Texas Almost Joined the SEC
In the middle of the latest round of conference expansion talk, a massive piece of... historical information that perhaps very few people were previously aware of:
Texas wanted to join the SEC in the late 80's, but would only be given the stamp of approval from its state legislature if Texas A&M could join them. The SEC balked on that demand which led to Arkansas and South Carolina coming on board instead. That's the story at least from former SEC commissioner Harvey Schiller this past week on the Paul Finebaum radio show.
"The natural associations were certainly Arkansas and South Carolina but the one that really made sense to us was Texas. So I spent some time with (Texas athletics director) DeLoss Dodds and he really wanted to join the conference. However, the state legislature somehow got wind of it through Texas A&M and said you have to bring in both schools or you can't take Texas. And we couldn't do that for a variety of reasons."
Unfortunately, the natural follow up question which was not asked was what were the reasons that prevented the Aggies from being a worthy addition to the conference? Any coach worth his salt in recruiting will tell you he takes on "package deals" all the time when you're talking about a "player" like Texas. If this story is true, as told, this has to count as one of the major gaffes of the last quarter century in collegiate athletics.
The Longhorns and Aggies would eventually help the Big 8 morph into the Big 12 as the Southwest Conference dissolved into nothing but a debaucherous memory.
The SEC added Arkansas and South Carolina which led to... a few years of decent Nolan Richardson basketball?
At least they captured that massive Columbia television market...
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