#SEC CONFERENCE DIVISION REALIGNMENT PRO#
#SEC CONFERENCE DIVISION REALIGNMENT TV#

It’s just never been tried, to my knowledge, by a major program, or even a minor one. An intrasquad game is double the player reps you would get playing somebody else. It’s a chance for the walk-ons or little-used scholarship players to actually play in front of fans. They can fill their own stadium, the coaches use it as a recruiting event, the two hours serve as an infomercial for the program, and everyone on the roster can play. The main reason is that coaches and administrators, especially at the bigger schools, tend to really like the intrasquad game setup.

#SEC CONFERENCE DIVISION REALIGNMENT TV#

Maybe some enterprising TV executives need to get on it.Īs for the Freeze idea, or any of the usual ideas, I’ve always been skeptical.

And an average SEC team would also be favored. So I’d be willing to bet that a Top 25 college team would beat the best XFL or USFL team more often than not. The playbooks are much thinner, the familiarity within the team too scant.

#SEC CONFERENCE DIVISION REALIGNMENT PRO#

The other pro leagues, however, are too fly-by-night to maintain any continuity. Even in the NFL, where coaches and rosters turn over every year, there is enough continuity that it is still a team. The worst NFL team would always beat the best college team, and not just because of talent. It’s also an intriguing question who would win. But I haven’t heard the idea of playing teams from the XFL (or throw in the USFL). Hugh Freeze this week threw out the idea of Auburn and Alabama playing UAB and Troy. This is the time of year that people - coaches, media members, message board poster Sliced Bread - suggest that spring games turn into exhibition games against other teams. Between that and the money, there just isn’t any reason for Missouri to walk away - unless the Big Ten came calling.Ĭould SEC schools scrimmage XFL teams for their spring day? Which teams could win? But divisions are about to go away, and Mizzou’s schedule is about to make much more sense. One of the main reasons Missouri has felt out of place in the SEC is that it was out of place in the SEC East.

The exchange of rivalry games would also be a wash: Missouri would get Kansas back, but it would lose Arkansas, and it’s just about to get Oklahoma back. You can sneak in with a very good year, then try to build on that. In the age of the 12-team College Football Playoff, you won’t have to be the best team in the conference to get in. This is a program that came one win away from making the BCS championship in 2007 and won the SEC East in 2013 and ’14. It still seems more about Missouri itself, and whether it can hire the right coach - maybe it already has in Eli Drinkwitz, I don’t know - commit enough resources and get some luck. Certainly, Missouri would have an easier path, but not that much easier. But it’s hard to argue right now that Missouri isn’t also behind TCU, Oklahoma State and Baylor, as well as incoming Cincinnati and maybe BYU. That would be a calculated risk, with some justification: Missouri would be the second all-time winningest program in the new Big 12, behind only West Virginia, while it will rank 11th in the new SEC. How much would it recoup by presumably being more competitive in the Big 12? Perhaps some more visibility, which would lead to the benefits that programs like TCU are hoping to use to become sustained powers. Suffice to say, that’s a lot of annual money to walk away from if you’re Missouri. How much money? If you use just the TV money, the SEC’s average payout is set to be around $58 million under the current parameters of the ESPN contract, while the Big 12’s average payout will only be around $28 million – and that was considered a good get by first-year commissioner Brett Yormark. Missouri could go, but unless it went to the Big Ten - where an invite still does not seem forthcoming - then it would be giving up a lot of money to leave. This time around, it’s more about brands. Louis and Kansas City markets, the Big Ten was, rightly or wrongly, allured by the potential of the New York and Washington/Baltimore markets. If Missouri had waited, would it have gotten the Big Ten’s invite in late 2012 instead of Maryland or Rutgers? That’s hard to say because at that point it was almost all about TV markets, and although Missouri could say it has a chunk of the St. In fact, it’s generally assumed the school was angling for the Big Ten during the 2010/2011 realignment wars, and that only when it didn’t look like an invitation was forthcoming did Missouri agree to accompany Texas A&M to the SEC. Now this is a great curveball, because as much as Missouri still seems out of place in the SEC (at least to some people), it’s the Big Ten where those people think Mizzou is a more natural fit.

Sec conference division realignment