Urban Meyer wants FSU, Miami in the SEC
"I think that'd be great for the SEC..."
Late in the week, Florida football coach Urban Meyer hopped on the radio with Joe Rose of WQAM in Miami and was asked about adding Florida State and Miami to the Southeastern Conference in response to recent moves, actual and expected, by the Big Ten and Pac-10:
"I think that'd be great for the SEC. I've not done the research..."
"I know one thing, our commissioner in our office won't be caught by surprise because we've got the best people. I mean, it's phenomenal the job they do. So that's a natural fit, the two schools you just mentioned. We play one of them every year anyway and the other one's a great rivalry as well."
Florida has played Miami on an occasional basis after taking them off the permanent schedule 20 years ago.
The, now popular, notion of also adding Georgia Tech and Clemson to the mix to form a 16 team league was broached with the head Gator:
"As a coach you look at it saying, 'Here we go.' Let's go add a couple more powerhouses because you have to go play 'em. But as far as interest on a national level, as far as quality of play, right now the SEC is the best and I think that's part of the shock waves throughout the country the last 4 or 5 years is the television contracts and interest level that's taken place in the SEC that's forcing some of these conferences to probably react and so it's going to be interesting."
"The one thing you can rest assured though, the SEC... the coaches aren't involved in this but the commissioner, Mike Slive and them, he's phenomenal. He's got his hands on some buttons if we have to do what we have to do."
Hands on some buttons? Hopefully, Slive can be trusted with the launch codes. A 16 team league sounds good in theory if you can put a hammerlock on interest in the states of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
But the enduring question is can revenue be justifiably increased to the point where each school will somehow make more money dividing by 16 than 12?
Those are the numbers being crunched and re-crunched in Slive's office this weekend as the SEC waits to see what Texas decides to do in the early part of next week.
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