They must be mad enough to spit over in College Station. Or gig somebody. Or whatever it is Aggies do when they are high pissed.
You see, Texas A&M joined the Southeastern Conference 10 years or so. Sure they did it because the SEC helped their brand more than the Big 12 did. There is that. But mainly they did it just to get out from under Texas and Oklahoma. Particularly Texas who they hate worse than poison.
Imagine the amusement in Aggieland when the news came out that the Longhorn and Sooners brass had made overtures to the SEC to join it. And that, depending on who and what you read, it’s pretty much a done deal.
It gets even better. It’s not clear that the President of Texas A&M or any of the other “member institutions” of the Big 12 knew anything about it. Which if true represents the biggest snub since Trump failed to check on Mike Pence during the Great Insurrection.
This is all very interesting. First of all, if this goes down it is really bad news for Arkansas. The Razorbacks recruit Texas pretty hard. Part of the pitch is their membership in the SEC. If UT and OU get in, the exclusive allure of that argument goes out the window.
Still this is more proof that the conferences, especially with the prospect of players having NIL rights, will be aligned between the “haves” and the “have nots” with conferences blowing up and schools looking to knife their former colleagues in the back. This is all good news for, say, Notre Dame if it decides to lift it’s skirt and quit being independent in football. It is bad news for, oh I don’t know, Tulane comes to mind for some reason.
Still, OU and UT are used to pretty much calling the shots over there in the Big 12, as Tommy Tuberville, I mean the distinguished United States Senator Tuberville, discovered when he left the Chair of Football at Auburn for Texas Tech. If , indeed, they join the SEC, they will soon learn that they left their fiefdom for an autonomous collective.
See, in the SEC it is share and share alike. For example, gridiron punching bag Vanderbilt gets the same cut of the swag as Alabama. It is a charter member of the SEC and will never get shown the door if for no reason than everybody schedules their homecoming games against the Commodores. Then again, the Commodores are as good as anybody in baseball.
It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out. The notion of the Longhorns playing in Tuscaloosa or the aforementioned Commodores taking on the Sooners in Norman just doesn’t seem right.
But I shed no tears for the Aggies. They got damn near as much money as Texas. They will figure this out. And you know? Texas is but a shadow of their former self. They were doing good to go, like, 7-4 in the Big 12. Here’s a prediction: Arkansas kicks their ass up here when they play them in September or so. Welcome to the SEC Bevo!
But it sure is funny-at least to me- if all of this caught the Aggies or anybody else in the Big 12 by surprise. Snake dens are not confined to OPEC. And bidness is bidness.
As an aside, it is my honor-if you want to call it that-to be covered up with Vanderbilt people in my life. I called my law school buddy Don, who has known futility both as a fan of the Commodores and the Tulane Green Wave. Being in Los Angeles, he does not have his finger on the day-to-day pulse of SEC football, UCLA not being in the center of the known football universe. But he was raised up in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. He understands the pathology.
I called him up the other day to inform him that it looked like Oklahoma and Texas were going to join the SEC.
Don had not heard this news. He burst out in what sounded like helpless laughter. I think I heard his phone land on his desk as he most likely covered his eyes with his hands.
Bidness is bidness. And the world has gone crazy.
Maybe Tulane can end up in the Mountain West. Stay tuned as they used to say.
