‘It’s all about money’: Ex-South Carolina AD Eric Hyman sounds off on realignment

Eric Hyman’s days aren’t as fast-paced of late — at least in theory.

He spent 32 years as an athletic director at Division I schools between stops at Virginia Military Institute, Miami (Ohio), TCU, South Carolina and Texas A&M. More recently he worked with the search firm Ventura Partners — which, coincidentally, consulted with USC during the hirings of Shane Beamer and Lamont Paris.

That kind of career affords time away. This week, that includes a trip to Oregon for a road bike trek that’ll take Hyman off the grid.

The only thing expected to spin faster than his wheels during that span? College sports’ power conference realignment war that’s shifted into high gear over the past month.

“It’s just so different than what it was,” Hyman told the State. “Even though I’ve only been out of it about five or six years, college athletics has changed so much.”

Hyman, as much as anyone in and around college sports, is uniquely qualified to make sense of the realignment puzzle pieces comprised of exorbitant TV deals and cutthroat business moves that’d make Gordon Gekko blush.

TCU bounced from the Western Athletic Conference to Conference USA and, finally, the Mountain West over his six years as athletic director in Fort Worth. He also took over the athletic department at Texas A&M during its first season of SEC competition in 2012 following seven years at South Carolina.

What’s next for the sport? Hyman has some thoughts.

“There’s more money floating around,” Hyman said. “But when is enough, enough? I’ve always said, when you talk about what’s going on in college athletics, and I’ve said this for a while, you’ve got to get all the presidents and all the ADs in the country in one room, and then teach them how to say, ‘No.’ ”

The finances of conference realignment

Conference realignment news has been a dizzying mess of programs bucking tradition to chase massive paychecks in leagues whose geographic footprints make gerrymandered political districts look increasingly sensible.

Where the crux of those issues reside, at least in Hyman’s mind, is simple: money and television.

“Don’t kid yourself, the TV partners — ESPN or Fox — drive a lot of this,” Hyman said. “And it’s all about money. I don’t care what anybody else says, it’s about money.”

Texas and Oklahoma flipped the ignition to conference realignment a year ago when news leaked they’d depart the Big 12 for the SEC. Southern Cal and UCLA dropped lighter fluid on the already combustible situation last week when they were accepted as members of the Big Ten beginning in 2024.

Peel back the curtain to their financial situations in the Big 12 and Pac-12 and it’s easy to see why joining the SEC and Big Ten was so appealing.

SEC teams received $54.6 million in revenue share last year, according to the league office. The ACC and Pac-12, by contrast, saw its programs receive $36.1 million and $19.8 million, respectively, during the 2020 fiscal year, per ESPN.

Those disparities only stand to grow in the coming years as the Big Ten continues its TV deal discussions, while the SEC could theoretically want to renegotiate the $300 million deal it signed with ESPN two years ago without OU and Texas as members.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey loosely alluded to viewership value the SEC brings to television networks via the 13 football games the league put on the ESPN Plus streaming platform last year.

“Those weren’t exactly headliner games,” Sankey said at SEC spring meetings in June. “I think that represents the power of the Southeastern Conference.”

Added Hyman: “When I was at South Carolina, football was 70-71% of our budget revenue wise and (men’s) basketball was like 18%. All the other entities brought things to the table, but bottom line is football — that was the engine that drove the train. You didn’t want to do something that would impact that in a negative standpoint.”

What would more SEC additions mean at South Carolina?

That South Carolina would likely remain in the middle of the pack or slip slightly in a souped-up version of the SEC isn’t a guarantee, but finishing order gets trickier if Clemson or other ACC football powers like Florida State or Miami join the fold.

“If I was the athletic director, I’d have reservations about (adding Clemson to the SEC),” Hyman said. “But I’m not the athletic director. Times change. Things change. The feeling may be different. It may be something you have to do.”

It’s not altogether clear whether the SEC is still hunting expansion. Saturday Down South’s Matt Hayes and CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd both reported this week the league is hoping to keep things at 16 teams for the time being.

Sankey will assuredly be asked about it when SEC hosts its annual media days in Atlanta next week. That said, it’s hard to imagine the most powerful man in college football showing his hand to a room full or reporters and bloggers.

“The challenge for South Carolina (is) you’ve got two really good programs coming into the league (Oklahoma and Texas). That’s not going to make it any easier, I’ll put it that way. Now, there’s going to be more opportunities for bowl games and all those kinds of things. But to go for a national championship, it’s made it more difficult.”

College football has quickly evolved from a sport chock full of quaint regional rivalries to a multi-billion dollar industry on the precipice of massive overhaul with conference realignment raging and the College Football Playoff set to see its contract expire following the 2025 season.

Throw in name, image and likeness and the massive roster gymnastics that have begun in the transfer portal era and the sport Hyman largely departed just a few years ago has completely flipped on its head in half a decade.

Then again, that’s not his problem anymore. Let the wheels spin. He’s off to the Pacific Northwest.

“It’s a rather tumultuous time (in college sports),” he said. “I’m sort of glad to have it in my rear-view mirror.”