This is inherently a wrong take. The reason the SEC and the Big10’s competitive advantage (as far as the contracts go) is that people watch them more than any other conference. That’s plain and simple. This was posted earlier but here’s a link to the most watched programs and games of 2022.
7 of the top 10 and 16 of the top 25 most watched football programs came from the Big10 (2 of the top 3) and SEC. All 4 of the schools asked to join the 2 conferences are also in the top 25 (UCLA is #25). Going in further, only 1 program that isn’t moving to a P2 conference (Texas at #8) or isn’t a traditional religious institution (Notre Dame at #6) is on the top 10 and that’s Clemson at #10.
If you look at how well each conference did on their broadcasts, there are 45 games that had over 4 million viewers. All but 10 of them had at least 1 team from the Big10 and SEC. Going even further, the top 10 all had at least 1 team and the top 25 had only 4 games not have a team from those 2 conference. Here they are:
- #11 - Army @ Navy
- #13 - Notre Dame @ Southern Cal
- #23 - TCU @ Texas
- #24 - NC ST @Clemson
Notice that 2 of those schools are now moving to those conferences. In fact, the Big10 will gain control every other year of one of those games!
Out the remaining 6 games, only 4 did not involve one of the schools that’s not moving to the Big10 or SEC.
Going even further down the rabbit hole, out of the top 5 games (all over 10 million viewers) only 2 teams were not in the P2 and 1 of them is Texas (the other is ND). The consolidation of power will continue to matter if there’s streaming. While not every school in either the Big10 or SEC draws huge viewership, they have enough big dogs to keep people watching (and purchasing streaming subscriptions to watch).