Cole Cubelic explains why the SEC, Big Ten will never kick out members

As college football realignment has hit overdrive in recent years, it’s still not quite clear when the music will stop and we’ll have some semblance of a new normal in the sport.

Even as things stand, Florida State is looking actively to escape the ACC and that could have major ramifications down the road. Playoff expansion remains on the table, even before the move to a 12-team postseason.

What is clear is that the Big Ten and the SEC have established themselves as the two most powerful conferences at the moment. But even those leagues, as good as they are at the top, have some riffraff at the bottom.

That riffraff is in no danger of being booted from the league, though, according to ESPN’s Cole Cubelic.

“I don’t think there’s a school that’s in the SEC or the Big Ten right now, if we had this big tectonic shift and when it takes place, I don’t think there’s a school that’s in those two conferences now that would not be included,” Cubelic said on the Andy Staples On3 show. “I just don’t think that that’s realistic.”

There are a number of reasons why some of the programs you might think would be on the outs if it was only about strong sports programs are actually perfectly safe.

Vanderbilt and Northwestern, for example, are academic powerhouses that help lift their league’s collective reputation.

But beyond that, there’s just reality.

“Every league, division, whatever it is needs bottom-feeders,” Cole Cubelic explained. “Because otherwise you’re just going to have a bunch of .500 teams and it’s not what everybody wants to see and it’s not going to help you grow your product.”

Cubelic provided another sport to help make his example. Major League Baseball has plenty of disparities, perhaps more than any other team sport.

Yet the product works because people want to watch. You have the hero underdog stories, but you also have the powerhouses.

“It’s really cool when the Pirates compete for a division title every now and then,” he said. “It’s really cool when teams that have … the Oakland A’s, even though people know they’re going to move and they’re playing moneyball and their payroll is $10 million less per year than the Yankees’ starting rotation is and they’re competing for this mythical divisional title and oh they’re going to be able to go win. It’s always cool to hear that.

“Baseball doesn’t want all the franchises to be the Yankees. They don’t want all the franchises to be the Dodgers. Because those teams that everybody wants to watch and wants to watch win, they have to have people to feed on. So Vanderbilt’s not going anywhere. Northwestern’s not going anywhere.”

That’s not to say it’s impossible that one of the teams currently in the Big Ten or SEC opts to look elsewhere. But there are considerable financial incentives to remaining in one of the two current power leagues.

Cole Cubelic noted he could see an individual team here or there exploring its options, but not at the behest of the conference.

“Nobody’s getting kicked out. Nobody’s getting thrown out,” he said. “I do think that a little bit of the chatter about maybe one school going from one of those conferences to the other is kind of interesting because it’s just something that I don’t think we would ever look at and say, ‘Oh, I could see why they would want to do that.’ Because I do think the advantages or disadvantages would be minute in the grand scheme of things. But just to make that move, for whatever reasons, feelings hurt, whatever it is, would be very interesting.”