NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Actually, the television executive told me, it won’t be the SEC asking Vanderbilt and Mississippi State to leave. The Big Ten won’t try to give Northwestern and Rutgers an “It’s not you, it’s me” speech.
More likely, he said — and this is someone who has been involved in talks that have influenced the direction of college football — those conferences will just be abandoned for something new.
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“The SEC is a brand, the Big Ten is a brand, but those brands are only as good as the institutions involved,” he said.
So NFL Campus North forms with the strongest football programs from the Big Ten, plus some outsiders who bring more value in that sport. NFL Campus South does the same with the core gridiron powers of the SEC, plus Clemson, Florida State, whatever. The weaklings are simply left behind, like Baltimore in 1984 watching Mayflower trucks disappear on the western horizon.
It makes sense. It’s the natural progression of things, as people such as The Athletic’s Chris Vannini have been writing for years. It’s insane and unthinkable, which makes it college athletics normalcy in 2023, but I’m willing to start pre-emptively screaming about it now in hopes that a decision based on something other than enriching a very small group of people is made at some point in this self-sabotaging world.
That noise worked with name, image and likeness rights, a long-needed change that was contested fiercely by most of the same exclusive crowd of folks getting rich off college sports. Of course, the courts made much more of a difference than the noise. But I like to think the noise did something. And could again. It’s worth a yell at the cloud.
How about SEC commissioner Greg Sankey putting his name on it right now? “Not on my watch,” Sankey could say of this preposterous idea of leaving behind the best institution in the best city in the SEC, an athletic department with a national championship baseball program, strong tradition in basketball and excellence in many sports.
Sankey declined to comment on the idea of Vanderbilt being left behind through a spokesman, not wishing to delve into hypotheticals. This did not surprise me, and I wouldn’t take it as confirmation that he has the NFL Campus South roster on a dry-erase board in his office. Also, there’s a decent chance this takes enough time to materialize that it isn’t on his watch.
"You gotta get close to Greg."@SethWEmerson & I explored the relationship between Tony Petitti and Greg Sankey — and the thawing of the SEC-Big Ten cold war.
"The SEC and Big Ten relationship is more important now than ever," Sankey told @TheAthletic: https://t.co/zb0V2uZ2mR
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) August 17, 2023
Certainly, he has considered how the people in the industry that really runs college athletics — a TV industry having its own existential moment — would eventually start comparing the mouths at the trough in terms of the football value each offers in return.
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“Some of these (lesser) programs have kind of just been drafting off the big boys for their money, right?” said the TV executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That’s why Vanderbilt gets the same (SEC payout) every year as Alabama. At some point, you should probably be able to survive on your own merits.”
It’s an interesting time for this to be brought up at Vanderbilt because Vanderbilt is investing in winning football like never before in the history of the institution. I have no doubt Dan McGugin got some nice raises from the $850 a year plus board that Vanderbilt reported giving him in 1904, and that he had the resources he needed in a 197-win, Hall of Fame career.
But imagine taking a special DeLorean back to 1922 when Dudley Field was built at a reported cost of $200,000 (which is about $3.7 million in today’s dollars) and telling McGugin that his beloved program was putting more than $300 million into that place and other athletics facilities, just to start to catch up with the rest of the SEC. He’d be shocked, so please don’t tell him it’s called FirstBank Stadium now, or anything about Vanderbilt football results since he retired in 1934.
Financial bottom line is the most important scoreboard in college football.
We’re not far from the two biggest leagues having no more options in expansion to earn more money.
The next step is obvious, writes @davidubben: Contraction.https://t.co/sVhOXjAuKO
— The Athletic CFB (@TheAthleticCFB) August 17, 2023
I did have actual conversations with a few people in Vanderbilt athletics about this, and of course, they’ve thought about this. There isn’t much anyone wants to say on the record about it now. But this did make me realize that, going back to when Texas and Oklahoma accelerated the latest realignment ridiculousness by leaving the Big 12 for the SEC in 2021, Vanderbilt people sure use the term “charter member” a lot.
Vanderbilt was there from the first day of the SEC, in 1932. Vanderbilt sets the academic pace in the league. Vanderbilt has championship programs. Vanderbilt is serious about spending money on football.
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These are the things Vanderbilt people would like to keep in mind. While hoping common sense returns to college athletics at some point. While realizing even an astounding turn toward football excellence might not be enough because the fan following reflects a small private university that has mostly lost at football over the past 90 years.
I’m fascinated by what Clark Lea is trying to do with Vanderbilt football, and I think his third team — which opens the season Saturday against Hawaii amid construction around the stadium — is going to look like a legitimate SEC football team. That’s not easy to do. Modern history tells us there’s a cap on how far Lea can take it.
But having an opportunity to produce excellence where it isn’t expected, against folks who are expected to dominate you — as Stanford, Northwestern and TCU have done, among others — is a driving force in this sport. Imagine having that opportunity ripped away. Consider how many people will lose interest in college football. If you’re just going to become NFL Campus, you’ll be compared more closely to the NFL, and you’ll suffer by comparison.
It can’t happen. It might happen. I didn’t put much stock in that before recent events, because university presidents have always liked their talking points. Vanderbilt is a wonderful talking point. But so were things such as “student-athlete welfare” and “associations of like-minded institutions,” not long ago.
Lea was put in the spot of going on the record about realignment, after a recent Vanderbilt practice. He was asked about the crumbling of the Pac-12, a league he knows well from his coaching days at UCLA, a day after Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah all bolted.
“Well, I mean, I think it’s sad,” Lea said. “I know this is just the nature of where things are headed right now, and it makes me really happy to be a charter member of the SEC and to know where home is, right? This is a great benefit to us in the world of ever-changing parts that we’re not having to put time and attention and energy on that.”
Not yet. Not while the home still exists.
(Photo of Clark Lea: Steve Roberts / USA Today)
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