Conference Expansion: Texas A&M Joins the SEC

Well after what seemed like an eternity of waiting for everything to be one hundred percent complete, the SEC officially has itself a 13th member.

Texas A&M has officially been accepted into the Southeastern Conference, and is scheduled to begin play in the conference starting with the 2012-2013 season.

No real surprise here, as it was was just a matter of time before all of this got sorted out.

Once all of this started a few months ago, it became obvious that the Aggies were on a completely different page than their Big 12 counterparts, and they felt as though they had to make this move.

Given all of the uncertainty that was surrounding the Big 12, I’m not sure you can really blame them. Other schools would have likely held a grudge had they went back on their word and decided to stay in the Big 12 now that it looks like the conference will survive. They had to go through with their interest in the SEC.

Of course, now the question turns to who the 14th member is.

There’s been conflicting reports about Missouri, so who knows where things stand on that front. They make a lot of sense because of location, but there’s also been rumors flying around that perhaps Virginia Tech could be in the mix as well.

It just seems to me that getting anyone out of the ACC at this point is going to be extremely difficult. With the addition of Pitt and Syracuse, plus the increased buyout, that might make SEC commissioner Mike Slive rethink adding a member from that conference.

But getting Texas A&M is good enough for right now, and we’ll have to wait and see if the SEC chooses to add another member in the near future.

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