Do programs like Vanderbilt football belong in the “superconference” era?

After the surprising announced defection last summer of OU and Texas to the SEC and the impending departure of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, many college football pundits are ready to name the upcoming epoch of college football as the “Era of the Two Superconferences.”

The Sooners and the Longhorns look like they won’t officially leave the Big 12 until 2025 due to a media rights contract, while the Trojans and the Bruins are set to officially leave the Pac-12 by 2024.

It makes a lot of sense in theory. Two conferences are quickly gobbling up college football’s most storied programs. The SEC and the Big Ten are loading up on prestige-rich football teams that command the largest fan bases, the highest brand value, and the best TV/streaming ratings.

With the upcoming additions, the two leagues will both have 16 teams. College football hasn’t seen a single entity with that many member institutions since the 1990s WAC days.

Though Vanderbilt football has been in the SEC for 90 years, the Commodores don’t belong in one of college football’s two new emerging “superconferences.”

A bipolar power structure in college football has indeed yielded two superconferences in formation (and likely not finished yet) — but there are some key assumptions that many are making about these two leagues.

Why does Vanderbilt football automatically have a seat at the table of one of these two superconferences? Do the Commodores really strike you as one of the 32 most powerful programs in NCAA Division I FBS football, which will overall contain 133 members by next year?

This question doesn’t just apply to Vanderbilt. Should Missouri feel 100 percent safe in its relatively new SEC home? Despite the mythical attachment to media market numbers, should Rutgers, Illinois, and Maryland assume that they’ll forever be members of a powerful Big Ten?

It’s clear that football teams are driving the latest frenzied round of realignment among the nation’s top university athletic programs. Is that completely true, though, if teams like Vanderbilt are included?

Vanderbilt football is a founding member of the SEC, dating all the way back to 1933. In addition to nine other current SEC members, these founding schools included Sewanee (now D-III), Tulane, and Georgia Tech.

The Commodores haven’t recorded a winning season since 2013, and in the past three seasons combined, they’ve compiled a 5-28 win-loss record. Vanderbilt’s in-conference futility stretches far beyond that, though: it has recorded a winning record against SEC foes just three times since 1949.

Vandy has only spent time as a ranked team in the AP Top 25 in four separate seasons since 1958. It’s a great private research institution with a pretty campus in Nashville, but this is not a “mover and shaker” in terms of the gridiron.

Everyone knows that the college football landscape is drastically changing in today’s day of NIL deals for student-athletes and the open transfer portal. It appears that two superconferences are forming in opposite corners, and that three or four ACC teams will somehow force their way out and join one of these conferences.

The additions to these superconferences are driven by large fan bases, incredible financial support, and the likelihood to draw attention to the league — mostly through football.

It doesn’t make sense for that new power structure to include a football program like Vanderbilt’s at the expense of much more accomplished teams such as Oregon, Washington, and Utah, three Pac-12 members who are suddenly on the outside looking in.

If the SEC and the Big Ten truly become the exclusive “superconferences” that many fear they will be (and accompanied by the question of if they will challenge the NCAA), it’s hard to see that designation extended to a football team like Vanderbilt.