HOOVER, Ala. — SEC commissioner Greg Sankey stood before an assembled media horde this week and spent a solid half hour talking about all the ways the SEC is winning. “We led the nation in football attendance for the 21st consecutive year,” Sankey said at one point. “We had half of the most highly viewed televised football games and again had the most highly viewed conference championship game.”



That point, included in a laundry list of positives, unintentionally underscored the one area of the college football business the SEC hasn’t completely dominated during the past few years. When it comes to revenue generation created mostly through selling football games to television, the Big Ten — not the SEC — is king. In fiscal year 2018, the first year that included its most recent media rights deal, the Big Ten made $759 million. The SEC made $660 million. The biggest reason? The SEC is severely underpaid for the most valuable...