Notes from Clay Travis interview
* Has believed that The University of Texas is scared of the SEC for a long time. Thinks Texas talks a big game, but when the rubber meets the road, they don’t back it up. When the expansion process has brought itself up over the past few years, Texas people would make excuses about why the SEC didn’t work for Texas. It would start with, “We won’t make as much money.” and then after the addition of The Longhorn Network, it morphed into, “We could never have the Longhorn Network in the SEC.” They would always try to out the distance, or the academics or the Big 12 being so superior to the SEC. By the time they actually added West Virginia, it occurred to him that it was time for someone to actually call the Longhorns fans out for the stuff they trotted out as arguments for why they didn’t want to join the SEC. He believes they like the competition better in the Big 12, and unlike Texas A&M, they are afraid to step up and compete with the biggest boys in the country. The article got a lot of play, and he believes that Texas is afraid of the SEC.
* Thinks Texas A&M joining the SEC was brilliant. He’s written about how much sense he thought it made for a couple of years and he knows how excited people in the SEC office were about expanding into Texas. From a Texas A&M perspective, the argument he makes is and the one that A&M is already showing, is the one with the recruits. Being able to offer playing in the best conference in the country and staying close to home in Texas is something that no one else in the country can offer. Instead of playing teams like the Iowa State’s that you really don’t care about, let’s see how you feel about playing against the Alabama’s and Florida’s of the world in nationally televised games that people all over the country will be talking about.
* Texas does not want to be an equal partner and the reality of it is, they want to dominate a weaker conference as opposed to playing consistently against the big boys. His favorite of the Texas excuses is the academics excuse. Texas people would compare themselves to Harvard and that just isn’t true. They are a good academic school but Texas A&M is just about every bit of a good academic school as they are. There are state schools all across the country that rank academically higher than Texas, so people should stop pretending that Texas is comparable to Harvard. The Big 12 has since added West Virginia, a school the SEC decided not to add because of their academic ratings, and is in talks with Louisville, a school that makes Kentucky look like Harvard.
* Texas fans also love to point out the travel issue and say that the SEC road trips are too far, which just isn’t true when Texas is traveling to places like Ames, Iowa and Morgantown, West Virginia. People like to make arguments, but when they don’t stand up when you step back and look at the facts, it makes you look bad. He never picked a side in the A&M-Texas rivalry, but it seems to him that the A&M fans are a lot more rational and forward thinking about the benefits of joining the SEC and it seems as if the longhorn fans live in a fantasy world where they have won eight national championships in the last ten years. They have the cockiness of USC and Alabama rolled into one, with the success of Washington.
* Thinks the SEC network is going to happen. He believes it will look very similar to the Big 10 network except the partnership will be in congruency with ESPN who the SEC has a partnership with through the 2023-2024 season. It can happen very quickly, obviously not this year, but by next year it should be very seriously contemplated and by the year after it will be out there. It will be a subscription based model, the same thing Texas has tried to do with The Longhorn Network. The difference will be that the SEC network will actually have games that people want to watch in a wide variety of sports and to a great extent. The SEC sold the rights for one game a week to CBS, so they get first pick for the most part, while the rest of the SEC games are ESPN property. The partnership is there to be set up and exploited rapidly because ESPN already has the rights to the programming. In that sense, it’s a question of what they want to put on the network, not can they do it. He thinks it will be worth about $1 a month per subscriber to start with. To compare that with something, the average subscriber pays around $4.60 a month for ESPN. If you combine the approximate seven million cable subscribers in Texas with the approximate two million cable subscribers in Missouri along with the other 20.2 million cable subscribers that were already in the SEC, you’re looking at nearly 30 million cable subscribers total. That’s why these schools were added, to help build a network. If you run the numbers, in a few years the SEC network could be bringing in billions of dollars a year in overall revenue and 50 to 60 million dollars per school in television rights alone.
* Thinks Texas A&M will fit in well in the SEC. One argument he hears is that the SEC is top heavy, and he thinks that is a ridiculous statement. A lot of A&M and Missouri fans have asked him how he thinks the schools will do and his answer is that they are going to do better historically than they would do as a football program in the SEC. People ask him what that means and he replies that while everyone is focused on the SEC winning the last six national titles with four different teams, they don’t realize that the bottom six teams in the conference during that time have outperformed historically what their football programs would have done. One example being Kentucky who had been to five straight bowl games prior to last season, when in their entire history leading up to those six years they only went to five total. All six of the lesser weight programs are at heights unseen in their football history for generations. He thinks that when A&M and Missouri come in you’ll see the SEC tide lift all boats. That doesn’t mean A&M will be in the running for an SEC title every season but they will occasionally. And when they are in the running for an SEC title, they will also be in the running for a national title.
* What you will see is that the SEC fan bases are a very united front. A&M won’t only get the benefit when they play Alabama, Florida or LSU but also when those teams are in nationally prominent games. Alabama and LSU playing for a national title helps everybody in the SEC because all of those coaches can say, “Look, you can go other places but the best brand of football in the universe is the NFL. The second best is the SEC.” Thinks as the years go forward, Texas A&M fans will think it’s an even smarter move than they do right now.
* Liked the hiring of Kevin Sumlin. He was on the list when Tennessee fans hired Derek Dooley and a lot of Tennessee fans would like to trade the two. You have got to have the steaks, but you also have to have the sizzle these days, and Kevin Sumlin brings that to the table for Texas A&M. He seems to understand that part of being a successful program is selling that program.
* Nobody’s offense plays that well when you are playing against the best defenses in the country. Thinks that Kevin Sumlin’s offensive strategy has been over-discussed. The reality is that you are going to have to compete defensively as well to win. Mike Leach has had his system placed against these SEC defenses and it has not done as well against them, but no offensive system is going to work against top-tier defenses. When you really break it down, he thinks the offensive system will sell well to recruits, but you’re not going score a lot of points against the Nick Saban defense no matter who you are. Thinks the offensive system you run is less significant that three things. The first being, the amount of turnovers you normally have, and the second being, how well your defense plays. If you don’t give up a lot of points, a lot of points aren’t going to need to be scored. The third is that the SEC defenses always win in the end. There is a reason the SEC has beaten the Oklahoma’s and the Oregon’s in the BCS title game the past six years and that reason is the SEC defense. Thinks no one will ever win the SEC again with a straight offensive system. A team needs balance to win.
* The biggest surprise the A&M fans will find in going to the SEC is how welcomed they will be. Traveling and going on the road is a great thing about the SEC because it’s always a really welcoming environment. He doesn’t think that the tailgate culture exists in the Big 12 to the extent that it does in the SEC. It’s very competitive and people want to win, but when you go on the road with your family, people are incredibly friendly. A&M fans will also be impressed with how many SEC fans are excited to come down and watch games at Kyle Field. He might be coming down to College Station for the game against Florida on September 8th, but will for sure be in town with his family on October 20th for the game against LSU. He is ecstatic to come to town and is excited to have A&M in the conference.
* Believes that the future of the SEC is not at 14 teams and is instead at 16 teams. What you are going to see at 16 teams is four, four team divisions. He thinks they would put A&M in a division with Arkansas, Missouri and LSU. If you were to win your four team division, you would then go to a four team play off and the winner would be crowned conference champion. When the SEC went to 14 teams, he was one of the first people to say that they would not go into a market that they were already in. He thinks the next two states the SEC will go to during expansion are North Carolina and Virginia for the reason of expanding their footprint. If he was a betting man, he would guess that North Carolina State with their football tradition would be invited and so would Virginia Tech. Thinks that the final four of the SEC championship would rival March Madness’ final four in terms of attention it would get going forward. With the four division set-up, it gives the conference the ability to hold together more of those long time rivalries and also allows the conference to cycle through games more rapidly because you don’t have to play every team in an eight team division every single year.
