Tennessee football should root for Big Ten’s potential expansion plans

It was clear the seismic shift in college football with SEC and Big Ten expansion wasn’t over after the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins bolted the Pac-12. However, Big Ten expansion seems more imminent than ever. Tennessee football fans should celebrate it.

Brett McMurphy of The Action Network earlier this week reported that Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said the conference was targeting a handful of other schools for potential expansion, seven to be exact. Of course, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish led the list.

However, the Oregon Ducks, Washington Huskies, Stanford Cardinal, Cal Golden Bears, Florida State Seminoles and Miami Hurricanes on the list. The ripple effect that would come with this expansion would end up helping Tennessee football in a big way.

If the Big Ten expands, the SEC will obviously expand. In fact, just this announcement may lead the SEC to expand to corner the market, especially with one of the league’s potential targets, FSU, on the Big Ten’s radar. Such expansion will make the SEC tougher. It’ll make UT’s slate easier.

At this point, the depth of a conference is irrelevant. Once they go to 20 teams, your division will be more like what your conference used to be. In that context, it’s almost impossible to see the Vols not landing in a favorable division if the league goes to 20 teams.

Let’s get the obvious fact out of the way. It’ll be the ACC that gets raided if the SEC expands. As a result, the westernmost division is already set since no team is coming from there. The Texas Longhorns, Texas A&M Aggies Oklahoma Sooners, Arkansas Razorbacks and Missouri Tigers will all be in a division.

Meanwhile, the LSU Tigers, Ole Miss Rebels and Mississippi State Bulldogs will be in a division. Now, here’s where it gets tricky. If you look at the schools that would be targeted by the SEC to get to 20, you’e talking about FSU, Miami, Clemson, one of the North Carolina schools and one of the Virginia schools.

Looking at brand power beyond just recent success along with TV markets, to the degree that those are still relevant, you can really narrow it down to FSU, Clemson and two of the three between Miami, one of the North Carolina schools and one of the Virginia schools. In that context, you eliminate Miami.

All apologies to the Hurricanes, but they don’t have the brand in terms of fan support that other schools do, and the Vols don’t need the TV market with the Florida Gators already in the league. FSU brings the brand, so they are still a safe bet over a second North Carolina or Virginia school. That’s true with Clemson too.

Simply put, SEC expansion will almost 100 percent be FSU, Clemson, one of the North Carolina schools and one of the Virginia schools. Should that happen, there’s no way Tennessee football wouldn’t be in the easiest division in the conference.

That’s because, geographically, when FSU and Clemson join, a division with those two, Georgia, Florida and the South Carolina Gamecocks already makes the most sense. It falls perfectly in line for travel purposes and protecting some rivalries.

For the same reason, Alabama and Auburn end up in the same division as LSU, MSU and Ole Miss. That way you’ve got schools in gulf coast states east of the Mississippi River in one division, all five schools west of the Mississippi River in another division and the five southernmost schools in Atlantic Coast states in a third.

Just leaves the Vols, the Vanderbilt Commodores, the Kentucky Wildcats, one of the Virginia schools and one of the North Carolina schools are left. When you factor in the concept of blue bloods, whether it be recent or all time, there will be no blue bloods in that division. As a result, UT would be the favorite to win it most years.

Of course, there is the issue that those schools in the SEC would compete more with Tennessee football now because of them being able to lock off those areas, which would be crucial to the Vols. However, the lack of blue blood competition outweighs the recruiting losses.

At this point, the SEC would have to do something like a four-team playoff for the champion. They might even do a six-team playoff with two wildcards, and the Vols would be in contention way more years than they are right now.

Should they and the Big Ten continue to expand, they could set up their own playoff. If it included the format of the conferences first, then the Vols would still be in the postseason most of the time, and that would actually work wonders for recruiting on its own.

Taking all this into account, the SEC expansion that would come from Big Ten expansion is certain to help Tennessee football. Even if tougher and better brands join, the divisional layout will almost certainly be favorable to Rocky Top, and that’s the goal by the time the league expands this much.