During the peak of speculation amid college athletics’ last major realignment, both Texas and Oklahoma were party to countless rumors. Texas and OU to the SEC! Texas and OU to the Pac-10! Texas to the ACC? What a time it was.
And I guess we’re circling back to that hullabaloo, thanks to a report out of Houston that Texas and OU have indicated an interest in joining the SEC. This report does not appear to be without merit. Who knows how likely this is to go down, but indications are that this isn’t mere idle speculation.
There’s no external pressure on the SEC to do anything, what with the league’s excellent financial footing. That league’s future success does not depend on adding more schools to the fold. But there is of course the ever-present lure of even more money, because who could be satisfied with a boatload of money when you could acquire an even larger boatload of money?
If this move did go down, it would reverberate everywhere since the Big 12 would probably disintegrate, leaving the ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 to pick over the scraps. It wouldn’t be as frenzied as the last time around, when nearly every league was having an existential crisis, but some chaos would be inevitable.