Conference Realignment: Gene Stallings Has A Texas-Sized SEC Vision For A&M

Consider us here at Swampland Sports a bit ahead of our time.  In September of 2007, we published an article about realigning southern college conferences so that they reflected geography a little bit better.  It was a wish list to get all the teams and conferences in the Swampland Footprint lined up properly.

We could have never expected that potential conference shifts would happen so soon as the Pac 10 added Colorado and the Big Ten added Nebraska late this week.  Both of these moves, while outside of our Footprint, are going to have an effect on the entire college football landscape.  Most importantly, the future of one of our key conferences - the Big 12.

What Nebraska's jump to the Big Ten and Colorado's to the Pac 10 have proved is that culture is as important as geography.  According to the AP, Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman stated "that his university is much more 'aligned' with the Big Ten than the Big 12 when it comes to academics, culture, and athletics."

The cynics are claiming this to be an excuse, but we buy it completely.  Everyone now see how shaky the Big 12 was from the beginning.  When the Big 8 added four Texas teams looking to escape a crumbling Southwest Conference, Nebraska never anticipated how the Big 12 South via Texas would be the tail that wagged the Big 12 dog.

Nebraska wants to be in a conference where the same values are shared.  They now have that in the Big Ten.  In the same way, Boulder, Colorado has more in common with Berkeley, CA than it does Lincoln, NE.

As Nebraska and Colorado officially moved to their new conferences, the bigger news centered on the Pac 10's plans to be the first 16 team superconference.  Many have believed that this kind of move is inevitable for college football, but the surprise to most was the Pac 10 targeting the Big 12 South rather than pursuing the top teams from the Mountain West which would fit better with their Colorado addition.  Besides the questionable fit, this plan would leave the current Big 12 in ruins.

Perhaps the biggest question to many, including us, is why the Big 12 has to dissolve over the loss of Colorado and Nebraska when both teams were better cultural fits elsewhere.  As Nebraska's AD Tom Osbourne has stated, losing Nebraska alone should not destroy the Big 12.

We believe, as does the Houston Chronicle, that the easiest answer for the Big 12 is to move the two Oklahoma teams to the Big 12 North with their old Big 8 brethren, and then add two more Texas teams to the South from the old Southwest Conference group - TCU, Houston (who has just announced big athletic upgrades), Rice, and SMU.  Culturally and geographically, this make the most sense.  So why isn't it happening?

As the week has progressed, it seems pretty clear that this Big 12 South/Pac 10 merger is being pushed by the University of Texas.  The word is that Texas isn't happy just being the best football program in Big 12 country.  They want to be the biggest and best football program west of the Mississippi.  The bright lights of Hollywood seem to have blinded the Longhorns.

Texas clearly loves the idea of Pac 16 since it is their creation.  They get to take the Big 12 South with them plus two Pac 10 tomato cans (aka Arizona and Arizona St) and create an 8 team division that they can continue to dominate.  Sadly, the rest of the Big 12 South is lining up with Texas since Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State all are worried that they will end up like Iowa State or Kansas State - lost in a Big 12 without big name teams.

Leave it to Gene Stallings to get the bigger picture.  Stallings has Texas football and SEC football coursing through his veins.  He played at Texas A&M for the famed Bear Bryant's Junction Boys.  He coached Texas A&M to a Southwest Conference title.  He also coached Alabama to a national championship.  Today, Stallings is a Texas A&M regent who will be part of any decision about Texas A&M's conference future.

On Friday, Stallings was on Paul Finebaum's radio program.  (You can listen to the audio here.)   Stallings revealed quite a bit.  First, like Swampland Sports and the Houston Chronicle, Stallings doesn't understand why losing Nebraska and Colorado means that the Big 12 has to disband.  He favors keeping the current conference intact as the first option.  However, he says that Texas seems to have dismissed this option.

Stallings also states that Texas is clearly driving the train to get itself, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech to the Pac 10.  Additionally, he says that Texas is not considering other conference options like the SEC.  The biggest bombshell for most came when Finebaum asked Stallings about whether it mattered to him that Texas and Texas A&M stayed in the same conference.  Stallings replied:

"At one time it would. Now it wouldn't.  There was a time when I felt that Texas and A&M should be in the same conference. But at the same time I think A&M is big enough to stand on its own and not necessarily need to be piggybacked on someone else.... I can see advantages to all the Texas schools remaining in the same conferences. At the same time, I can some advantages to splitting up too."

Stallings makes a great point - why do the best Texas teams have to stick together except for tradition's sake?  Take a page out of Florida's college football programs.  Florida is in the SEC.  Florida State and Miami are in the ACC.  USF is in the Big East.  All are in BCS conferences.  It is possible to have two different Florida teams playing against one another for a BCS title as Florida and Florida State did years ago.  

Right now, these scenarios can't happen with teams from Texas.  The best Texas team outside of the Big 12 has been TCU, but the Mountain West doesn't have an automatic BCS bid.  

Might it be better for the top Texas powers to spread out their collective weight?

Assuming Texas and Texas Tech go to the Pac 10, Texas A&M goes to the SEC, TCU stays in the Mountain West which may soon receive a BCS bid, this would be good for Texas college football, wouldn't it?

If anything, SEC Commissioner Mike Slive should have T Boone PIckens, the top Oklahoma State booster, on the phone right now explaining how the Cowboys might think about heading to the SEC rather than the Pac 10.  Why do the Cowboys want to play third fiddle behind Texas and Oklahoma in the Pac 10 when they can be Oklahoma's sole SEC power?  

Can't the football passion of Texas and Oklahoma be shared by more than one top conference?

Imagine the SEC adding Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, along with maybe Missouri and Virginia Tech if they decide to go to 16?  You can bet Mike Slive is thinking along those lines.  When Finebaum asked Stallings if he has been talking to any of his SEC friends, Stallings replied, "Yeah, I've talked to one or two."  Slive is likely to have been one of those two.

Considering culture which was a huge factor in Nebraska and Colorado moving, we can also make an argument that Texas A&M culturally fits the SEC while Texas's new vision of itself might culturally fit best in the Pac 10.  Austin residents already see their city as an outpost contrary to most Texas tradition.  Maybe keeping Austin weird, the city's unofficial war cry, would be more easily done being in a conference with Berkeley and Boulder.

If the Longhorns don't like Stallings' position, they can stop it by re-committing to the Big 12.  As Stallings said and Mike Slive has maintained, both would be happy to stay where they are as part of 12 team conferences.  Unlike the Pac 10, the SEC is not looking to create a 16 team conference.  Slive has said they will only do so as a reaction to others.

The Big Ten did not disrupt any balance by adding Nebraska nor did the Pac 10 thus far by just adding Colorado.  They can add Utah, go to 12, and call it a day.  Only Texas and the Pac 10 seem to want this change right here, right now.

Like Stallings, we don't know why Texas is hell bent on going to the Pac 10.  Certainly, as Stallings said in the Finebaum interview - Texas has clearly decided that the Pac 10 is in their best interests.  Maybe its promises of money, etc.  Texas is the top dog now in the Big 12, and they assume they will be in the Pac 16.

Stallings made an important point that decisions like moving conferences are 30 to 40 year decisions and need to be looked at in that light.  They can't be whimsical.  In that light, the current state of the Pac 10 should give Texas pause.  

The USA Today is reporting that the Pac 10 has the least revenue of any other BCS conference.  Additionally, their best team USC is about to go on serious probation that could hobble the program for the next five years.  This whole expansion idea seems like a marriage of convenience between a desperate conference with a new commissioner and a school whose home state-sized ego has them too wrapped up to see clearly.

Before Texas starts counting all the number of big Pac 16 media markets, remember that the ACC believed at one time that Boston College would get them northeast sports fans.   This has yet to happen.  The league's new TV contract was ultimately driven by ESPN's desire to have Carolina-Duke hoops during the slow months after football season is over. The reality is that BC has been a drag on the conference.  

Tim Cowlishaw, Dallas News columnist and Colorado alum, wrote after his Buffs went to the Pac 10 how laughable is "the idea that the Pac-10 has now 'captured the Denver market.' The Buffs own the Denver market much the way Dallas stands still for SMU football."  

Texas might end up dominating every single Pac 10 school in key media markets like LA, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and now Denver, but the Longhorns shouldn't expect anyone in those markets to care.  They have pro teams to support after all.  That's why the Pac 10 doesn't currently have a great TV deal already in place.  Remember, it's about culture.  The west coast just doesn't care about college football like they do in the Swampland Footprint.

At the heart of it, Swampland Sports likes tradition so we'd like to see the Big 12 conference add two more Texas teams, move OU and OSU to the North, and call it a day.  Who really cares who the Pac 10 adds along side Colorado to round out their 12?  

However, if Texas does make this move, and OU, OSU, Texas Tech go with them, we agree with Stallings that Texas A&M would be wise to seek an SEC bid.  

All the fundamentals are the same at Texas and Texas A&M.  They both have the resources, the history, and the access to talent to be a mega-power program.  Taking those Texas resources and marrying them with the SEC would likely make A&M a real competitor to Texas for their state's high school talent rather than being second fiddle as they currently are.  

Remember that the SEC's TV deal give its teams the best TV exposure of any conference in the country.  Whatever Texas team goes to the SEC would have an immediate media advantage due to ESPN's deal with the conference.

On a political note, Stallings also pointed out that it is an election year for his friend and A&M grad, Governor Rick Perry.  Stallings said that political pressures might force Perry to make sure that all the Texas schools stay together.  However, politics could just as easily force the Big 12 to stay together by adding more Texas teams.  We hope that's the case.

Regardless, when it comes to the advent of the superconference the state of Texas and its passion for college football seems to hold all the cards.  Thanks for Stallings and some outside the box thinking, there might be more than one game of poker going on for the future of college football.

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