While the rest of the P5 was sleeping, the SEC, which already had a brobdingnagian lead in all things football, seems to have pulled off an athletic Pearl Harbor.
There are rumors that the SEC will continue its assault by invading southeast Asia (poaching top football powers from other P5s). The other P5s will have largely been consigned to football irrelevance. The only hope of survival seems to be to join the trend to professionalize. As one of the top four or five universities of the world, I doubt Stanford will follow this path. Perhaps the majority of PAC schools will feel the same. This seems to be a moment when Stanford and the rest of the conference tmust think deeply about how far they will go and, even if they professionalize, can they keep up with an expanded SEC. If they choose not to professionalize, how will they structure themselves and operate in this radically different landscape. Pretty soon, if not already, we will not be in Kansas anymore.
There are rumors that the SEC will continue its assault by invading southeast Asia (poaching top football powers from other P5s). The other P5s will have largely been consigned to football irrelevance. The only hope of survival seems to be to join the trend to professionalize. As one of the top four or five universities of the world, I doubt Stanford will follow this path. Perhaps the majority of PAC schools will feel the same. This seems to be a moment when Stanford and the rest of the conference tmust think deeply about how far they will go and, even if they professionalize, can they keep up with an expanded SEC. If they choose not to professionalize, how will they structure themselves and operate in this radically different landscape. Pretty soon, if not already, we will not be in Kansas anymore.