AIKEN, S.C. — I drove out to this western South Carolina town Wednesday morning for a meeting of the Gameco*ck Club to ask Gameco*cks fans how they felt about Texas and Oklahoma joining the Southeastern Conference.
It just seemed like somebody should.
In all the talk about winners and losers in the soon-to-be uber-SEC, not enough people are talking about or talking to the people who fill all these football stadiums on Saturdays, the ones who create the passion that makes all this possible in the first place. So here we are, in a gravel parking lot outside the Aiken County Shrine Club, and Rod Hutto and John Salter are taking it pretty well.
Advertisem*nt
“I can see it being exciting for programs like Oklahoma and Texas to be coming to Williams-Brice Stadium,” said Salter, 62. “I can see it being a positive on that side. Does it make the schedule tougher? Sure, but it’s going to make the schedule tougher for everybody in the SEC. Fans at Vanderbilt have to be wondering, ‘How are we going to win any games at all?’”
Sure, the SEC’s bank account is about to get much bigger, but how does that make life better for Salter and Hutto and their garnet-and-black wearing compatriots?
“It’s kind of two-fold,” said Hutto, 54. “It’s good to get your positioning with all the conference realignments that are going to happen, to get that area is probably good even though it’s kind of out of the Southeastern Conference area. But in the long run, I’m not sure it’s good for college football 10 years from now. … But it’s exciting to have two new road trips.”
There is a certain amount of resignation in their responses, they admit. This change is coming down the tracks. Fans can get on board or get run over — even if that’s not the official messaging from the SEC.
“I have heard from student government leaders and rank-and-file students who say they would love the opportunity to see the Longhorns and Sooners at Williams-Brice and the Colonial Life Arena, the baseball stadium, but even more would love to travel there someday for things like football games,” South Carolina interim president Harris Pastides told The Athletic. “So they are excited because those programs have a level of tradition and fame that make people interested in visiting.
“That’s how I would sell it if I were needing to sell it.”
The SEC doesn’t really need to sell it, though. Not even to the 14 football coaches who are already in the league — 13 of whom have to be thinking, “Are you kidding me?” (Alabama’s Nick Saban has taken his program to the level that the schedule doesn’t really matter anymore.)
Advertisem*nt
South Carolina’s Shane Beamer, who worked at Oklahoma until eight months ago, said he learned about the possibility of expansion at the same time as the rest of the world. Beamer and his family were driving back from an Atlanta Braves game last week when his wife Emily read the news on social media.
“I’m still trying to figure out what’s what and what is real and what is not real,” he said Monday before addressing a Gameco*ck Club meeting in Columbia. “In this league, you’re in the toughest conference in America already and you know that. Week in, week out, you are going to be playing against the very best. Adding potentially two new programs to this conference only makes it a more challenging conference but I’m of the mindset of, we get to play these other teams. Certainly, it makes it more challenging, but it makes it more exciting in a lot of ways, too.”
Beamer had a little more bravado in his answer when a fan asked later in the night about the addition of Texas and Oklahoma.
“If those guys want to come and get some, come on,” he said, raising a cheer in the room.
Beamer and Sooners coach Lincoln Riley had not talked about the news as of Monday night. Sooners golf coach Ryan Hybl, a close friend of Beamer’s, did call, though. Hybl was excited because the SEC golf championship is held annually at Georgia’s Sea Island Golf Club.
When Beamer and Riley do talk, there is sure to be some concern about the fact that their jobs just got harder. Particularly Beamer’s. He was hired in December to turn around a program that won two games last year, and he was asked to do it in the toughest college football conference in the country. Now the ladder he has to climb is about to add two more rungs near the top.
The same goes for Gameco*cks men’s basketball coach Frank Martin and baseball coach Mark Kingston. Those two men, along with Beamer, run the programs that most directly have an impact on the happiness of most South Carolina fans. More wins equal more happiness. More losses equal more sadness. Adding Oklahoma and Texas probably doesn’t mean more wins — at least in the short term.
Advertisem*nt
Martin is not surprised by the news.
“College athletics is headed to a certain place where everything that has started to take place was inevitable,” he said. “That was going to happen sooner or later, and these are the first dominos. I knew it was just a matter of time before Oklahoma joined this league in some way, shape or form. I didn’t have any inside information, just understanding the landscape. I am not surprised. This league is hard, and we’re adding two quality programs.”
Martin has seen both programs up close. He coached in the Big 12 at Kansas State from 2007-08 through 2011-12. That’s the reason he also knows what this is going to do to the eight Big 12 teams that are being left behind by the Longhorns and Sooners.
“I feel bad for those schools,” Martin said. “I know in 2011, we were all scrambling because we felt like the end was near and we were going to have to change conferences and (we were) trying to figure out what we could all do to hold together as basketball to survive.”
That’s not a problem any school in the SEC will have for a very long time. The upcoming expansion of the league guarantees its financial future, which means no member will have to worry about downsizing its athletic department or cutting sports (both of which loomed as frightening possibilities during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic).
That’s a good thing, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a bad thing for most SEC fans whose biggest concern is the competitiveness of their football programs. The last time the conference expanded was before the 2012 season when Texas A&M and Missouri were added. The Aggies were installed as South Carolina’s permanent cross-divisional rival prior to the 2014 season, and they’ve beaten the Gameco*cks seven straight times since then. Oklahoma is a better football program than Texas A&M. Texas can be if Steve Sarkisian is the right coach.
Pastides was one of two current SEC presidents in place when the conference added the Aggies and Tigers.
Advertisem*nt
“That decision was harder because it expanded the geographic footprint, to go to Texas for the first time, to go to Missouri,” he said. “This one is much more in the footprint. You have to vote based on the commissioner’s recommendation as well as your own university’s self-interest, which is partly the quality of the company you keep, partly the competitive benefit to the university and the conference, and partly on the business side of the equation relative to, ‘Might we increase revenue or decrease revenue.’ Once the vote is taken, there will be some ceremonial things and after that, you get down to the nitty-gritty that the athletic director will be more engaged with than I will. That involves a lot of consulting with our coaches relative to scheduling and the like.”
South Carolina athletics director Ray Tanner declined to comment last week through a spokesman. But while we’re on the subject of Tanner, here’s what I would do if I were him: Go straight to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and ask him to invite Clemson and do it publicly. The traditional thinking was that the Gameco*cks wouldn’t want the Tigers in the same league because of the advantages, recruiting and otherwise, that it might give Clemson.
The problem for South Carolina: Clemson now has all those advantages anyway because it is one of the elite programs in the country. On top of that, the Tigers currently have a much easier path to the College Football Playoff coming out of the inferior ACC.
“Personally, I would love to have Clemson in the conference,” Hutto said. “If I were Dabo Swinney, I wouldn’t do it. Right now, I get to eat at the kid’s table all year to get somewhere. I know it’s good for their fans to see their team clobber people 50-10, but … I think they’d still win 10-plus, but it is a little different to come off Georgia and go play LSU.”
Right now, the only clear winners in this whole thing are Swinney and Ohio State coach Ryan Day, who are more than happy to win their respective conferences and then wait for the teams that stumble out of this new SEC.
“The (Tigers) argue, ‘We beat SEC schools in the Playoff every year,’ but they don’t play the eight-game (SEC) schedule,” Salter said. “Doing it eight games a year wears on you.”
He’s right, which is why South Carolina should be stumping right now to bring their hated rival into the family. If nothing else, the Gameco*cks would have a better shot at beating Clemson at the end of the year if the Tigers were coming off an SEC schedule.
Advertisem*nt
“That’s a theoretical question,” Pastides said. “Clemson has not approached the conference. The conference is not talking to Clemson, so there is no point in my speculating about it. It’s not on our radar.”
There’s one factor, of course, that could put it on the radar in the future.
“It’s all about the money,” Salter said. “We know that.”
(Photo: Dannie Walls / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Josh Kendall , a Georgia native, has been following the Falcons since Jeff Van Note was the richly bearded face of the franchise. For 20 years before joining The Athletic NFL staff, he covered football in the SEC. He also covers golf for The Athletic. Follow Josh on Twitter @JoshTheAthletic
