Was Clemson Really On Board With an SEC Invite?

The only states in the east without SEC teams (that are also roughly in the same region) are North Carolina and Virginia. If you squint, you could add Maryland and West Virginia. That’s your pool.

Maybe I saw it on one of the message boards I was reading the other night. I’ve spent way too much time looking into something that’s not going to happen for more than a year if it ever does

You said "the TSL might call a special session just to get involved in it … "

Absolutely not.

First, only the Governor can call a special session of the Texas Legislature. Governor Rick Perry is an Aggie, a former Yell Leader.

Plus, he professes to be a small-government guy — no way he risks his presidential hopes on a special session dedicated to football conference realignment.

FSU did get an invite back when the SEC eventually wound up with South Carolina and Arkansas, so it’s not out of the realm of imagination. Things have changed though, as Florida is far more powerful now than it was 20-25 years ago. There’s no way UF now wants FSU in the league because being able to sell the SEC is one of its top recruiting advantages over FSU and Miami.

Im sure everybody here understands when i say that the ACC is NOT maximizing it’s potential in football and I doubt they ever will. The SEC would be a dream come true as they’re by far the most accomplished program in the ACC and have by far the most potential to succeed at the highest level of CFB. Clemson certainly fits the mold of an SEC style program but has a lower ceiling than the ’Noles. Of course this is opinion, but nevertheless I believe it to be shared by many (knowledgeable) fans/alumni.

But they won’t be allowed in over UF’s objections

OU is going to stick to Texas, but if the Horns go rogue the SEC would have to add both Oklahoma schools. Otherwise they head west to a Pac16.

I haven’t given any thought to VaTech or West Virginia. Even Virginia for that matter. VaTech could be interesting, but West Virginia scares me. I think if the SEC does indeed expand it will take into consideration other sports besides football as well.

I’m not saying that it couldn’t be done, but I don’t see other leagues giving the SEC a green light for that unless it’s part of a wide-ranging megaconference realignment

Ask the old WAC

. . . but I doubt very seriously whether it would go up enough to justify going from a twelve-way revenue split to a 14-way revenue split, and I certainly don’t think ESPN would see Florida State as adding enough new value to justify re-opening the contract and breaking the bank again.

If the Seminoles had been in the 2000s what they were in the late ‘80s and ’90s, maybe, but the FSU brand has fallen considerably in the national consciousness over the last decade. Again, it’s not just about increasing revenue, it’s about increasing it enough to grow the pie to such an extent that everyone profits more despite getting a smaller piece, percentage-wise. Few schools can offer that, and no school located in the intersection of Alabama, Auburn, Florida, and Georgia fans can offer that, even if it did win a lot of games when the current crop of college athletes were in grade school.

Also, as the SEC demonstrated when it refused Georgia Tech’s petition for re-admission to the league in the ‘70s after the Yellow Jackets left the conference in a snit in the ’60s, schools that wuss out on the SEC once don’t get a second chance. The ’Noles had their opportunity in the early ’90s; they chose instead to take the easy way out, join the ACC, and pad their schedule with conference games. They made their bed; now they can lie in it.

And Blacksburg where VT is at is in the western part of the state. It’s no more remote from the rest of the league than Lexington is. Here’s a map.

Geographically and culturally, we can look to the old Southern Conference – founded in 1921 by the football powers in the even older Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA). Virginia Tech was one of the founders.

By 1929, the SoCon included every modern SEC school (save Arkansas – which had aligned with the Southwest Conference in 1914) – and every modern ACC school (except B.C. for obvious reasons and Miami and Florida State which got a late starts on the gridiron in 1926 and 1947, respectively).

Think about that – a conference stretching from Baton Rouge to College Park, Md. By history and culture, all of the old SoCon members are in the same family so to speak, even if we’re all no longer under the same roof: Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Duke, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Florida, Kentucky, LSU, Maryland, Miss State, Ole Miss, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, Tennessee, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Virginia and Virginia Tech [not to mention schools tht formerly played bigger football than they do now – Sewanee, VMI and W&L].

It was the SEC schools (from Athens westward) that left the Southern Conference in 1932 over disputes about what they used to call “subsidies”. Among other things, the SEC schools were first and foremost ready to award open “scholarships” which was considered an anathema in most of the Eastern establishment schools.

The Mid-West powers (the Big Nine and Pitt ) and West (Pacific Coast Conference) – not to mention some of the big Ivy League powers – all dutifully mimed along even though they were all paying their players under the table or arranging no-show jobs with rich alumni.

Led by Bama, Georgia and Georgia Tech – the three premiere football schools in the South at the time – and joined by rising stars like the Vols, LSU and Auburn – the SEC schools were ready to duke it out in the big intersectional match-ups that put Southern football on the map (not denigrating other squads but these teams were in the vanguard). This was for cultural pride and these universities felt no stigma attached to subsidies, nor were they the least bit shy of recruiting – which were both condemned practices.

The SEC schools were the first to award scholarships openly in 1935. Their brethren in Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland, however, were still paying lip service to the “no subsidies” – even though hypocritcally money was certainly changing hands. When the SEC began to award scholarships, the Southern Conference (by one vote) adopted the “Graham Plan” (named for the UNC Chancellor at the time) which disallowed them.

It was only until 1951 that the remaining Southern Conference powers decided to follow the SEC and created the ACC. By then, the SEC was the dominant football conference. Even though high school football was (and remains) a huge deal in the Carolinas, and Virginia, those schools – save Clemson – were behind the curve in football. With the exception of Clemson and South Carolina, most of the ACC schools began to let theit football programs wither. Sure there were still bright spots here-and-there in ACC land – some of the strong UNC programs in the 1950s, and the Maryland Terp squads of the 70s – but only Clemson was year-in-and-year-out competing at the highest level, . But not the consistent football emphasis of the SEC.

I think the stroll down memory lane is helpful. Culturally, every old-line ACC team is very connected to the SEC – far more so than the old Southwest Conference schools (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, Rice, TCU, etc.) or the old Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (now known as the Big XII) of which the Oklahoma squads joined in the 1920s.

That being said, the old divisions of the 1930s still cut a swatch across the Southland. In 1933, Clemson and South Carolina would have done better to have gone with UGA and Tech into the SEC rather than cleave to UNC and stay in the Southern Conference. South Carolina compounded its problems by leaving the ACC in 1971 and wandering as an independent. Regardless, the things which separated the future ACC schools and the SEC still separate them. The ACC presidents and boards just don’t emphasize football. The stadiums are smaller. The alumni are not as passionate about football and football facilities. Most almuni would rather see basektball glory than football glory. They also look down their long noses at the SEC for emphasizing football at the expense of their view on the proper role of college athletics. They even look down on their own members who put more emphasis into football than they do. It’s a philosophical divide that probably will never be heeled.

With that regard, while Va Tech, Clemson and FSU (and to a certain extent Ga Tech) would be a better football fit, their presidents and boards will never lead them out of the ACC. And maybe that’s for the best.

Consequently, our best targets for expansion are to the west – but we should probably abandon the idea that the Texas and Oklahoma schools are “like us” when they weren’t in the old Southern Conference.

to consider. I still think that it will be difficult to peel FSU, CU or GT out of the ACC. Va Tech might go – but the Hokies’ love-hate relationship with ACC founder UVA might keep them in the ACC too.

and if I were a fan of any other school I would probably be all for it. But I’m not. And I’m not.

There’s no way we would ever pry UNC or Duke away from the ACC, but I think we would have a decent shot at Wake Forrest or NC State.

It’s true that we may be on the Eastern side of the divide, but it still seems like I’ve met a fairly good share of LSU, Ole Miss, Miss State, and Arkansas fans. As large as the state of Texas is, meeting graduates of their universities seems to be a rarity in my life. Perhaps it’s just a case of memory bias, but I still say “Go East, young man!”