An SEC team winning the Big 12 or Sun Belt? Inside the weird world of conference affiliates

When Alabama’s women’s rowing team gets on the water in preparation for the 2024-25 season, it’ll be in pursuit of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Junior Hannah Bennett understands that the standard at Alabama, regardless of sport, is winning championships.

The athletic department, after all, has won more than 100 SEC championships in its history, but there’s something it hasn’t won: a women’s rowing title. Should Alabama win one this season, it also will be the first women’s rowing championship in SEC history. How’s it happening? Conference realignment.

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Alabama’s women’s rowing program competes in the Big 12 as an affiliate member, as does Tennessee, because the SEC doesn’t have enough teams for intraconference competition. That will change in 2024 when Oklahoma and Texas join the SEC, including their women’s rowing teams. If 25 percent of the member schools participate in a sport, the SEC can host a conference championship, so women’s rowing will be added next season.

The history doesn’t stop there. As it stands, the plan is for all four programs to retain membership in the Big 12 because its championship comes with an automatic qualifier to the NCAA Tournament. That means one of those four teams simultaneously could hold multiple conference championships.

“It’s exciting,” Bennett said. “Being an athlete at Alabama, your goal is always to win. So to have another thing to be able to win is equally exciting.”

For programs competing in affiliate conferences, realigning to fit their best interest is a way of life. Programs like Alabama and Tennessee women’s rowing (Big 12), Kentucky and South Carolina men’s soccer (Sun Belt) and Florida and Vanderbilt women’s lacrosse (American Athletic Conference) are pairs in the SEC that often work as package deals to other conferences. All have changed conferences at least once in the past 15 years, some more than once.

How exactly did these SEC teams end up in affiliate conferences? Because of Title IX and scholarship distribution rules, schools are required to have a proportionate number of men’s and women’s sports and scholarships. That means there are certain teams that are under the school’s SEC flag but have to compete in another conference. It’s a distinction that coaches frequently make, from recruiting to everyday conversations.

In the 2024-25 season, Alabama will compete for Big 12 and SEC titles. (Courtesy of Alabama Athletics)

“It happens regularly,” Kentucky men’s soccer coach Johan Cedergren said. “I have a conversation with someone, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you coach at Kentucky? How’s the men’s soccer and the SEC; it has to be good.’ Then you have to get into the whole, ‘There is no men’s soccer in the SEC, other than us, and South Carolina,’ etc. I think it’s just the way it is.”

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The reasons these SEC programs picked their respective affiliate conferences vary by the situation.

Big 12 women’s rowing had five teams in 2015, and the threshold for an automatic qualifier in the NCAA Tournament is six. Alabama coach Glenn Putyrae said the Big 12 worked with Alabama and Tennessee to add them to the conference so all seven teams from both leagues had an opportunity for the qualifier. The South Carolina and Kentucky men’s soccer teams sought competition in moving to the Sun Belt in 2022, and the Wildcats topped the Sun Belt standings last fall.

Proximity was the motivation for Vanderbilt women’s lacrosse coach Beth Hewitt and Florida coach Amanda O’Leary in moving from the Big East to the AAC in 2018.

“Big East and the American kind of came together and realigned just to make it a little bit more compatible,” Hewitt said. “Easier travel for some schools just made more sense. Truthfully with lacrosse, it’s not as much about being in the correct conference. It’s kind of like, ‘How can we combine with people that are as close in vicinity as possible?’”

Vanderbilt’s women’s bowling team, the reigning national champion, is transitioning from the Southland to Conference USA because of an extenuating circumstance. Former Southland members Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin departed for other conferences, and they were the only full-time members of the Southland, leaving affiliate members in flux. The conference told the affiliates it would be open to continuing to host the women’s bowling championship, but it might make more sense to find a conference that fielded bowling with full-time members.

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The Commodores and others found that spot in Conference USA, making it the first time the conference will sponsor women’s bowling. For the national champion, that comes with its concerns.

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“We have yet to have (an official meeting) for what’s happening in 2023-24,” Vanderbilt coach John Williamson said. “I think that they’re going to continue to do the same things that the Southland did, so from a logistics standpoint, it shouldn’t change much. But there’s always a little apprehension or uneasiness when you’re switching entities or you have a new person in charge because you have no idea of their vision.”

The student-athletes who participate in affiliate conferences have different experiences than their contemporaries on campus who play a sport that’s under the SEC umbrella. The travel can be vastly different, like the Vanderbilt women’s bowling team, which faces tournament sites ranging from Dallas to Las Vegas, to New York and other cities. Due to their recent move to the Sun Belt, upperclassmen on the Kentucky and South Carolina men’s soccer teams have played conference opponents across two leagues.

Still, the moves actually can help these programs recruit on more of a national level, sometimes including the appeal of competing closer to the athletes’ hometowns due to scheduling practices.

“Obviously, it’s cool to go and see different schools,” said Ben Damge, a Kentucky junior soccer player. “Whether it’s been Conference USA or Sun Belt, our athletic department works to put together a very competitive season. Our goal is to come out and get a (win), so in that aspect, it’s not a huge difference (from other athletes), but it is cool to get to play against different schools and have those different, unique experiences.”

While football or basketball players look forward to rivalries like the Iron Bowl, the Alabama rowing team doesn’t have that. Because Tennessee is the only other SEC team in the Big 12, that’s naturally a rival for Alabama. The same goes for Kentucky and South Carolina in men’s soccer and Florida and Vanderbilt in women’s lacrosse.

And the rivalries and overall schedules feature diverse opponents.

“There isn’t a conference (in rowing) that has what’s considered a ‘conference schedule,’” Putyrae said. “Sometimes the first time that teams from the conference are going to see each other is going to be at the (conference) championship. When it comes to scheduling for us, we try to get as wide a range of competitors from around the country, which is primarily the other power conferences: the ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Ivy League.”

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Just as coaches of other sports contemplate the future of their sport and how realignment will affect the landscape, similar conversations are occurring for these sports outside of the SEC umbrella. The hope is that their sports continue to grow and reach the threshold that women’s rowing reached to eventually host an SEC championship and add to the athletic department’s official SEC count.

The biggest question might be: How do these programs classify themselves, SEC or with their affiliate conference? For the most part, the programs like to think of themselves as hybrids with SEC-level resources while competing elsewhere, sometimes in the premier conference of their sport. In a way, it’s the best of both worlds.

“You can have sort of the best of everything and not really have to sacrifice anything,” Williamson said. “We don’t not talk about the Southeastern Conference because part of the Southeastern Conference is in our DNA. It’s what and who we are.”

Editor’s note: This story is part of The Athletic’s Realignment Revisited series, digging into the past, present and future of conference realignment in college sports. Follow the series and find more conference realignment stories here.

(Top photo: Courtesy of UK Athletics)

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