![Florida Gators mascots Albert and Alberta the Gator ride on an ATV before the game against the Missouri Tigers at Steve Spurrier Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, FL on Saturday, October 8, 2022. [Matt Pendleton/Gainesville Sun]](http://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2022/10/08/NTGG/f4d33bb2-d870-45b4-ab74-c5bd25f390ac-FLGAI-100822-NCAAF-FloridaVsMissouri-5694-MattPendleton.jpg?width=660&height=440&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
The Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners joining the SEC a yr early in 2024 will rework a league already famend for its athletic excellence.
The new 16-team tremendous league will add tv eyeballs from two blueblood soccer packages which have mixed for 11 nationwide titles. It additionally coincides with the beginning of ESPN’s 10-year, $300 billion soccer TV contract and The College Football Playoff’s growth from 4 to 12 groups.
Here’s how Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC will affect the Florida Gators:
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New Football Rivalries
Florida hasn’t performed Texas in soccer since 1940 and has performed Oklahoma simply twice at school historical past – beating the Sooners within the 2008 BCS title sport and shedding to OU within the 2020 Cotton Bowl. Both faculties will find yourself on Florida’s schedule sooner or later earlier than the tip of the last decade.
But Texas and OU joining the SEC may have a extra profound impact on a few of Florida’s conventional rivalries. A proper announcement hasn’t been made but, however with the brand new 16-team convention, the SEC is predicted to eliminate divisions and transfer to a nine-game league schedule. Each faculty would have three everlasting rivals they’d face yearly, then tackle the opposite 12 faculties on an every-other-year foundation.
Under this format, Georgia and Tennessee are locks to stay as two of Florida’s three everlasting rivals. But UF’s annual cross-division sport with LSU may grow to be a factor of the previous. Geographically, it might make extra sense for LSU so as to add Texas as a 3rd everlasting rival with Texas A&M and Arkansas.
Candidates for a 3rd everlasting rival for Florida beneath this format would come with South Carolina, Kentucky and Auburn, which, regardless of being a five-hour drive from Gainesville, has performed the Gators simply 4 occasions since 2006. However, there was a time when Auburn was on UF’s schedule each season.
More competitors in non-revenue sports activities
Texas and Oklahoma are two well-rounded athletic packages which have traditions of excellence in girls’s and non-revenue sports activities.
Oklahoma has gained 5 nationwide championships in girls’s gymnastics since 2014, together with a split-national championship with Florida in 2014. Last yr, the Sooners beat the Gators within the NCAA Gymnastics Finals by .125 factors.
This season, Florida is ranked No. 3 in NCAA Division 1 girls’s gymnastics. No. 1? You guessed it – Oklahoma.
In softball, Oklahoma has gained 4 nationwide championships since Florida gained back-to-back nationwide titles in 2014 and 2015.
Texas, in the meantime, excels in swimming and diving (14 nationwide titles since 1983-84), girls’s volleyball (2012, 2022) and baseball (six nationwide titles, the final coming over Florida within the 2005 College World Series finals).
More income for Florida’s athletic division
Florida made a shade over $48 million ($48,130,503) in media rights income from the SEC in fiscal yr 2021-22, in keeping with its annual monetary report back to the NCAA.
With the $300,000 million annual soccer contract with ESPN and $512 million extra in media rights yearly coming from different sources, the media rights income boosts for faculties will doubtless bounce to $58-60 million, in keeping with USA Today’s Steve Berkowitz.
There is a catch. The SEC borrowed in opposition to the long run ESPN soccer contract throughout the pandemic, a mortgage it may wind up repaying into the late 2020s. Even with that, and including Texas and Oklahoma as companions, SEC faculties are projected to earn more money.
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