From most perspectives, Arkansas’s conference change has proved prescient. As a member of the world-beating, ultraprominent SEC, Arkansas reaped around $7 million more last year in conference payouts than did members of the Big 12, which does not have its own cable network and which will be the most vulnerable conference should another bout of realignment hit in the middle of the next decade, when conference television contracts are set to expire.

As for the Southwest Conference, it disappeared in 1996 after years of scandals, with four of its members joining the former Big Eight in the new Big 12 while others dropped to lower leagues. Arkansas might have still had a good claim to inclusion in a Power 5 league back then, had it not left the Southwest early. Or it might have gone the way of its old league rival Houston, which was left out of the Big 12 initially and then two years ago desperately tried to join it but, despite making a strong case, found itself behind the velvet rope.

Teams that changed leagues to stay in a power conference “made a decision to get themselves protected politically, financially and institutionally,” said Mike Tranghese, a former Big East commissioner, who now advises the SEC on men’s basketball.

While running the Big East in the 1990s and 2000s, Tranghese added football powers like Miami, West Virginia and Virginia Tech. But the league later imploded as a football conference, with several members leaving for other leagues, mainly the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“The schools that left the Big East for the A.C.C. and, in Rutgers’s case, the Big Ten did not go to those leagues thinking they were going to win the national championship,” Tranghese said.

In other words: Competition isn’t everything.

Or is it?

Nutt led the Razorbacks to four divisional titles during his tenure from 1998 to 2007, but they resulted in three conference title-game losses. The Bobby Petrino era, featuring that No. 5 finish in 2011, flamed out in scandal. Bret Bielema’s attempt to install a kind of Big Ten South — stout defense, plodding offense — led to a 29-34 record over the last five seasons, including an 11-29 record in SEC play.

This year, the Razorbacks are staring down a particularly bleak stretch. Under a new coach, they are 1-2, with the losses coming to unheralded Colorado State and North Texas. Their next three games are Saturday at No. 9 Auburn; then versus No. 22 Texas A&M in Arlington, Tex.; and then hosting, yes, No. 1 Alabama. A loss in that game would be the 12th in a row to the Crimson Tide.