When news broke that the Big Ten had extended formal invitations to several schools for inclusion into the conference, many began speculating on how other conferences might react.
Some are speculating that college athletics could evolve where several “super” conferences populate the landscape, with teams jumping from one BCS conference to another.
In order to offset losses, the Big East, Big XII, ACC and Pac-10 could look to add teams from other conferences like the Mountain West or Conference USA.
It sets up a potential scenario where every conference in the nation could be effected, all except the one conference that’s been in the driver’s seat for a decade – the SEC.
The Southeastern Conference doesn’t have to do anything to maintain their competitive advantage. In fact, doing nothing would better serve the league than expansion could ever hope to do.
While schools like Texas, Oklahoma, Florida State, Miami (FL), Virginia Tech and West Virginia could be on a list the SEC would look at for possible expansion, the addition of any program would be a detriment to the conference.
The SEC is already widely accepted as the best college football conference in the nation.
Adding powerhouse programs like Texas and Oklahoma would make a difficult SEC schedule even more challenging and could potentially hurt the league’s chances of landing a team in the BCS national championship.
Since the SEC champion is in a very favorable position each season to earn a spot in the BCS title game, adding more schools doesn’t help that cause. 
If the Big Ten moves forward with expansion and includes those teams they’ve extended invitations too, it’s doubtful the league champion would finish the regular season undefeated or with one loss, thus making it very unlikely a Big Ten team could play for the BCS national championship.
The SECs television contracts are the most lucrative of any BCS conference in the nation. Last year, the SEC signed 15-year deals with CBS and ESPN which will generate revenues of over $200 million annually.
The Southeastern Conference has well-established bowl tie-ins and is almost guaranteed two of its member schools will play in BCS bowls every year.
The addition of more teams to the conference doesn’t help the SEC get more teams into BCS bowls either.
Since each conference is limited to sending two teams to BCS bowls, there won’t be more major revenue opportunities available than what already exist.
Expanding the conference would add value to its proportionate worth as it relates to the current television contracts, but the question is whether CBS and ESPN would be willing to renegotiate the deals.
If the conference wanted to establish its own network like the Big Ten, it could do that today without expanding.
But the SEC doesn’t need to do that because of its current television deals. The conference is already getting more exposure during football season than any other BCS conference.
While the other super conferences are battling it out and inflicting losses on one another, the SEC champion can punch their ticket to the BCS title game every year.
In short, the SEC can remain just as dominant without expanding.
Commissioner Mike Slive should sit back and allow the other conferences to worry about realignment and let the SEC continue being the best college football conference in America.
