GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida coach Dan Mullen was relaxing at his Lake Oconee vacation home when the bombshell broke that Texas and Oklahoma planned to leave the Big 12 for the SEC.
Mullen was both blindsided and incredulous.
“I was surfing or doing something, hanging out there, and I saw some report,” he recalled. “I mean I’ve heard that report before. It happened a couple of years ago that there was a report that all this different stuff happened.
“I didn’t take it — to be honest with you ― that seriously.”
Two days before the news broke on July 21, Mullen opened SEC Media Days in Hoover, Ala., when the league was already sitting pretty. The addition of two national powers seemed almost unfair, yet likely a sign of things to come as conferences push to position themselves for more TV dollars and College Football Playoff bids.
“There aren’t megaconferences yet,” Mullen said. “But if you look, we’re as close to being to that now, and then you add those two teams and certainly it is the strongest conference in college football.”
Texas and Oklahoma have combined for 11 national titles, including seven for the Sooners. But since Texas’ 2005 Cotton Bowl win, SEC teams have won 11 of 15 national championships, beginning with the Gators’ 2006 team.
Oklahoma last won the national championship in 2000, but in the past four seasons appeared in three straight College Football Playoff semifinals and handed the Gators a 55-20 loss during the 2020 Cotton Bowl.
“You’re really looking at since the turn of the century teams that are going to be in this league have been some of the most powerful teams in college football,” Mullen said.
When the rich officially become richer remains to be seen.
Texas and Oklahoma are under contract to remain in the Big 12 until the league’s TV deal expires in 2025. The schools could decide to pay to leave for the SEC early by forfeiting two years of media distributions, or as much as $80 million per school.
Mullen said the timetable for the SEC’s expansion from 14 to 16 teams will be for others to decide. Meanwhile, the Gators gear up for the 2021 season.
“Would it shock me if it happened sooner, no. Would it shock me if it took four years, probably not,” Mullen said. “I doubt it’s going to happen within the next three weeks.”
The course of the 2021 college football offseason has proven most anything is possible.
The proposed expansion of the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams, the enactment of name, image and likeness legislation, and now perhaps the commencement of wide-sweeping conference realignments leave Mullen wondering what’s next.
“I think I’ve said this, college football in the next couple years will look differently than maybe what it’s looked like in the past,” he said. “That’s just going to be another step of it.”
