| 15 August 2011
It’s funny how life works out sometimes. You plan everything out, do your best to balance life with work and friends with family. But sometimes things just don’t always end up as expected.
Last summer I planned a vacation for the end of June. On paper, it made perfect sense. It’s the start of the slowest few months in sports, and is right in the middle of a literal college football dead period. Going on a vacation in June, what could I possibly miss out on? A few college commitments from high school kids I’d never heard of? An arrest or two in a summer full of them? As my buddy Zayed used to say, “Ehh whatever dude.” I could catch up on all that when I got home.
Of course, it didn’t turn out nearly that easy. College football as we knew it almost got blown to smithereens, only saved at the last second, when Texas got cold feet about a Longhorn Network-less future in the Pac-16. Still that didn’t stop some dominoes from falling, and by the time I got back from vacation, Colorado, Nebraska, Utah and Boise State had all switched conference affiliations.
Something similar happened again this past Memorial Day. Just as I was getting set to apply a nice fat glob of suntan lotion and hit the beach, that prick Jim Tressel decided to resign his post at Ohio State. Sure I got a column up that day, but still showed up late to the beach, and my tan never reached its full potential. Even when I was there, I almost felt guilty for having any fun, and spent most of the afternoon constantly checking my phone looking for any news to break.
Finally, there was this past week.
Behind the scenes in my personal life, June and July were incredibly busy months, and with football set to kick-off in September, I knew that August would be my only real opportunity to lay low. I had a friend expected to visit last Tuesday, and a bachelor party to travel to this weekend. From experience, all I could do was pray that nothing catastrophic happened.
It almost did.
As all of you know, news broke Tuesday that Texas A&M was eyeing a move to the SEC, barely 12 months after throwing a fit, and nearly doing the same in the summer of 2010. Only after Dan Beebe calmed them down, rubbed them on the head, and gave them some ice cream, did the Aggies relax and come back to play with the rest of the kids in the Big XII sandbox. Still, like any whiny kid, you knew they’d act up again.
Apparently that acting up came last week (again, when I had freakin’ company!). Tired of Texas and their shiny new toy (the Longhorn Network), A&M decided it was time to make overtures with the SEC again. This time though, there’d be no posturing. They’d go all the way, leaving their Big XII brethren behind for good. At least that’s the way it was being discussed on the message boards.
Me, I can’t say I totally ever bought it. I know it’s easy to say in hindsight, but let me try and explain what my line of thinking was over the last week.
From the jump, all we ever heard were statements along the line of “Texas A&M is ready to make a move to the SEC! They’re holding board meetings to vote on it! It’ll all be official within days, if not hours!
Which is all well and good, except, umm, Texas A&M can’t want the SEC, without the SEC wanting them back. This is a two-way street. A symbiotic relationship. It’d be like me saying, “Hey, I’m ready to date Mila Kunis!!” That’s fine, but until Mila says “I’m ready to date Aaron Torres!” (which I pray happens soon), it doesn’t mean we’re dating. It’s all conjecture, same with A&M’s goofy public sentiment over the SEC.
Now that doesn’t mean that I think the SEC is against expanding. No way Jose. They do want, and eventually will expand. After all, more teams, means more TV money, and more TV money means more cars, cash and bonuses for these college athletic directors, coaches and other administrators. And who doesn’t love cars, cash and bonuses?
At the same time, at no point did I think the SEC was going to let anyone dictate the expansion process, except themselves. They certainly weren’t going to be rushed to a decision by Texas A&M. As many smarter writers than me have said this week, “Right now Texas A&M needs the SEC, not the other way around.”
Beyond that, there were a few bigger problems that no one ever seemed to be able to provide an answer to.
The first was that as much as A&M wanted to be the 13th notch under the SEC’s belt, the conference was never going to add a 13th team without a 14th. Never, ever, ever. You’d see Nick Saban singing Karaoke on YouTube before he allowed a format with unbalanced divisions. How would it be fair to Auburn, Alabama or the rest of the SEC West that they have to go through six teams to get to a division title, while the East only had to go through five? It just never made sense.
And when you really started looking around the landscape, it never clear who that 14th team would be.
From the beginning, it appeared as though Clemson, Florida State and Georgia Tech (the first two of which made perfect sense) were out of the running. According to reports by CBS Sports’ Brett McMurphy, SEC officials have an agreement not to expand into their existing footprint and step on the toes of the already established schools in those states (In this case, those schools would be South Carolina, Florida and Georgia). Texas A&M’s Big XII running mate Oklahoma also seemed to be out of the question too. The Sooners seem content knowing that if they can beat Texas in any given year, they’ll almost certainly find themselves in the National Championship race.
The other two teams that were tossed around also didn’t make total sense, for very similar reasons. Missouri was name No. 1, but after what happened with them and the Big Ten last year, you knew that they’d proceed with caution in any expansion talks this go around. As for Virginia Tech, what was the need for them to sprint out of the ACC? Like Oklahoma, all they have to do is show up, strap on their helmets and are virtually guaranteed to compete for a conference title as things stand in the ACC. I’m not saying Virginia Tech wouldn’t consider the SEC. But if they did, it’d be after careful consideration. This all seemed so rushed.
And really, above everything else, that’s the one word I couldn’t help but think throughout this whole process: Rushed, like when a single woman in her mid-30’s meets a guy and tries to force him commit so they can start popping out kids. It makes total sense on her end, but what if the guy isn’t ready?
Well, that’s exactly what happened here, as the guy (the SEC), left the girl (Texas A&M) at the altar. As is no secret at this point, the SEC voted yesterday against adding Texas A&M as a 13th team…for now, anyway.
Now obviously when I first heard the news, I found it kind of entertaining. Here was Texas A&M, a school with next to know football tradition in the last two decades, trying to show up at the party of the five-time reigning BCS National Champions, and force their way in. It didn’t happen, and you could cut the unintentional comedy with a knife.
Of course it wasn’t that simple. As I mentioned, I was traveling yesterday, and because of it, missed out on a lot of the details of the situation. After getting home, reading all the fine print, and fine reporting done by a lot of great writers (as much as it pains to me say this, the New York Times’ Pete Thamel killed this story), it seems like Sunday’s vote was only a stumbling block in the SEC-A&M courtship. To take the earlier marriage analogy before one step further, this is a lot like the guy leaving the girl at the altar, then calling her the next day and saying “I just need time to think.” It doesn’t mean that things are over. Just that they’re not going to go exactly as planned.
For starters, there’s a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo for all parties to figure out. From what I can gather, the SEC didn’t want to just outright “invite,” Texas A&M to the conference, for fear that there could be legal ramifications with tampering. The SEC’s decision yesterday wasn’t an outright no thanks, but as Thamel reported, more of a way to delay the process, and allow A&M to “get their house in order.” (That quote according to an SEC official)
In the end, it does appear that A&M will end up in the SEC. The question now becomes what the time frame is. Reading reports from last night, it seems like it could come even in the next few weeks.
Again, let me go on the record and say “I don’t buy it.” And it’s for the same reason I didn’t buy it the first time: The 14th team.
If we’ve learned anything throughout this college expansion process, it’s that these things take time. It took weeks for Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College to leave the ACC, the same when Colorado and Nebraska left the Big XII last year, and things are way more difficult with more complicated TV contracts put in place to avoid scenarios exactly like this. It’s that way with Texas A&M and I’m sure the same with any other school, from any other conference that the SEC might be interested in inviting. As a matter of fact, I thought one of the most underreported quotes from this weekend came from another Thamel article, when an SEC official said, “This thing is much slower out of the chute than the media and blogs have made it.” Bingo.
Quite frankly, this is how I see it going: Over the next few days and weeks, Mike Slive is going to pick up his phone, and start making some calls to his chums all over the Southeast. The calls will be exploratory and simple at first, just gauging who’s on the market and what their interest levels might be. Over time things will only get more serious, as behind the scenes Slive will start putting all the back-room pieces together.
Then eventually… just when we least expect it… BOOM, we’ll get some breaking report that the SEC is going to 14 teams with Texas A&M and fill-in-the-blank team joining the league. Maybe if Slive is feeling really frisky, and the President’s agree to drop their “no expanding into established states” rule, they go to 16, with some combination of Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech or maybe even Miami. And from there, the rest of college football will play catch-up and try to get to 16 themselves. It will happen, just not as soon as most think.
Understand that expansion is coming, but it won’t be on anyone’s time frame but the SEC’s.
They’re the biggest men in the room, and they’re just not going to be pushed around by A&M or anyone else.
When they make their decision is final, believe me, we’ll know it.
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