Richt on expansion: ‘Some really serious stuff going on out there’
MACON -– Mark Richt has heard the latest wave of rumors about the Pac-10 possibly annexing half of the Big 12 and about the Big Ten perhaps accelerating its own expansion timetable.
Still, he can’t quite see all of this reaching the SEC.
“It’s really interesting to hear that it’s such a hot topic,” Richt said today at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, where he and two of his UGA players joined representatives from other college football programs around the state at the annual Pigskin Preview. “I think [part of it is that] this time of year people are just looking for things to talk about. But I think there is some really serious stuff going on out there.”
Even so . . .
“I don’t know about our league,” Richt added. “I really feel like we’ve got a great league, and we all believe that. We’ve got a tremendous SEC Championship Game; we’ve got our TV contract; we’re 98 percent full every time we roll out the carpet, so to speak; and we’ve had a lot of national champions lately.
“So I don’t think we’re in a rush to change much. We kind of like the way things are going.
“But I really do think that [SEC] commissioner [Mike] Slive will make a good decision. . . . I’m sure he’s got to be thinking about what’s going on in the college landscape today, and I think he’ll keep us on top.”
Richt’s thoughts largely match those expressed by other coaches, athletics directors and school presidents at the SEC meetings last week. The consensus seemed to be that they’re happy with the SEC as currently constituted and would like to keep it as is, but that they also recognize the league must be open to change if the landscape is altered dramatically by expansion and realignment in other conferences.
Richt said the topic came up in coaches’ meetings in Destin. “I don’t think anybody believes something drastic is going to happen [in the SEC] anytime soon,” he said.
———
Richt and two Georgia players, linebacker Akeem Dent and wide receiver Kris Durham, answered reporters’ questions at the Pigskin Preview event. More of what they had to say is posted on twitter.com/ajcuga. Please follow us there.
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180 comments Add your comment
Rudy sacked your QB
June 8th, 2010
3:34 pm
Uh…Jim Roy…GT didn’t win the 1990 National Championship. Colorado did. They actually played a tough schedule and went to a big bowl game.
Dan
June 8th, 2010
3:37 pm
The reports indicate that Texas is not interested in the SEC. Plus, if any of you had actually gone to Austin, you’d know that culturally it is more a Pac-10 school than SEC school.
I think the Big 10 is trying to find a way to force ND’s hand to get them into their league. If they get that done, they’ll probably call it a day.
hammerhead
June 8th, 2010
3:38 pm
Jim Roy – Ruff Ruff Ruff is on your side… you need to re-read his entry and understand he’s taking a shot at us Georgia fans. Try on a little sarcasm and you’ll understand.
Jim Roy
June 8th, 2010
3:38 pm
Rudy sacked your QB
What, they ended up #1 in the Coaches Poll, it was a split championship, but a championship…And when was the last time that Georgia even played for a national championship?
Jim Roy
June 8th, 2010
3:39 pm
hammerhead
You know us Tech grads can’t read it unless it contains an engineering formula in the sentence
Dewey Oxburger
June 8th, 2010
3:42 pm
Here’s the skinny……
The Pac 10 will add Texas, TX A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, OK St. and Colorado.
The Big Ten will add Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas St. and Notre Dame.
The SEC should then invite Clemson, Fla St. Miami and Ga Tech to get to 16 schools.
The remaining ACC schools would then unite with the 8 Big East Schools to form another 16 Team Conference.
ReddJonn68
June 8th, 2010
3:42 pm
That may be true HugoStiglitz, but this is all based on the TV revenue that will be generated & let’s not forget the BCS buzz or potential payout, that will also generate more funds. I do not think this will work out as well for baskeball, baseball, or track. Not to exclude any collegiate sport, I think logistically & revenue wise football will keep things afloat at first if any of these realignments ever make it.
Russell Dowripple
June 8th, 2010
3:44 pm
Dewey,
There you go. That’s a show.
N. Saban
June 8th, 2010
3:47 pm
Nothing will happen until they call me. Hell no I’m….err I mean we aren’t inviting Texas, no sirree………Maybe TCU or SMU….
hammerhead
June 8th, 2010
3:47 pm
As for “when was the last time Georgia even played for a nat’l c’ship? I’d argue 2002 – when Terrance Edwards (bless his heart) dropped a wide open TD pass against the Gators in Jax (lost 20-13)… Alas, we finished 13-1 and #3, I believe. #2 finish in 2007 doesn’t count IMHO because we didn’t win the conference.
conyers dog
June 8th, 2010
3:48 pm
Keep it like it is or add say a Texas A&M and a Va. Tech to get the depth of a larger tv audience.
Jim Roy
June 8th, 2010
3:48 pm
“The remaining ACC schools would then unite with the 8 Big East Schools to form another 16 Team Conference.”
Perhaps they could actually muster engough fortitude to give the Sunbelt Conference a run for their money
Dewey Oxburger
June 8th, 2010
3:48 pm
Russell,
It’s like looking at the sun, you catch a glimpse, then you look away!
N. Saban
June 8th, 2010
3:51 pm
You mean I ‘ve gotta play Miami, FSU and Florida….and LSU……and…..Duke at noon.
I might as well retire. I will never get another title……….I don’t like this expansion talk.
Dewey Oxburger
June 8th, 2010
3:52 pm
The remnants of the ACC and Big East would be more of a basketball conference than a football conference anyway. The Big Hoops Remnants Conference!
Fair and Balanced
June 8th, 2010
3:57 pm
Other conferences talk about expansion because they need to do something to catch up with the SEC. The SEC ain’t broke. Don’t try to fix it!
Chad
June 8th, 2010
4:05 pm
Yes you are fortunate to have bama and fla. But things go in cycles. If you think it will continue look at fsu, neb and miami fans who believed the same thing at the start of the century. Watch as those schools rebound this year and beyond. Of course the sec might take them which would add more to their fortune.
AZ Dawg
June 8th, 2010
4:05 pm
Lets get Ga Tech in – that would be a guaranteed conference win each year!
jarvis
June 8th, 2010
4:06 pm
No need to apologize Delbert. No one reads posts that long anyway.
Glenn
June 8th, 2010
4:07 pm
The SEC doesn’t need to expand . It will still have the biggest tv contract & its locked up for many years . I believe they would add Texas A&M who would choose the SEC over the PAC 10. That would give them the Texas tv market . At that point they would add one team from a state would give them new exposure & add revenue . I would bet it would be VA Tech . If not West Virginia .
Brusierbrody
June 8th, 2010
4:08 pm
Fair and Balanced, you and Richt both do not get it. Nobody cares about the “voted on” national championships the SEC has or how fast their players are. This is about 1 thing and 1 thing alone. Money. You can win the next 20 national championship games in a row and your team payouts will still be below the Big 10. It is funny to watch the SEC fans talk about how great their football teams are and then put their heads in the sand. You guys are starting to sound like the Irish fans. there is nothing wrong with sitting back and watching before you make a move, but to talk about how many trophies you have won proves you are not paying attention.
hjh
June 8th, 2010
4:09 pm
look at the sec bowl history last year. pathetic!!!
Just shut up
June 8th, 2010
4:09 pm
Chad,
You’re kidding yourself if you think the SEC is just Bama and Fla. I guess whining about academics was already called out on here, so you had to resort to other attempts at “spin”.
Dewey Oxburger
June 8th, 2010
4:11 pm
“I used to swallow a lot of aggression….along with a lot of pizza!”
Seriously, I fear that in this round of conference realignment and expansion it’s either grow or be pillaged.
Bluto
June 8th, 2010
4:12 pm
ReddJonn68 you are wrong the Big 10 schools are getting bigger payouts than the SEC. Look it up. And they are doing it with a inferior product. Now that has to burn, no matter how much you win your check will always be smaller….
Cletus the SEC Fan
June 8th, 2010
4:12 pm
Erik
June 8th, 2010
3:29 pm
It cracks me up how all the Big 10/11 folks have recently resorted to harping on academics. When you’ve resorted to that, you’ve lost the argument.
Yeah, SEC fans surely don’t care about academics. If the Big Ten adds the right AAU schools, the Big Ten will control over 40% of the research money allotted to Universities in THE COUNTRY. And they find ways/have partnerships to share this between conference members. The athletics payouts are dwarfed by the research dollars.
BAMA1
June 8th, 2010
4:12 pm
I would love to have Texas in the SEC, but I wouldn’t drive there again for nothing.. . That’s just toooooo damn far, and I live in Bama. I couldn’t imagine driving from South Carolina. And yes, I know there are planes….but for that price, i’d watch it at home.
RVGnap
June 8th, 2010
4:18 pm
Cletus,
I think you just proved his point. Big 10 people have recently resorted to taking athletic arguments/debates and turning them into academic arguments/debates.
Cletus the SEC Fan
June 8th, 2010
4:22 pm
Which I know you SEC folk find difficult to keep up with…..
Cletus the SEC Fan
June 8th, 2010
4:23 pm
I will try to type slower.
UglyOldDog
June 8th, 2010
4:23 pm
beatdowns galore….how’s the base-a-ball team…losers again, like 3 straight years…what a joke…go stroke your little slide rule
TX Ex
June 8th, 2010
4:23 pm
Texas would be more interested in Big 10 than SEC because of academics and R&D money. Texas has a pretty high R&D cash, but Big 10 could help them up it. And the Big 10 would like 2 TX senators in their pocket to appropriate more $ to Big 10 R&D funds. I read that Bama spends only 1/10 of it’s football budget on R&D. Typical SEC – big on football, small on education.
JW
June 8th, 2010
4:28 pm
What happens in the Big 12 largely depends on what happens in the Big 10. If the Big 10 misses out on their bid for Notre Dame and instead invite Missouri and Nebraska, the rest of the Big 12 is going to be looking to jump ship too. The current thought is that Texas, A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech and either Colorado or Baylor would head to the Pac-10, with the rest of the Big 12 looking at maybe the Mountain West conference.
As a Colorado alumni, I think a trip to the MWC might not be so bad, since their chances in a stacked Pac-10 wouldn’t be very good.
Joe P.
June 8th, 2010
4:28 pm
The Big Ten is going to form a ‘Big Ten South’ division as they expand their conference to 18, 20 or 21 (if Notre Dame) institutions. Florida and Vanderbilt from the SEC, along with Duke, UNC, Virginia and Georgia Tech (and likely Maryland) from the ACC.
Yes, it’s all driven by money — but most people are fixated on the athletics money and TV network money — that’s small potatoes. What the University Presidents care about is the Research budgets — which are 10x-20x the athletic budget in these schools. Penn State immediately raised their research grants 20% in 1991 after they joined the Big Ten’s Committee of Institutional Cooperation.
So the SEC will be looking to replace Florida and Vanderbilt, but the ACC will be basically demolished, so there should be plenty of candidates….
Delbert D.
June 8th, 2010
4:31 pm
The Big Ten has always been about academics over athletics. When the rest of the country were playing 10 game schedules in the 1960s, the Big Ten played 9 game schedules. It was not until the 1975 season that the Big Ten allowed teams to play in bowl games other than the Rose Bowl. Until 1971, the Big Ten did not allow the same team to represent the conference in consecutive years in the Rose Bowl (an exception made after the 1961 season in which Minnesota played in the 1962 Rose Bowl after playing in the 1961 Rose Bowl due to Ohio State declining the bid.)
Anita McCambridge
June 8th, 2010
4:32 pm
Demolish the ACC? How DARE you!!!
PTC DAWG
June 8th, 2010
4:32 pm
You “small picture” guys crack me up.
the real Old Gold
June 8th, 2010
4:34 pm
I thought Kris Durham graduated?
GA Native
June 8th, 2010
4:36 pm
Texas wants to remain the top dog in the Big XII, with their own network. If, however, CU, NU and MU bolt for another conference, Texas will have to look for a new home. Texas will probably end up in the Pac 10, or even the Big 10, before they’d move to the SEC.
Oh and don’t kid yourselves, an expanded Pac 10 with USC, Texas and Oklahoma, and to a lesser extent, OSU, A&M, TT, Cal, UCLA, ASU, Stanford, Colorado, etc. would be as good or better than the SEC. The conference would also be vastly superior to the SEC in terms of academics and tv footprint.
If the Pac 10 and Big 10 go to 16 teams, the SEC will have to grow to remain relevant. I’d guess Virginia Tech would be high on the conference’s list since the SEC doesn’t have a presence in VA. The FL market is already covered by UF, just as the ATL mkt is covered by UGA, but I could see GT and FSU getting an invitation. Clemson is a possibility, but the school doesn’t offer much in the way of TV viewers. If the SEC is smart, they’d go after OU, OSU and maybe A&M. Those schools would expand the geographic footprint of the conference, while adding solid teams that are probably culturally and academically more in line with the SEC. Not sure I’d want to see them in the SEC, but Miami would bring the South Florida/Miami media market with it, so they’d probably be considered.
hammerhead
June 8th, 2010
4:36 pm
*hjh* – The SEC’s record in 2009-10 bowls was 6-4; Big 10 4-3; ACC 3-4; Big 12 4-4 and the PAC 10 2-5. Bama won the only game that mattered. All the other conference bowl records do not count.
Stanfield
June 8th, 2010
4:36 pm
Would like to see miami, Fla. State, Va. Tech and Ga. Tech join the SEC. Even though these programs are slumping right now, they are good programs and will rebound.
Gipper's Ghost
June 8th, 2010
4:39 pm
The Big 10 could have had Notre Dame about 100 years ago, if it were not for the anti-ND bias of then Michigan Coach Fielding Yost.
ND was forced to play a national schedule in the early 20th century, and it worked out pretty well for them. The only way ND will join the Big 10 now is if the Big East implodes as a result of the conference realignments. This would pretty much force ND’s hand, but would make travel a lot easier for the non-revenue sports.
In Russ we Trust
June 8th, 2010
4:42 pm
FWIW, UF and UGA are both listed as “Public Ivy’s”…not just UF. UF and UGA rate higher academically than all current schools in the Big 12 with the exception of Texas (UF and UGA in the same neighborhood per US News). Of course, Vandy ranks higher than all Big 12 schools. So moving to the SEC would be step up for Texas. Of course, this is not what it is about…the only thing that matters is $$$$. The rest is just talk.
Casual Observer
June 8th, 2010
4:44 pm
After reading some of the most idiotic diatribes from SEC fans, I am now in favor of MAJOR expansion all over the college football landscape. Not an SEC hater, but you all are in need of serious therapy to remedy your delusional theories about a conference, even when others are stating facts. SEC is on top from a football perspective purely because all the talent rests in the region and kids choose to go to school locally. SEC is winning national championships because SEC coaches had a renewed emphasis on defense. I rarely see blown coverages in SEC games like in years past (SEC ALWAYS had dynamic offenses). That being said, the college football landscape WILL change SOON. Due to this transformation (like all dynasties in the middle ages), this bird will too be knocked from its perch.
BTW, reading these posts tells me why we are no longer the #1 Superpower. Average person can’t conjugate verbs nor form proper sentences. Go to Belgium, and the average citizen can pull out 4 languages out of their back pockets.
bill_in_atl
June 8th, 2010
4:46 pm
To those who claim it’s all about research money instead of athletic money and use the claim that it’s 10x to 20x higher, I only ask one question. Where is all the extra money coming from and why would it go to an AAU school that isn’t already receiving it?
Are you saying that by joining the Big Ten a school like Maryland will instantly end up with $200 Million in extra research grants that they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten?
I realize the research grants are huge, but again why would the recipient change based solely on who plays in what football conference?
This doesn’t pass the logic test. If I’m wrong, please explain. I’m open to hearing how it would work.
Delbert D.
June 8th, 2010
4:51 pm
Want to know why Texas and Texas A&M are joined at the hip?
Texas A&M is in the top 20 research universities in terms of funding ($570 million invested). A&M is one of a select few universities with land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant designations. The University of Texas is also a major center for academic research (research expenditures exceeding $590 million in 2009.) Except for MIT, UT attracts more federal research grants than any American university without a medical school.
Ivana Humpurmom
June 8th, 2010
5:00 pm
Seriously, I think Texas, GT and Clemson wood be good addition to the SEC. Knock them silly doggies down a few pegs! Oh wait, they are already down a few pegs!
D-MAN
June 8th, 2010
5:02 pm
We want teams that sell out stadiums,not tech!
Dig Bick
June 8th, 2010
5:02 pm
Come on now!!!! SEC aint broke, den dont try to fix it. We like stormtroopers, we gonna take over again like weee do every year no what I is sayyin? Coooooooooool mane!
Ivana Humpurmom
June 8th, 2010
5:04 pm
GT would be an excellent candidate because Atlanta is a major stomping ground for tons of SEC fans, so it would be a good mix to toss them in. Duke, UNC uhh no thanks, leave them together so they can spank each other back and forth in basketball rendevous.