduling scenarios for the Big 12 if the conference doesn’t replace Oklahoma and Texas. The first is to reduce the number of weeks of conference games from 9 to 7, resulting in conference members having an unprecedented 5-game non-conference schedule. The other is to keep the current 9-game conference schedule, but have teams play 2 conference members twice for their 8th and 9th conference game.

As for the SEC, the challenges would be a bit more nuanced. The most basic problem would be which division Texas and Oklahoma would join to not upset the balance in the SEC. The best guess of many would be Texas in the SEC West and Oklahoma in the East in hopes to capitalize on the longstanding rivalries of Texas-Texas A&M and Oklahoma-Missouri. In terms of scheduling, the SEC would have to scrap their current model of cross-division competition, which includes two games, a consistent yearly opponent and a random draw that changes every year. The league, which would expand to 16 teams, would likely cut one of their 3 non-conference games to make room for an additional cross-divisional game and may even eliminate the idea of a consistent cross divisional opponent, as Florida head coach Dan Mullen suggested at SEC Media Days this week. Of course fans will speculate and salivate at what the possibility of adding two strong football programs in Texas and Oklahoma will do for the SEC, a popular one being a bracket for an SEC tournament, similar to the SEC basketball tournament, which would be made plausible with a 16 team field.

Some of the complications that would come with the arrival of Texas and Oklahoma, however, are less exciting off the field issues that would need to be resolved. For one, TV rights have always been a hot button topic surrounding Texas football, due to the Texas-owned Longhorn Network. In the SEC, the Longhorn Network would likely come under fire thanks to the 10-year, multibillion-dollar deal that was just signed by ESPN in late 2020 to be the exclusive provider of all SEC regular season football games, as well as a host of other add-ons surrounding SEC football. This deal would also likely need to be restructured with the addition of two marquee schools like Texas and Oklahoma coming to the conference.

Recruiting and NIL opportunities would also be vastly different with Texas and Oklahoma coming to the SEC, as the conference would then have 9 of the top 20 recruiting classes in 2021, while the Big 12 would be left with 0 in that group. This would devastate the Big 12, as well as skyrocket the SEC in terms of monetary value of games, which would directly correlate to NIL profits amongst athletes of the conference.

Though these discussions are only in the beginning stages and, even if the change would fall through, no change would happen for likely over 5 years. Until then, fans will be left to speculate and dream about the possibilities of SEC football adding two new contenders for football glory to the league.