The SEC is in something of a catbirdish position while all this Big Ten expansion namby-pamby swirls about, and rather than, say, wonder aloud how adding more teams to the Big Ten might help Ohio State win a national title game played against one of his football teams, conference commish Mike Slive very graciously told assembled media types tonight that while monumental shifts in the college football landscape might eventually force the conference to self-embiggen, he’s quite pleased with the way things are, thanks. SBN’s Team Speed Kills opines on why knee-jerk expansion on the part of the SEC would be highly silly and unlikely:
Big Ten Expansion Reaction: Self-Satisfied SEC Edition
“Keeping up” is an awful reason to expand. Only two conferences have gone past 12 members recently. The WAC went to 16 in the ‘90s and imploded shortly thereafter. The MAC expanded to 13 by adding Temple when it was kicked from the Big East, but that’s presented scheduling issues. The existing test cases for football conferences larger than 12 members are not promising.
Let’s also remember that no one has even pulled off the 12-member conference as well as the SEC has. The Big 12 is plagued by the fact that the South division has dominated the North for much of the decade, and the ACC can’t even give tickets away to its championship game. The SEC meanwhile has two balanced divisions, the perfect championship game locale, and the majority of its traditional games intact. No one else can boast that, and expanding beyond its current state disrupts it.Read the rest at Team Speed Kills.
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