Another narrative I'm hearing lately that is a bit of a head-scratcher is:
"Texas is going to get killed in the SEC. Enjoy going 5-7 every year!"
The Aggies joined the SEC in 2012. That year they were unranked in the preseason AP Top 25.
Texas is currently ranked 20th in the preseason poll.
While the Aggies haven't won the conference, they haven't been embarrassing. Their team now is as good as it's ever been, and they've finished in the Top 25 in 4 of their 9 SEC seasons. Not great... but not bad. Their average SEC season nets them 8.5 wins. Respectable.
Are we supposed to believe that Texas could never DREAM of having the same success as A&M has had in the conference?
And that got me thinking... just where would Texas rank as a member of the SEC?
We all know football is king, but football isn't everything. Texas has been a very reliable "all-sports" school for quite a while. But even where your teams finish on the field isn't the whole story. Money is just as big a deal as football in this equation (obviously they go hand-in-hand to a large degree), but these are also schools, and academics matters, too. (Sorry, Mississippi State.)
Looking at what information was available, I began the process of ranking each "new" SEC team on 5 different criterion:
1) Football now. How good is your football team today? This will be 20% of your score.
2) Football history. How good is your program historically? Another 20%.
3) Value of your program. Money talks, and in this case tells another 20% of your tally.
4) All-sports ranking. 60% of your score was about football. Seems fair. 20% on all sports combined.
5) Academics. Gotta' throw Vanderbilt a bone! But seriously, the conference wants to be taken seriously as a group of universities. You always see commercials for these schools talking about how most college students "will go pro in something other than sports" and they want that to be a part of the equation, so that can be our final 20%.
So below I'll show you how all 16 SEC schools rank in each of these categories. You get 1 point for being the best, 16 for being the worst... and at the end you'll get an admittedly crude idea of where Texas an Oklahoma rank as far as total value of their membership.
Let's start with football now.
This is going to be Texas' worst category, as they're middle of the pack. Based on preseason rankings, Texas is #20 in the country, but that would only be #7 in the SEC. This is also, of course, the most short-sighted of all the rankings we'll look at today, but let's not pretend that this isn't what is driving the "Texas is gonna' get destroyed" fun that rivals like to have these days.
"Rank" means national ranking and "points" will be used to determine our composite rankings at the end. Here's how it shakes out RIGHT NOW:
College Football Preseason Rankings
Rank Team Points
1 Alabama 1
3 Oklahoma 2
5 Georgia 3
6 Texas A&M 4
11 Florida 5
17 LSU 6
20 Texas 7
27 Ole Miss 8
29 Auburn 9
34 Missouri 10
35 Kentucky 11
46 Arkansas 12
50 Mississippi St 13
56 Tennessee 14
76 South Carolina 15
90 Vanderbilt 16
I used the Athlon rankings here because they went beyond 25, but the order is basically the same in the Associated Press poll. Florida and LSU are flipped, but the points remain the same for everyone else.
So what about all-time?
For that we go to the college football all-time wins list. But wait! That's not fair to "younger" teams! I'm all for fairness. This is according to the college football all-time win PERCENTAGE list:
College Football All-Time win percentage
Rank Team Points
2 Alabama 1
6 Oklahoma 2
7 Texas 3
11 Tennessee 4
13 Georgia 5
14 LSU 6
18 Florida 7
20 Auburn 8
25 Texas A&M 9
39 Arkansas 10
65 Ole Miss 11
66 Missouri 12
84 South Carolina 13
90 Kentucky 14
96 Vanderbilt 15
97 Mississippi St 16
There are other ways to measure overall football success, of course. National titles is a good one. If that was our metric the order would be Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas - then LSU, A&M and Ole Miss. But some of those are "claimed titles" from way back when and harder to verify. And what if you had 3 great teams 100 years ago but lost most of the time? Not looking at anyone in particular, TexAgs. All-time win % seemed like a fair way to do it. For the life of your program, how often do you win?
So we've covered today's football and football history, but let's not forget the almighty dollar. Thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we have rankings as to the VALUE of each program. Nationally, the SEC is very good in this department, but it doesn't look like the addition of Texas and Oklahoma is going to hurt TOO badly! (wink)
College Football Brand Value
Rank Team Points
1 Texas 1
3 Alabama 2
6 Georgia 3
7 Oklahoma 4
8 Auburn 5
9 LSU 6
10 Tennessee 7
11 Florida 8
12 Texas A&M 9
16 Arkansas 10
17 South Carolina 11
22 Ole Miss 12
31 Kentucky 13
35 Mississippi St 14
56 Missouri 15
61 Vanderbilt 16
Just a quick note here that on brand value, every team in the SEC is in the top 61 teams and 14 of them in the top 35. That's pretty impressive.
That's 3 out of 5 categories and so far they've been all about football. But what about other sports? Football will count in here, yes, but a conference plays many sports. That's why there's a Director's Cup given every year to the school with "the most success in college athletics."
Texas won it this year.
"Well, hang on - this shouldn't be only about this year." That's fair, but in the history of the Director's Cup, Florida and Texas would be 1-2 in the SEC in top 10 finishes, and they're the only ones that are high up in that department. In fact, this year was the first time Alabama has EVER finished in the Top 10. The Aggies have made the top 10 only 4 times. Texas, 21 and Florida 27 times.
Here are the current rankings:
Director's Cup "All-sports" Standings
Rank Team Points
1 Texas 1
5 Florida 2
7 Alabama 3
8 Arkansas 4
10 Georgia 5
12 Kentucky 6
15 LSU 7
19 Texas A&M 8
22 Ole Miss 9
24 Oklahoma 10
26 Tennessee 11
42 South Carolina 12
48 Missouri 13
50 Auburn 14
56 Vanderbilt 15
59 Mississippi St 16
So that wraps up the athletic portion of our competition. Football, again, making up 60% of the total grade on its own, plus part of the all-sports total. All that remains is academics. Obviously this is more subjective, but the most commonly used ranking system comes from US News and World Report which puts out an annual list of the best "national universities." There are other lists, but it's hard enough to compete with Harvard and Yale without also adding Oxford and other international schools.
Here are the 2021 rankings for SEC schools:
National Universities Ranking
Rank School Points
14 Vanderbilt 1
30 Florida 2
42 Texas 3
47 Georgia 4
66 Texas A&M 5
97 Auburn 6
112 Tennessee 7
118 South Carolina 8
124 Missouri 9
133 Oklahoma 10
133 Kentucky 11
143 Alabama 12
153 LSU 13
160 Ole Miss 14
160 Arkansas 15
206 Mississippi State 16
US News uses a lot of factors to decide these rankings, but the biggest are graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, and undergrad academic reputation. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's the best we have.
1 Texas 3.0
2 Alabama 3.8
3 Georgia 4.0
4 Florida 4.8
5 Oklahoma 5.6
6 Texas A&M 7.0
7 LSU 7.6
8 Auburn 8.4
9 Tennessee 8.6
10 Arkansas 10.2
11 Ole Miss 10.8
12 Kentucky 11.0
T13 Missouri 11.8
T13 South Carolina 11.8
15 Vanderbilt 12.6
16 Mississippi St 15.0
This shouldn't be that much of a surprise. This is the reason Texas and Oklahoma are considered such a big prize. When you factor in several different ways to measure their value, they rise to the top.
There are really 4 tiers here. With the top 5 schools, there's never more than a .8 difference between them. Then a 1.4 drop into 6th and the same thing again. 6-9 are all fairly close, then it drops off at 10. Vandy and Mississippi State are really in their own category, even with Vandy's excellent academics.
So walking in the door, Texas and Oklahoma are 2 of the top tier of 5 schools. There's an argument that Texas has the most overall value of any of them.
"But how can that be? Texas can't even win the Big 12!"
Will Texas need some time to catch up in football? Perhaps. But history shows us that it's a lot easier to catch up in the on-field football results than it is to catch up in all-sports, or value, or fan base, or academics.
I've heard a lot this week that the Big 12 is garbage and there's no comparison.
Well... we just did a comparison.
The SEC is great. Texas and Oklahoma make it greater.
