Texas A&M Football: Has addition of Aggies benefited SEC over the years?

The Intangibles

Beyond just adding a competitive football team, the SEC “expanded its geographic footprint” (a common catchphrase of the 2012 realignments) with the inclusion of Texas A&M.

College Station, Tex. is an hour and a half from Houston, whose metro area ranks as fifth-largest population concentration in the United States. The advantage to adding a major program near so many high school recruits is one thing, and another is the eyeballs brought in with a media market of more than 7 million people.

The “Aggies & SEC” brand can make inroads into other large Texas metro areas like Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio now, too.

The SEC is clearly reaping the benefits: the league signed a new deal with ESPN that’s set to take place for the 2024 season (and is said to be much more lucrative than its current CBS arrangement). This comes to a conference that generated $720 million in revenue from 2019. The national exposure for SEC teams on CBS and now more so with ESPN/ABC figures to only continue benefitting the league for years to come.

It’s clear that the 2012 addition of Texas A&M football has strengthened the SEC’s national prominence.