NYT: If Texas A&M Is the SEC’s 13th Team, Who’s No. 14?

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As for when Texas A&M will move, the probable answer is soon but not imminent. If it were to join the SEC for the 2012-13 academic year, it would have to make the move by early fall in order for the move to be logistically feasible.

A high-ranking SEC official said he did not expect any movement on Texas A&M within the next week, because he said the university was busy working out the legal issues involved with leaving the Big 12.

“They have to unencumber themselves from the Big 12,” the official said.

There have been some recent voices opposing the move, including from Vanderbilt, but it does not appear that enough resistance has been built up to prevent it from happening.

“I think it’s a matter of timing and substance,” the SEC official said. “Who is it and when is it done? I don’t think the SEC has any strong opinion against expansion. Likewise, we’re not under any pressure to expand.”

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The official acknowledged that because of the length and structure of the SEC’s current television contract, adding Texas A&M and a 14th member would not be financially beneficial from a rights standpoint.

Texas A&M and Team No. 14 are expected to receive a pro rata share equal to what the SEC’s 12 current universities are making: an average of about $18 million in league payouts. (Individual universities can make more money from their separate television deals.)

The SEC deal, which ends in 2025, has a few windows when it can be renegotiated but no one from the SEC or the networks expects any radical change.

So the notion that Texas A&M will see a significant financial gain by going to the SEC is not true. While the SEC offers more long-term security, the Big 12 could end up with a television deal in four years that surpasses the annual payout of the SEC, according to Joel Lulla, a New York-based lawyer who is the Big 12’s television consultant. Starting next season, A&M is guaranteed $20 million of total revenue from the Big 12. Once the Big 12 negotiates its deal that expires in four years, Texas A&M would be poised to make more money. Texas A&M also has to deal with a potentially significant buyout that will be in the neighborhood of $15 million.

“Economically, unless the SEC opens their TV deals to the extent where they make more than a pro rata increase, it makes no sense at all,” Lulla said.

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