Fans of Mississippi’s two Southeastern Conference schools should not get too excited about the likely prospect that the conference will add the universities of Texas and Oklahoma by the year 2025.
It will probably produce a mixed bag for Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
The two Mississippi schools will certainly get richer, as both Texas and Oklahoma will add considerably to the revenues, especially the TV rights, that the conference members divide up.
But they will also make it more improbable that either Mississippi program will ever win an SEC football championship.
In the 29 years that the SEC has had a season-ending game to determine its champion, Mississippi State and Ole Miss have just one appearance between them in the contest — a 1998 loss by the Bulldogs. Adding two more national football powers to an already stacked league almost assures that the Mississippi schools will remain in the SEC’s lower tier.
Erick Smith, the college sports editor at USA Today, put it just right when he wrote this past week: “The money will be good, but is that enough to be a minor player on the stage? What’s the point of playing in a conference you can never win?”
- The Greenwood Commonwealth
