It was famed television sports producer Don Olymeyer who once said “the answer to all of your questions is money.” It was said in a sports context, but who are we really kidding here? These days, that pretty much applies to everything.

That point was brought home once again Thursday when the Southeastern Conference announced it would be going to a nine-game league schedule in 2026.

Though I’ve always believed this was what the SEC should have done, I always recognized that it’s their league and they have every right to do whatever they damn well pleased.

Sure, it’s a what-took-you-so-long move, but it was not without some internal opposition from those who thought adding another game might hurt a borderline team’s chance of making the College Football Playoff.

Putting that aside, it might have been some external issues that suddenly brought this about after years of talking about it at the league meetings and never doing anything about it.

One factor was the announcement that CFP powers-that-be were going to be using schedule strength as a key factor in their choices. (Care to explain why that wasn’t the case before?)

But a bigger external factor was the recent buffoonery of the Big Ten in trying to flex its muscle in recent times. You win back-to-back national championships and all of sudden you think you can call the shots? Where were you the rest of this millennium?

The Big Ten has been floating one crazy idea after another to try to change the fabric of college football. First, it was the concept of adding even more schools to its league and then the league doubled down on its own idiocy by coming up with a proposal to have up to 28 teams in the Playoff.

That would have meant seven teams each from the Big Ten and the SEC, which was basically an attempt to rope the SEC into going along with this over-the-top, self-serving scheme. Nothing quite says Playoff Fever like a matchup between Minnesota and South Carolina, two seventh-place teams last year.

The SEC didn’t bite. And then went ahead and did the correct, and sensible, move by going to nine games. Sensible, thy name is not the Big Ten.

This is where Olymeyer’s quote comes into play. Even though some small-picture-seeing people might think that another conference game might tip the scales in the wrong direction for a team trying to get into the post-season, the bigger picture comes very clearly into play in the form of dollar bills. 

Lots of them.

Think about the possibilities that ninth game could have. What if LSU had played Georgia last year? Or if Texas had played Alabama?

More big games – and the SEC has a lot more of them than anybody else – means more inventory for networks that will pay handsomely for that as opposed to a riveting Alabama-Mercer matchup.

There will be the usual moaning about who gets the advantage when the three permanent opponents are named, but the bigger reality is that a school will rotate the other 12 (six per year), so that no school goes more than two years without meeting everyone in the conference. And every school will travel to every conference location in a four-year span.

Perfect.

Go ahead and fight over who gets to play Vanderbilt, but there won’t be the scheduling imbalance like there has been in the past.

Amazing fact: Georgia has played Texas A&M in Shreveport more times (1) than it has in College Station (0). And the Aggies joined the SEC in 2012, three years after beating Georgia in the Independence Bowl.

Good for you SEC. And if the Big Ten shows up on your Caller ID, don’t answer it. That’s a headache you don’t need.

None of us do.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com