Burt’s SEC Fantasy

It’s no secret that I—alongside virtually every other FSU (and Clemson, and Miami, and any honest North Carolina) fan—have been clamoring for my ‘Noles to get the hell up out of the poorly-steered, poorly-promoted, withering ACC in favor of either the SEC or Big Ten, which together comprise the “Power Two” cartel of modern college sports.

Now, is that consolidation great for the college landscape? No. But it’s happening, and it’s being driven by the differential media values of the large universities with huge, devoted fanbases and the smaller schools who draw less consumer attention. In many ways, it sucks. But it’s the American way, folks…It’s capitalism…Now that there’s literally billions of dollars involved, I’m not sure we can un-ring that bell.

You can blame FSU’s public grandstanding—or the Seminoles’ inconsistent play over the past decade (though you should blame Miami…bums haven’t done a damn thing since joining more than 20 years ago)—for the ACC’s predicament, but the harsh reality is that the conference’s fate was sealed through multiple decades of slow-footed, unimaginative, “let’s have a bourbon on the back porch” leadership, as well as the Tobacco Road brass’ acceptance of an increasingly damaging “partnership” with ESPN, who has more or less openly aided and abetted the ACC’s descent to a second-class conference. The four-letter network has made its long-term college sports bet on the SEC—who could blame them?—and their programming reflects that: When’s the last time you heard ESPN say anything positive about the ACC? That’s not a rhetorical question…

For instance, were you aware that in 2023—the year an undefeated and absolutely stacked (check the draft results…check this year’s NFL All-Rookie Team…) Florida State squad was left out of the college football playoff in favor of Alabama and Texas teams with losses on their records (both of whom promptly lost in the semifinals)—the ACC, who plays more out-of-conference games against the SEC than does any other league, actually had a winning record against the SEC?? I bet you weren’t! ESPN certainly never mentioned it!! Were you aware that, with its two straight natties over the past two seasons, the Big Ten only just tied the ACC for second-most national titles since the turn of the century?? I bet not!! Even in basketball, long Tobacco Road’s cherished son and a well-earned point of pride for the ACC, the “well the ACC is clearly down this year” and the “man the SEC has really made strides in basketball!” start early every season and have been flying around on Bristol’s airwaves for what seems like a decade now, despite the ACC cleaning up in the postseason every god damn year! (ACC boys, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and before the SEC, it was the Big 12, and before that, it was the Big East. Bizarre behavior from a business “partner.”) The ACC is a perpetual punchline, even when the results dictate that it shouldn’t be.

But I digress! No one really wants to read about the ACC—which is kinda the whole point here…—and ABSOLUTELY no one wants to hear me re-litigate the FSU snub…I know that. So the point I want you to remember is this: ESPN is all in on the SEC and its long-term success, while their strategy vis-a-vis the ACC is essentially to juice the asset—at a highly favorable valuation for ESPN—for as long as they’re allowed. To put it in more practical terms, whereas ESPN has every intention of airing Alabama-Georgia and Texas-Oklahoma games in 2040, they’re “partners” with the ACC like Tony Soprano’s “partners” with the guy who owns the sporting goods store but owes Tony $100k in gambling debts: They don’t care about the long-term health of the business, they just care that they can draw something out of it in the near term (as ESPN/Disney sheds weight from their bloated, over-extended behemoth of a business). Right now, ESPN owns the ACC’s media rights at a very nice discount—on the order of $40 million less per school, per year!—relative to the SEC, so when they show a Clemson game, or an FSU game, or a Miami game, and those teams draw SEC-level eyeballs, ESPN is paying way less to make similar revenues in advertising. There’s the rub. ESPN does nothing to boost the media rights value of the ACC’s smaller brands like Wake Forest and Boston College (they don’t see a long-term play there), while cashing in on the relatively high and inelastic (there’s that economics degree folks!) revenue-generating potential of the conference’s best brands. I want to be crystal clear about this: I’m not alleging a vast conspiracy here…these are obvious monetary incentives out in the open for all to see.

So this has all been a very long, meandering way of saying that the ACC in its current iteration is unsustainable, and that there are attractive media rights entities in the league that, once they’re able to free themselves from their current contractual arrangements, will command attention from the Power Two. This will happen at some point, whether in 2026 or 2031.

In the scenario I’d like to explore today (Jesus, Burt! Finally!)—my favored scenario as a Florida State fan—the SEC moves to defend its territory from Big Ten incursion (the motivation for which we’ll cover in our next edition), bringing into the fold Florida State, Clemson, Miami, and North Carolina. In doing so, the SEC officially locks down the huge and growing market (and recruiting hotbed—the importance of this really cannot be overstated) of Florida, pulls in another blueblood and recent national title winner in Clemson, and opens up new territory by drawing in the premier brand in another rapidly growing sun belt state, North Carolina. Perhaps most importantly, it keeps its only remaining competitor out of the South, which the SEC has long and fairly successfully argued—and will want to continue to argue—is the only college football region that truly matters.

With that in mind, you could argue that this article is just a nice chunk of red meat for our sizable contingent of FSU-crazed readers. I guess you’re not completely wrong there. But to me, it’s also some pretty fucking succulent red meat for anyone curious as to what the conference landscape might look like in five years. And for a fan of a current SEC team, just imagine these matchups. Imagine the more sensible regional appeal—relative to the current setup that saw, for example, South Carolina play not one conference foe located east of Alabama—this setup would produce within the league.

So I had a couple Yuenglings one night, and I broke this theoretical 20-team SEC into four divisions, based both on geography and competitive balance. This is what I came up with, and I even did some free branding work for Sankey and the boys in Birmingham! Check it out:

The “Low Country” aka “Wild Things”

• Florida
• Auburn
• Florida State
• Miami
• South Carolina

The “Piedmont” aka “Deliverance”

• Georgia
• Clemson
• Tennessee
• Kentucky
• North Carolina

The “Deep South” aka “PigglyWigglyVille”

• Alabama
• LSU
• Ole Miss
• Mississippi State
• Vanderbilt

The “Midlands” aka “The Big 12”

• Oklahoma
• Texas
• Texas A&M
• Arkansas
• Missouri

Come on now…How steamy is that?? Read through it again. Can you imagine how intense all these divisional battles would be?? And check out how much sense this alignment makes geographically—the Low Country’s in green, the Piedmont in blue, the Deep South in red, and the Midlands in gold:

From a scheduling standpoint, it’s pretty simple: Each team plays every other team in its division once, and then each division is paired with one other division for a given season (rotating each year), with all of their teams also playing one another once. This makes four divisional games and five “partner” division games, producing a conference schedule of 9 games. 

In my proposal, the SEC moves to a 10-game conference schedule, allowing the league to protect some of its most storied rivalries. For example, Alabama-Auburn (the Iron Bowl) and Georgia-Florida (the Cocktail Party) both become “protected” rivalries, as does Clemson-South Carolina. These games get played every year. For the schools—like newbies Florida State and North Carolina—without obvious protected games, they simply rotate through a different 10th game each season, which could be based on conference standings from the year before (similar to the NFL, where schedules are filled out by pairing bottom dwellers with other bottom dwellers, big dawgs with other big dawgs, and so forth), or could be done randomly. When you look through some of these schedules below, you’ll see why the upper-tier teams might prefer it to be random…Schedules in this SEC would be absolutely brutal.

So let’s throw out a few sample schedules to get a feel for the type of extreme sexiness this setup could produce. Shockingly, I’ve chosen to profile Georgia and Florida State (that’s right haters!), and what the hell…we’ll throw in Alabama. In each, we’ve peppered in a couple hypothetical out-of-conference games to fill them out. Might the SEC and Big Ten come to some scheduling arrangement whereby their teams agree to meet at least one foe from the other league each season? Sure. But I also think you can see below why an SEC with these additions might not really want to add even more tough games out of conference—particularly given the league’s historical love for cupcakes (hey-ohh!!!). In this example, the Piedmont has been paired with the Low Country, and the Deep South with the Midlands, and we’ve filled out a 12-game slate with the typical regional Davids:

Georgia Bulldogs

Troy
at South Carolina
Tennessee
at North Carolina
Auburn
at Florida State
at Kentucky
Florida*
at Clemson
Miami
at Arkansas
Georgia Tech

In a little complication that our numbers guys would need to figure out, because Florida’s a protected game for Georgia, Georgia enters the pool of teams needing a 10th conference game. In this hypothetical, they draw the Hawgs. Could’ve just as easily been Vandy, LSU, etc. My ‘Dawgs keep the Bumblenerds at the end of the season to carry a worthy tradition forward.

Florida State Seminoles

Louisiana Tech
Auburn
at Tennessee
at Kentucky
North Carolina
Georgia
at Miami
Ole Miss
at Clemson
South Carolina
Georgia Southern
at Florida

Alabama Crimson Tide

Chattanooga
Texas A&M
at Arkansas
Vanderbilt
at Ole Miss
Missouri
Oklahoma
at Mississippi State
at LSU
Texas
Western Kentucky
at Auburn*

Alabama’s sample schedule certainly has more of a Western feel to it, but hey, it is what it is. The SEC swallowed the Big 12’s most valuable assets, and the Tide have been playing Arkansas and Texas A&M every season for years now. The schedule still produces a bevy of marquee matchups, and for any ‘Bama fan concerned over its slight Southwest Conference vibe, just know that 1) you’re still getting Auburn and LSU every year and 2) the ‘Tide’s schedule would rotate to the Low Country and the Piedmont over the next two seasons.

Bottom line: If I’m running the SEC, the day the Big Ten plants a big yankee flag squarely in my back yard is—in the words of the always-honest Tommy Tuberville—the day they “carry me out in a pine box” (Tuberville would voluntarily leave Ole Miss for Auburn two days later…). If you keep the Big Ten up north and out west, you can legitimately argue that you’re the only game in town in the only town that matters. Now clearly, college football matters a great deal in the Midwest too, but recent history—the last two seasons notwithstanding—and in particular, Southern schools’ unmatched access to elite native talent and their institutional commitment to competing ($$$) at the highest level, will tell you that the South remains the dominant region in this sport. In our next edition, we’ll contemplate a future Big Ten both with a successful move into the Southeast and without it—and I think you’ll leave convinced that the league, if it wants to win this great-power battle with the SEC, has every incentive to at least attempt such an incursion. Whether the SEC allows it is my million-dollar question.

Now, it’s more than fair to note that I’ve gamed all this out without any consideration for contractual entanglements, inevitable wrangling over per-school revenue splits (newbies may be forced to take a lesser cut of any first contract, for example), or other administrative complications, but who cares about those?! You’re not here for that! And if there’s one thing that seems pretty crystal clear to me given the current state of our world, it’s that one megalomaniac man, if he loves himself enough, can often find a way to do the things he wants to do, regardless of any legal impediments.

SO LET’S GET THIS ON SANKEY’S DESK! :: Joker energy:: Who here knows Greg?! Who knows a guy who used to drink with Greg's son?! Let’s make it happen!! (And let’s get that greedy asshole subscribed…)