Kelly Clarkson grew up in what is now semi-SEC territory — Burleson, Texas, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — so maybe the conference can invite her to sing at SEC media days.
I’ll take a risk, take a chance, make a change
And break away
Or maybe she could play around with the lyrics to “Stronger” or “Miss Independent.” Whatever works. The SEC had Nate Bargatze a couple of years ago; it can afford Clarkson.
We’ll delve into the SEC breakaway talk in this post-Destin mailbag, and also the SEC’s stance on the College Football Playoff, South Carolina’s prospects, Kirby Smart’s recruiting, and the outlook for the contenders and new coaches this season.
But first, a little fun.
Questions may have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Who would be the schools in your ideal version of an SEC football conference? Disclaimer: do not feel limited to schools currently in the conference. — Adam C.
Your ideal conference makeup, those in the business say, is what it looked like when you were a teenager. So in my case, that’s the 12-team SEC, which to me … actually isn’t my ideal.
South Carolina, yes, that’s an SEC school. Arkansas is a Southwest Conference school. So are Texas and Texas A&M. Oklahoma was Big 8/Big 12. And Missouri is a Big Ten school. Yes, I know the Big Ten has passed on several chances to add Mizzou, and the Southwest Conference doesn’t exist anymore. Mere technicalities.
Let me go into Kevin Costner-in-Bull Durham speech mode. I believe in small conferences. I believe in geography. I believe in everyone playing each other once during the regular season. I believe that schools should be fairly like-minded in their own conference. They can have varying degrees of caring about a sport, but when it comes to football it should be somewhat like-minded. But I don’t believe the haves and have-nots should be separated. I believe in keeping Mississippi State and Vanderbilt in the same conference as Alabama and Georgia, because upsets and Cinderella stories are cool.
Thus, my ideal, realignment-free SEC, at least for football:
Alabama
Auburn
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
LSU
Mississippi State
Ole Miss
Tennessee
South Carolina
Vanderbilt
Everyone plays each other once in a 10-game schedule, leaving two games for another power-conference game or two guarantee games. And at the end, you still have a conference championship game, the winner goes to a Playoff that features the Southwest Conference, the Big Ten, ACC, Pac-whatever and Big 8/12/whatever, Notre Dame (if it wins enough games) and the best Group of 6 champion. A neat eight-team Playoff. Bam.
But in the real world, realignment isn’t being undone. A Super League where the richest SEC schools broke off with the richest schools elsewhere would be icky. The real play for the SEC could be to stay with its 16, and add around eight schools, and suddenly the idea of its own Playoff doesn’t seem as wild.
Maybe those eight schools are North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Florida State, Miami, Oklahoma State and Georgia Tech. And you know what, let’s also add Kansas, Duke, TCU, Texas Tech, Wake Forest and NC State. And then let’s divide everyone up into three divisions where we just re-form some of the old SEC, Southwest Conference, Big Eight and ACC? (Let’s see if the Big Ten wants to trade Missouri for Maryland.)
Also note that it would be great to get Notre Dame, but my bleeding heart believes they should always be an independent.
What’s the SEC’s angle in all this SEC talk? There’s no chance that breaking away is going to let it make stricter rules. It also surely doesn’t even want stricter rules anyway. Is it posturing to get something in their favor? If so, what is it angling for that it doesn’t already have? — Benjamin D.
The breakaway talk has been going on for a while behind the scenes. I’ve been talking to people about it for months, it just burst into the open in Destin. People do need to take this seriously: In today’s college athletics world, who is to rule out anything? There is definitely some galaxy-brain thinking going on within the SEC, and it will probably lead to something. We just don’t know what, and to what extent.
There also isn’t consensus. This is a conference with 16 school presidents and athletic directors, all of whom hear from coaches, boosters and, hopefully, athletes. Almost nobody likes the status quo. But there are multitudes of opinions on what to do.
Some just want to tweak around the edges and make their own rules, the way the SEC has done in the past with its own rules on signing limits, graduate transfers, etc.
Some want to break away in a technical sense, making rules such as a luxury tax. (Yes, the SEC instituting a salary cap would put it at a competitive disadvantage. So what about a baseball-style luxury tax where Texas, LSU and Ole Miss can spend to their heart’s desire, as long as their spending above a certain point is taxed, with the proceeds going to everyone else?)
Some are just ready to completely break away, form their own playoff, and if it leads to an AFL-NFL style Super Bowl with the Big Ten, great. Some just want to make sure a separate playoff only happens for football. Some might be ready for doing it in all sports, if it comes to that.
Some just want to use this for leverage to get a national solution. And within that, some hope it still means federal legislation, some hope it’s a national collective bargaining agreement. Or individual conference CBAs.
A variety of opinions, and a lot of galaxy-brain ideas. At the top is commissioner Greg Sankey, along with his staff, who try to corral all these opinions into one direction. But this isn’t all happening now. The rules could, at least some of them. The SEC for the first time since 2003 did not pass any bylaw changes in Destin, but announced it would now have the flexibility to do so in between. That was worth a “hmm.”
But the separate football playoff is probably more of a far-off thing, especially given the CFP contract through 2031-32. Then again, if the SEC gets so discontent with where current discussions are … speaking of which:
It has been reported by Fox’s Joel Klatt that the overwhelming majority of coaches and athletic directors in the SEC favor the 24-team CFP format. Don’t you think that it was cowardly that Sankey failed to convene a vote on the issue during the conference? — Colin M.
All due respect to Klatt, that was not my sense going into Destin and it definitely wasn’t coming out of it. That’s based on all the coaches and athletic directors who spoke publicly, and what we heard privately. At least not an “overwhelming majority.” Maybe not even a majority.
But it’s also more nuanced than that. Maybe a coach or administrator favors 24 if the money is worth it, which is an important proviso because right now the money doesn’t work, at least for the SEC. So it was not “cowardly” for Sankey not to call for a vote. Too many people in the league don’t know what they favor. There may be some adamantly pro- or anti-24, but my sense is the majority thinks this has moved so quickly they need to slow down, think it over and … well, I’m not going to say “wait for more data,” because that’s a squirrelly way out.
The “data” is what the television networks will pay, and whether it would make up for the loss of the SEC championship game, which is built into the conference’s contract with ESPN. The people claiming it would be made up for by the additional CFP games could be right, but the ratings for the first-round games so far would indicate they aren’t. Plus all the other money that comes with the SEC championship.
As my colleague Stewart Mandel has written, this is in many ways an ESPN vs. Fox battle, with their conference partners looking to do right by them. It’s not just that ESPN holds television rights for up to a 14-team Playoff, and that Fox would be able to bid on additional CFP games. It’s that ESPN broadcasts more regular-season games than any other network, by far, and the worry is the bigger the CFP, the more it dilutes the importance of regular-season games. ESPN and the SEC need to get to a point where they feel comfortable that a 24-team Playoff works. They aren’t there yet.
Why is Sankey still saying that the SEC is far and away the best conference? It’s obviously the Big Ten now. You could say it’s his job… — Nathan G.
Nathan actually wrote more, but I cut it off at the part where he answered his own question. Thanks for saving me the time, Nathan.
Seth — enjoyed your work from back when you covered the Gamecocks. As someone who likes Shane Beamer and wants to see him have long-term success, what does that look like for a program like South Carolina? — Chris P.
Thanks, Chris! That was so long ago (2006-10) I’m amazed someone remembers. Beamer was an assistant there when I covered the team, and the success at that point under Steve Spurrier would be an appropriate measure: Spurrier never had a full losing season (he was 2-4 in 2015 when he retired midseason), and had three straight 11-2 seasons. Of course, that was a totally different time, and Spurrier was one of the best college football coaches of all time. So maybe that’s the high bar. (Plus, South Carolina had an amazing run of in-state talent, including Jadeveon Clowney, Marcus Lattimore and Stephon Gilmore, that coincided with the early, leaner years for Dabo Swinney at Clemson.)
More reasonably, Beamer and South Carolina can wait to see what the Playoff size ends up at and then use it to judge success. That goes for a bunch of programs: For some, a 24-team field would mean that missing it any year is a calamity. South Carolina is not one of those. But 24 is also so much that South Carolina should think it’s in the mix almost every year, and make it … half the time? And make a run every once in a while? That seems right.
I’m confused by Kirby Smart’s recruiting strategy of leaning heavily into lower-ranked recruits for the 2027 cycle. Yes, some three-stars defy expectations, but for every Ladd McConkey or Jordan Davis, there are 10 who show they were ranked as such for a reason. Maybe the elite recruits will come later in the cycle, but it looks disconcerting at this point in time. — Steve A.
I wouldn’t get worked up about recruiting in early June. There are six months for minds to change, either organically or financially, and Georgia fans should know that well: Dylan Raiola, Jared Curtis, et al.
It’s also a good bet Smart doesn’t think he’s leaning into low-ranked recruits. His staff does their own evaluations. Some of those three-stars may get bumped up soon. Some omay decommit if Georgia lands a bigger fish. Or maybe it really is a rough go for Georgia in the new world, though the evidence so far is the Dawgs are doing just fine.
Either way, check back in early December. If Georgia is still ranked 16th nationally with most of its class being three-stars, then it’s time to worry. Until then … eh.
Are Oklahoma and John Mateer the closest thing the SEC has to a dark horse conference title contender? (Brian Bahr / Getty Images)
Who’s the dark horse team to win the conference and who’s the darling that falls away (not named Texas, OK, maybe named Texas)? — Jeff L.
Oklahoma and LSU are the dark horses that come to mind, but can they be if they’re potentially preseason top 10 teams? In fact, half the league is in Stewart’s latest top 20, so pulling someone from outside that to go win the conference is a tall order. (Although South Carolina, with everything it has coming back, is tempting.)
The darling that falls away? Inevitably, a few teams are going to get beat up and have records way worse than expected. Picking the team with the most uncertainty, I’d say Ole Miss, and whether Pete Golding can keep it going with offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. off to LSU.
What will be considered a successful first season for each first-year SEC head coach? What would be considered a failure? — Cornelius L.
This is an extremely boring answer, but success is at least one more win than last season. Because in every case — not including Golding as a new coach — the coach was hired to replace a fired coach. And with nine conference games, everyone’s path to improving their record is harder.
So, if we add one more win for Alex Golesh at Auburn: 6-6, bowl eligibility, that’s one more win than last year, and thus success. Ditto for Will Stein at Kentucky. But with a bit less pressure than Golesh to go beyond six wins.
Jon Sumrall at Florida: 5-7 … OK wait, that’s not too great. Yeah, 6-6 is also the standard for success here, and like Golesh, seven or eight wins would be great.
Ryan Silverfield at Arkansas: 3-9 … uh yeah, also not great. Let’s push that up to 5-7. Maybe you could say 4-8 but competitive in many of the losses.
And Lane Kiffin at LSU: 8-4 would be one more win and moving in the right direction. By the time the season starts, everyone may have talked themselves into Year 1 being Playoff-or-bust. So perhaps 9-3 and at least in the CFP discussion.
And, ideally, not putting his foot in his mouth that much.
