It's like Lyle Lovett marrying Julia Roberts ... they whaaaa?

   
    It's been talked about, seems an increasing certainty, and I still can't figure out why.
    Texas A&M to the SEC. Didn't get it when the topic first arose, don't get it now. And am hoping the Big 12 can convince A&M to stay despite Texas' overwhelming greed and ESPN's overwhelming greed and shortsightedness.
    Note this. Not every person is all about money. Not every person makes decisions based solely on money. It just seems that way.

    Funny, too, is the hypocrisy of so many football fans. Ah, how quaint to TP some trees and picnic in the Grove and park your boat on the river near the stadium.
    There's the bulldog, the old car, Touchdown Jesus.
    Don't dare touch any of them and disrupt "tradition." Shoot, folks get mad when you take away where they've tailgated - and often just trashed - for years.
    Now, just abandon it.
    But in six weeks, there'll be whining and bellyaching about tradition.
    Nevertheless, A&M and the SEC is an absurd marriage, a shotgun wedding, and it's still difficult to figure out why so many think it's a quality move.
    TV markets are irrelevant in college football, and that so many miss that is remarkable. And sadly unsurprising.
    How Nielsen defines a TV market is different than what in some cases makes sense logistically. It's a measurement tool, but only because a city may not have a TV station, not because it's actually part of the metro market in any other area, like shopping.
    You could almost say if a smaller city has a daily newspaper, it's not really part of the "TV market", per se. It doesn't have a TV station because media mismanagement is cheap, incompetent and greedy, not because there is no market.
    So being part of a commercial market is different, and more realistic, than being part of a TV market.
    Nevertheless, of the top 30 programs in attendance in 2010, only nine  were within 60 miles of a top 50 TV market:
    Southern Cal and UCLA (No. 2 L.A)
    Michigan (No. 11 Detroit, 40 miles away)
    Washington (No. 14 Seattle/Tacoma)
    North Carolina (No. 27 Raleigh-Durham)
    Ohio State (No. 32 Columbus)
    BYU (No. 33 Salt Lake City)
    Clemson (No. 36 Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville/Anderson)
    Alabama (No. 40 Birmingham, about 60 miles away)
    Texas (No. 44 Austin)
    Oklahoma (No. 45 Oklahoma City, 20 miles away)

    South Bend is 95 miles from Chicago. Athens is 70 from Atlanta. Neither can in any way, shape or form be considered a suburb. They're independent cities.
    That Clemson market is certainly regional, with Asheville 90 miles from Clemson and 60 from Greenville. It'd doubtful national advertisers consider the Upstate a top-50 purchasing target, but there it is, one of those pesky facts.
    Only one winner of the past five national championship games has been with 60 miles of a market: Alabama. Of the eight teams playing in the past five games, only Ohio State and Texas are actually in the city of a top 50 market: No. 32 and No. 44. Alabama and Oklahoma are within 60 miles of a market.
    But still, they are independent cities.
    Of the top eight highest-rated regular-season college football games in 2010, only Alabama was in three, and Oklahoma in one, of the top 30/top 50 teams.
    No. 2 was Boise State-Virginia Tech. The Hokies are nearly three hours from No. 47 market Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem.
    It's not about TV markets. Please remember that. Please. And if you're interested, Macon is No. 122.
    All that said ...
    An email tried to sell Tampa, Miami and Orlando as SEC markets. On what map?
    College Station has a CBS/CW station, but Texas A&M has no major TV market. It's 100 miles from Houston, which hasn't given a flip about college sports since Phi Slamma Jamma back in 1980s.
    It's 175 miles to Dallas. Nope, nowhere near part of that market. And it's about 105 miles to Austin, which, well, is otherwise occupied. College Station does have a CW network station.
    And there's another example. Austin is no major market and is a "draw."
    A&M would have ranked seventh in the SEC in 2010 (82,477, 13th nationally). That would drop a little because of travel and interest, courtesy of the newness. Fans will save their money for home games and traditional road games.
    Yeah, don't talk to me about college football tradition and bringing in A&M because they have absolutely nothing in common. This is about money.
    Which brings up again another longstanding gripe about the vapid intellect and raging hypocrisy of 92 percent of the populace: they groan and moan about greed and making decisions based on money, and then they whine about a group not taking the money, and then they cry about somebody having too much money, and then bellyache about getting charged more money for tickets.
    Poster children for birth control. Silliness. Change the subject to, oh, government, and the absurdity and hypocrisy grows. We're talking about decisions based solely on money, and that's never good, nor is narrow-minded and/or short-term thinking.
    This little scenario has all of that.

    Question: If A&M is so anxious to leave the conference because of being in Texas' shadow, how will it feel about being in Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Florida, Tennessee and Georgia's shadow? And on a given year, that of Ole Miss or Mississippi State?
    Just because you'll never be your older brother doesn't mean who run away from the family home, no matter how arrogant that punk older brother might be.
    If A&M is such a jewel, how come it's leaving a conference that ranks below the SEC for the SEC? Is it such a jewel when it has one 10-win season since 1998, and only seven winning seasons since 1998?
    Doesn't the SEC already have plenty of programs like that battling in the nation's top conference?
   Plus, A&M moves from the Big 12, and the Aggies will be more of an afterthought throughout the state of Texas. That state has no connection with the SEC, no history. Texans aren't waking up humming Rocky Top, corralling bulldogs as pets or TPing any downtowns. Texas is about tradition, and about playing those same teams, just like the SEC is about traditional opponents.
    And for the love of God, if we started this conversation three years ago before any of this greed-fueled insanity started, people would call a doctor or cop if you suggested that A&M was just this great fit for the SEC.
    "A&M? They ain't done nuthin' in years. Who wants to go to College Station? Beat Texas Tech, don't try to play with the SEC, son."
    While we're all for making out after a touchdown, nobody in the southeast has been clamoring to get lost in the state of Texas just like few in Texas are yearning to visit Starkville or The Plains.
    Question: What the hell does "open the conference up to Texas" mean?
    It's absurd.
    Let's see, the SEC is the top conference in the nation, and has won five straight national championships.
    Isn't that kind of opening up the SEC to, uh, the friggin' country? Walk in to any high school in the country with an SEC shirt on, and you can pretty promise a kid that he'll play a national championship team once or twice before he leaves. You can promise that half of your schedule every year includes ranked teams.
    A&M won 11 games in 1998, and has seven winning seasons since then. Yes, the Aggies draw well, but that doesn't mean they bring a great past 20 or 30 years with them. They certainly bring no history with anybody in the SEC.
    And again, everybody's exposed to everybody. If a kid wants to leave the state, like Matthew Stafford did for Georgia and like players do for Arkansas and LSU, they'll go. If a kid wants to stay - and play the teams he grew up watching - he'll stay.
    Texas is a narrow-minded state. Kids there aren't thinking about many of the other 49 states about anything. It's doubtful the floodgates will open to The Plains, Knoxville or Athens. Plus, every SEC program can recruit a team with a four-hour drive.
    Question: If Texas A&M isn't making a boatload of money on its own in Texas, where people know and care about A&M, how do the Aggies help the SEC?
    If they're not sexy where they are, how are they sexy 800 miles away?
    Question: What about for those open-minded enough to think about other sports?
    A&M makes SEC women's basketball, softball and baseball better, but does the same in men's basketball that it does for football - take up space.
    Of course, those road trips for all non-football teams will suck, as will crowds. There are - sorry - other sports than football. More people need to have kids that play other sports to realize that.

    Nevertheless, I just don't get it. Does nothing for me.
    The grass isn't always greener on the other side, and there's not always the green of money over there, either.