So Texas and Oklahoma want to join the SEC, huh?
OU? OK. The Sooners have been solid members of the Big 12 for many, many years. They’ve kept their nose clean, relatively speaking, and haven’t made too many waves along the way. Sure, there have been some bumps in the road but no more than with most big-time programs. They have a proud football tradition and have maintained a modicum of responsibility within their program and within their conference.
But they now see the writing on the wall. The NIL ushers in a new era of college football. Mega conferences appear to be the next step, and the SEC is where the money is. Oklahoma is simply being proactive in what many believe is the future of college football. They would be a welcomed addition to the league. I see no problem with that.
Texas, on the other hand? Well, I think Aggies head coach Jimbo Fisher summed it up perfectly Wednesday at SEC Media Days. When asked about the breaking news, first reported by the Houston Chronicle, Fisher couldn’t even give an answer. Why? He couldn’t stop laughing.
“I bet they would,” Fisher said of the schools’ rumored wishes for joining the SEC.
The Longhorns now want to align themselves with a third conference since 1995? They are becoming the vagabonds of college football. If there were a transfer portal for entire programs, the Longhorns would be permanent guests. And maybe that’s where they belong, stuck in limbo until some unsuspecting conference opens a door for them. Let’s hope it’s not the SEC.
Texas has acted independently of every conference it has been in, from its own television network on down. Texas doesn’t play well with others. Let the Longhorns become what they are and what they’ve always perceived themselves as: an independent, above all the other peons in their own league.
They aren’t welcomed in a conference with as much prestige as the SEC.
It’s time for Texas to become self-aware. Placing itself on a pedestal so high that it has become impossible for them to operate cooperatively regardless of which conference they’re in, Texas, it now appears, comes crawling on its hands and hooves, hat-in-hand, to the SEC. Ironically, that’s where Texas A&M escaped to and successfully shed the “Little Brother” image that Longhorn faithful vehemently kept alive for so many years. Well, well, well, the tables have certainly turned, haven’t they.
Aggies fans take a good look. Texas has come to the realization that they are now what they have feared the most, the “Little Brother” and this is their desperate attempt to regain alpha status. We should all point and laugh at the hypocrisy. It is a joke, much like the Longhorns program over the past decade. Why would the SEC want such a floundering operation anyway?
Yes, Texas’ arrogance may have finally caught up to them and hopefully the SEC has taken notice. Decades of conducting themselves as if theirs doesn’t stink, callously ruining conferences in their wake, first the Southwest Conference and now the Big 12 (ask Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, and any Aggies fan). Now the Longhorns want to stain the SEC with their presence? No thanks, Texas, yours does stink … badly, in fact.
The Longhorns have made their bed; the SEC should let them lie in it. This conference doesn’t need the headache and just like Tigers don’t change their stripes, Texas will always toil in the delusion that it is better than everyone else.
Texas joining the SEC is a bad idea. Oklahoma wouldn’t be a bad choice, however. But if it’s a package deal with OU and Texas, tied to their apron strings, we should courteously tell them; “not no, but hell, no.”
If expansion is inevitable, and by all indications it appears to be, then a much more palatable addition might be Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. That would make for a more geographically correct divide of East and West Divisions, with Texas A&M joining OU and Okie State in the West along with LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Arkansas. The revamped East could look like this: Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
Sorry Texas, perhaps the Pac-12 might invite you in to ultimately destroy that conference.
Glenn Sattell is an award-winning freelance writer for Saturday Down South.
