Will being in the SEC always keep UK safe from the chaos of conference realignment?
Strictly from a competitive standpoint, the Southeastern Conference has never seemed an ideal fit for the University of Kentucky.
What has been beyond debate, however, is that membership in the $EC has had two paramount virtues for UK Athletics:
1. Being in a league whose 2020-21 payout per school was a robust $49.9 million has been a business boon to the enterprise of Wildcats sports;
2. Being a member of a college football mega-league has protected UK from the threat of downsizing and disruption that conference realignment has wreaked across the national college sports landscape.
As we sift through the latest college sports upheaval, the mass defections late last week that have left the Pac-12, one of college athletics’ most-venerable leagues, in a heap of smoldering ruins, it seems an appropriate time to ask:
Will being in the SEC always protect Kentucky from the destabilizing dynamics that continue to roil big-time college sports?
What we commonly refer to as “conference realignment” is more properly understood as “major-college football contraction.”
As recently as the 2012 college football season, there were a “super-six” of major conferences whose champions received automatic bids into the most-prestigious, postseason bowl games.
However, after the Big Ten, the Big 12 and, especially, the Atlantic Coast Conference raided the Big East for its most attractive football programs, the number of conferences at the top of the college football hierarchy was reduced to a “Power Five” — the three leagues mentioned first in this sentence plus the SEC and the Pac-12.
That’s where things stood until the past year, when the Big Ten and Big 12 both managed to lure four teams each away from the Pac-12. For 2024-25, that has left Bill Walton’s beloved “Conference of Champions” with a rump membership that presently consists of California, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State.
It also means college football is down to a “Power Four” of major conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC.
Looking forward, there seems little reason to think that the forces driving college football conference contraction, primarily the needs of the television rivals ESPN and Fox Sports, will abate. For ESPN and Fox, the game is to get as many “move the needle” football programs as possible into leagues controlled by the competing networks.
With ESPN having gone all in on the SEC and Fox having bet it all on the Big Ten, some foresee a future in which those two leagues become a “Power Two” with all the major football programs contained within one or the other.
Others take it even further, and predict the emergence of a college football version of soccer’s “Premier League” in which the great powers all converge into one “super conference.”
It is along this line that a potential, long-term threat to UK Athletics could arise. At some point, does the dynamic that has been contracting whole conferences from the top level of college football turn inward and start removing individual schools from within the dominant leagues?
What if some combination of Fox plus Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and USC decide they are tired of carrying less-valuable football brands such as Indiana and Northwestern in the Big Ten?
If ESPN and Alabama, Florida, Georgia and LSU applied the same logic to the SEC, how secure would Kentucky’s place be?
Since the Mark Stoops coaching era hit its stride in 2016, Kentucky football has moved from its historic place near the bottom of the SEC solidly into the middle of the league.
Yet the UK “football brand” has not necessarily caught up with the Wildcats’ improved on-the-field results.
On Friday, Stewart Mandel, the college football editor of “The Athletic,” was circulating on the platform formerly known as Twitter a proposal for a 28-team “College Football Premier League” comprised of four, seven-team divisions.
In the “South Division,” Mandel projected Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Georgia, LSU, South Carolina and Tennessee (he had the Florida schools in his East Division).
Notably absent was Kentucky even though, since UK’s seven-year bowl run began in 2016, the Wildcats’ primary metrics are better than three of the teams in Mandel’s South Division.
Over the past seven seasons, UK has more overall wins (54) than Arkansas (38), South Carolina (43) and Tennessee (47);
The Cats have more SEC wins since 2016 (28) than Arkansas (14), South Carolina (24) and Tennessee (24);
And, since 2016, Kentucky has more bowl victories (four) than Arkansas (two), South Carolina (two) and Tennessee (three).
(Two points of clarity: Mandel’s 28-team selection was initially made four years ago, and it was based on criteria that also included factors other than recent success.
It is also true that using 2016 as a cutoff is a favorable framing for UK).
Maybe being a founding member of the SEC shields Kentucky from ever facing a contraction dynamic. Almost certainly, that day of reckoning will not come imminently for any SEC school.
For the long term, it feels like there are no certainties.
Which is why the best thing the University of Kentucky can do for its entire athletics department — including its historically regal men’s basketball program — is invest in keeping the UK football program on a competitively upward arc.
This story was originally published August 7, 2023 at 12:50 PM.
