SEC leaders vote to invite Texas, Oklahoma to join the conference

The Big 12 is going to be fighting an uphill battle and the SEC has come together to extend invites to Texas and Oklahoma

It’s officially gonna happen. The Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners are almost certainly going to end up in the Southeastern Conference once they figure out how to get out of the Big 12.  It might be a matter of time, but it will, at some point, happen.

Thursday afternoon, all of the presidents of SEC institutions voted to extend membership invitations to the Longhorns and Sooners. The vote was unanimous. No opposition from Texas A&M, Missouri, or anyone else.

Now, the ball is in Oklahoma and Texas’ court.

According to Ross Delenger over at Sports Illustrated, leaders from OU and Texas will meet some time on Friday to discuss (and almost certainly accept) that invitation. It would be absolutely shocking for either the Sooners or Longhorns to turn that down.

The SEC made the decision to invite Texas and Oklahoma into the conference as the Longhorns and Sooners look to leave the Big 12

As of right now, we should all expect to see the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners in the SEC by 2025, just in time for that football season.

But the move could certainly happen before that time, depending on whatever happens with lawyers, university leaders, athletics directors, politicians, and so on and so forth. At the moment, it’s not clear how early the Sooners and Longhorns could make that leap though.

So, unless something unexpected, bizarre, or shocking happens, it’s just a matter of time before the Sooners and Longhorns are competing in the SEC.

And now we wait to see how the Big 12 will respond. Will it seek out a merger with another conference? Could it try to poach some potentially interesting teams? Or, will the Big 12 simply dissolve and fade away?