SEC offered a formal invitation for Miami to join back in the 90’s. You have no idea what the SEC’s interest is. At the beginning of this thread, all the insiders were saying SEC for Miami. If that has changed, it’s because Miami prefers the BIG, not because it’s our only option.
SEC moves in silence, nobody knew Texas and Oklahoma were joining until it announced.
We’re located in the SEC footprint and we’re one of the top 5 brands remaining on the board. If the league lands Miami and another travel partner like FSU or Clemson, then they lock the BIG out of the Southeast
Exactly, I don't know why folks don't understand this. Greg Sankey and the SEC have for years during all this realignment have pounded their chest and proudly claimed that they are the premier football conference in the southeast and that it was going to stay that way. If the rumblings that 20 members is more than likely the max expansion that both the SEC and B1G are eyeing at, then why in the world would the SEC not take FSU, Miami, Clemson, and let's just say Georgia Tech too, to cap it at 20? Why would the SEC even think to allow the B1G to plant their conference flag in their already existing conference footprint?
If you add those four, you're adding teams who have a collective 12 National Championships since 1980. On top of that you're also adding key football rivalries to be conference matchups like Florida-FSU, Florida-Miami, FSU-Miami, Georgia-Clemson, Georgia-Georgia Tech, South Carolina-Clemson, Clemson-Georgia Tech, and even old SEC rivalries for Georgia Tech like Tennessee, Alabama, and Auburn.
All of this major realignment from the very get-go was to add quality FOOTBALL matchups to the conference inventory for the tv networks. Basketball is secondary to that, and adding UNC and Virginia is not going to move the needle for viewership in football. The only existing rivalries for those two teams in football would be UNC-FSU, UNC-South Carolina, and Virginia-FSU, Maryland-UNC, and Maryland-Virginia. Do you think people are going to watch those games in bigger numbers than the ones I mentioned above? No, and it's ridiculous to think otherwise.
And with B1G already at 18, they could add UNC and Virginia if they wanted to expand to the south, but it's already been reported that the B1G wanted Cal and Stanford in the conference to go to 20, but the networks didn't want to add them at this last round of realignment. And if the B1G is going to add two more teams in the future, it makes more sense to add Cal and Stanford to pair with their old Pac-12 conference mates to add to the football matchup inventory than it would be to pair up three old ACC teams in the B1G with UNC, Virginia, and Maryland, to half-*** an attempt to garner more viewership in the South and Mid-Atlantic region.
