Alabama Football: Look at future SEC with 24 teams
By Ronald Evans
What will happen next in SEC football expansion? Few believe the SEC and the Big Ten will stop at 16 teams. The Pac 12, Big 12 and the ACC will be further depleted as the college football world is restructured around a Power Two, led by Alabama Football and other elite programs.
As we published yesterday, the reality is college football already has a Power Two. The demarcation comes from deals for media rights. Not even the ACC is protected from attrition. The current media deals for the ACC run for more than another decade. The conference has believed the ‘grants of rights’ signed by its teams would block exits from the ACC for many years.
Michael Smith of Sports Business Journal states the ACC has miscalculated.
The ACC has always counted on the grant of media rights to prevent schools from defecting to Big Ten or SEC. It's not. Schools have been doing the math.
— Michael Smith (@SmittySBJ) June 30, 2022
When (not if ) the Big Ten and the SEC grow to 20 to 24 teams, the team payouts from each conference will dwarf what the other three former, Power Fives will be able to provide.
The ACC’s best hope is to expand and up its bounty. It might pull that off, though battling the SEC and the Big Ten for teams will be difficult. A tipping point would quickly be reached if the SEC added Clemson and one more ACC school, particularly if it is Miami.
The big plum for the Big Ten is Notre Dame, but the B1G will not stop there.
Alabama football fans have questions
Alabama football fans are not particularly concerned about what the Big Ten does. More on the minds of Crimson Tide and other SEC football fans is what will the league’s future bring and how soon.
How soon is unpredictable. Sooner, rather than later is the best guess, though all the sorting out of the college football terrain could take a few years.
Speculation is not just fun. At this point, it is warranted.