Texas Football: Herbstreit not a fan of the move to the SEC

All of the buzz surrounding the Texas football program and Oklahoma Sooners at the moment obviously has to do with the move from the Big 12 to the SEC. With the known fact that these two schools will be making the move from the Big 12 to the SEC soon, it’s just a matter of the exact year that Texas and Oklahoma will start competing in the SEC.

The opinions are widespread around the college sports landscape (especially among football fans) as to how the move from the Longhorns and Sooners from the Big 12 to the SEC is viewed. Most did believe that there was a looming major domino that would fall like this eventually to spark the move for a major round of conference realignment. That came with the idea being that some new super conferences would form together.

One major player in the media around the college football landscape gave his opinion against the move for Texas and Oklahoma to join the SEC this week. Per 247Sports, ESPN college football media personality Kirk Herbstreit doesn’t like the move for the SEC to accept both the Longhorns and Sooners.

Herbie joined SportsCenter to give his opinion on this matter, and he clearly favors the more traditional approach to conference alignment. Here’s more on what he had to say on this matter.

Kirk Herbstreit makes his thoughts clear on Texas football and OU moving to the SEC

"“What’s becoming abundantly clear, and I hate to say this because I’ve always tried to fight it, is people try to stay at the top and try to compete with the SEC. It’s all about money,” Herbstreit said on SportsCenter. “It’s no longer about tradition. It’s no longer about the things that I think college football has always kinda tried to stand itself on and on top of and really look at and appreciate rivalries and tradition and things of that nature.“Right now, I think it’s about money and keeping up with the Joneses. And right now, Texas and OU, they’re looking over the horizon to the east and they’re seeing that SEC and all that money and they’re saying ‘We can’t be left behind. We want to go into that neighborhood and we want to join that group of teams.’”"

It’s not like Herbie is the only one that feels this way about Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC. But he did have a pretty harsh take on the ability of Texas especially to compete in the SEC with the lack of the traditional success that we’ve come to expect out of this football program.

What is clear is that the Longhorns and Sooners both definitely have the resources and overall capability to compete at a high level in any conference in college football. Being able to compete in the SEC now will largely be up to how new head coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff can build a solid foundation with the Texas program in the Big 12 this fall.

Texas and Oklahoma did pretty abruptly make this move to leave the Big 12 for the SEC. But this is something that appeared to be months and/or years in the making. It was going to come out eventually, so why not now?

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the dominos fall in this round of the conference realignment conversation. This now only seems like a matter of time before some of the remaining eight Big 12 schools decide to leave for other conferences too.