SEC Football: 4 expansion candidates the conference should avoid

Kansas

Plenty of the schools included on this list would be great potential additions to the SEC if men’s basketball was where the money lies for college sports heading into the future. While men’s basketball can be a huge boost, especially come postseason time, it is not even close to the revenue driver that college football is.

And that’s why it’s hard to ever see the Kansas Jayhawks as a worthy addition to the SEC in any round of conference realignment in the near future. Kansas definitely boasts one of the most impressive men’s basketball programs in the entire country. But the lack of sustained football success over the course of even five years in a row in the program’s history shows a clear lack of investment and sustainability in Lawrence for this sport.

There’s no much else that Kansas brings to the table as a possible expansion candidate for the SEC that is worthwhile either. The state of Kansas is not a fertile recruiting ground for basketball or football compared to states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, etc. And the TV market in Kansas wouldn’t do much to drive revenue in the SEC.

In terms of the appeal as an expansion candidate, Kansas makes a lot more sense for the Big Ten or the PAC-12 than it ever would the SEC.

Beyond the success of the basketball program, the only major positive I could see from the SEC adding the Jayhawks would be getting the Kansas-Mizzou rivalry back under the householding of one conference.

It definitely sounds nice to have the Border War rivalry back, but it’s clearly not enough for Kansas to be an expansion candidate at any point in the near future for the SEC.