Texas Football: 3 things that have to happen to join the SEC

Expansion of College Football Playoff down the road

This one is actually an interesting point to bring up. One part of overcoming any opposition from individual SEC programs, potentially such as Texas A&M and Arkansas (among others), would be still having the opportunity for them to reach the College Football Playoff on a realistic term. Getting Texas and Oklahoma into the SEC would make it much more difficult for the lower-tier programs to get into the College Football Playoff.

And it’s not like teams like the South Carolina Gamecocks, Vanderbilt Commodores, Tennessee Volunteers, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas, etc. already have an easy time staying in College Football Playoff contention year in and year out. There are programs that have the resources to get back to that level, such as Tennessee and LSU now. The Florida Gators were also a program that was able to rebound quickly in the past few years.

But if there are more spots available in the College Football Playoff for at-large bids if the committee does decide to expand the field in the near future, then the door could stay open for postseason relevance for many of the lower-tier SEC programs. While the chance to win an SEC Championship still slims down, at least postseason relevance could remain.

It does look like much more of a certainty that the College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams compared to Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC in the near future. But both have some traction at the moment. College Football Playoff expansion looked to be something that could open up the conference realignment conversation anyway when the discussion first started with the committee, just not with Texas and Oklahoma potentially moving to the SEC.