Whether it expanded or not, the Southeastern Conference was never in real danger of extinction. It had too much legacy and power for such an unseemly fate. But it risked falling behind in the revenue war if it didn't capitalize on the most tumultuous modern period of college athletics.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive had long been interested in starting a conference television network, but the timing wasn't right when the SEC signed a 15-year television rights deal with ESPN in 2008. That deal was historic at the time, but the market was booming, and it risked paling in comparison to even more lucrative deals that other conferences would soon get.

Enter Texas A&M and Missouri which officially joined the conference five years ago last Saturday. The SEC pounced on the Big 12's dysfunction to add two large TV markets that would pave the way for the most successful television network launch in cable history. From revenue alone, the SEC's decision to add two schools has proven to be a brilliant decision. In the year before the expansion, the SEC distributed $248.1 million, good for $19.5 million per school. Compare that to the SEC's 2016 distribution when it shipped out $565.9 million or $40.4 million per school.

The best part? That number should only keep going up.

"Being a member of the Southeastern Conference has a lot of advantages," says South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner. "The distribution to a member institution is very, very strong."



"The revenue poured in"

Bill Byrne's initial preference was to stay in the Big 12.

Realignment talk was heating up in 2010 and Texas A&M was a top target of Larry Scott's grand vision of a 16-team PAC conference. Scott and his team spent months building out what that conference would look like, from scheduling to travel, before even asking Texas A&M leaders if they were interested in joining.

As Texas A&M's athletic director, Byrne wasn't sold. He didn't like the idea of long, late night flights back from the West Coast after a game. That didn't seem beneficial to the school's student-athletes especially compared to the situation the Aggies had in the Texas-centric Big 12 where athletes' parents could reasonably travel to home and away games. He wanted to keep the Big 12 together.

Although Scott was close to achieving his dream, he was ultimately only able to pluck Colorado away from the Big 12. The rest committed to staying in the Big 12 though it wasn't long before Texas A&M officials were privately reaching out to the SEC. They heard through back channels that the SEC would be receptive to adding the Aggies but wouldn't pursue them publicly. If Texas A&M wanted the SEC, it would have to be the aggressor.

Ultimately, the anger over the Longhorn Network finally got all of A&M's power players on the same page after serious division in 2010 over whether the Big 12, Pac-10 or SEC represented the best option. Byrne was leery about both options.

"We had built our program to be very competitive in the Big 12, and if you go back and look at our last few seasons in the Big 12, we were very competitive," Byrne says. "I was concerned whether we had the depth to compete with the SEC in the sport of football. I knew we could be competitive in all the other sports."

By 2011, almost everyone including Byrne realized it was time to leave the Big 12 and pursue SEC membership. The school worked with Slive and other SEC officials behind the scenes to secure Texas A&M's spot, resulting in a public announcement on Sept. 26, 2011 that the Aggies were joining the conference. The move wasn't well-received in the Big 12, to put it lightly, with lawsuits threatened and in-state rivalries destroyed. Texas A&M and Texas have still yet to schedule football games against each other, and it's unlikely they'll do so anytime soon.



Even with the loss of a treasured rivalry, the positives have far outweighed the negatives according to the school's former leaders.

"It was the right decision to make," says former Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin. "Everything that has happened since that time, in my mind, has confirmed that the movement of A&M to the SEC was exactly the right thing to do."

Says Byrne: "I think it was a great opportunity for A&M to get out of the shadows of the University of Texas. That has proved to be so. A&M has blossomed as we went into the SEC and things have changed over in the state capital of Texas."

Financially, it certainly has been a boon for the school. Texas A&M's athletic department generated the most money in the country, $194.3 million, in 2016, according to a USA Today Sports database. That represents a 122 percent revenue increase over its last year in the Big 12. A good chunk of that came from donations for Kyle Field renovations, but even that is linked to the Aggies' magical first year in the SEC. The planets perfectly aligned that year when Johnny Manziel took down Alabama as part of a Heisman Trophy-winning year that invigorated the fanbase. The school spent almost half a billion dollars to turn Kyle Field into the largest, and possibly nicest, stadium in the SEC.



"Our timing was we had Johnny Football and oil at $100 a barrel," Byrne says, "and the revenue poured in."

Texas A&M since hasn't been able to recreate the magic of that 11-2 season lending some credence to Byrne's initial concerns. Since 2012, the Kevin Sumlin-led Aggies have never finished better than fourth in the SEC West, totaling a 33-19 record that has featured multiple last-season collapses. Scott Woodward, the school's current AD, made waves in May when he said on the Paul Finebaum Show, Sumlin "knows he has to win, and he has to win this year."

It stems from a burgeoning dissatisfaction that Texas A&M hasn't been able to better capitalize on its move to the SEC. Recruiting was gangbusters after Manziel's magic, the money was pouring in and there was a real chance to overthrow a Texas program that floundered in the Charlie Strong era. And yet, Texas A&M has strung together three consecutive 8-5 seasons and has lost by a combined 133-37 in its last three games against Alabama.

"The last few years have not been that great at A&M," Loftin admits. "They've done fairly well by many measures but not what they wanted to go given the recruiting strength and facilities they've had. That's disappointing to some of the fans including me."

Even amidst the relative disappointment, no one in College Station is pining to be back in the Big 12. In fact, Loftin says a few of his most vociferous opponents against moving A&M to the SEC have since admitted he made the right decision.

"That," Loftin says, "was very gratifying."





"An opportunity Missouri couldn't turn down"

Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs' very public push to switch divisions with Missouri illustrated a concern that could always follow the Tigers: Geographic fit in the SEC.

Missouri, as Jacobs explained, would benefit more from being in the SEC West than the SEC East for a litany of reasons including easier travel for its fans. Jim Sterk, Missouri's AD, told AL.com the school likes its spot in the SEC East and a switch has never been formally discussed.

Residing in the SEC East does come with financial challenges, though. Missouri spent $6.65 million on travel in 2015-16, a 50.1 percent increase over its travel costs during its final year in the Big 12, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Tim Hickman, Missouri's executive associate AD, told the paper the Tigers were "on the upper end of the league in travel costs because we're on the outer edge of the conference's limits."

However, Sterk says, "None of our coaches are complaining about travel."

It helps that Missouri's athletic revenue has improved 51.6 percent from its last year in the Big 12. The school raked in $97.27 million in 2016, its largest total ever in spite of lagging ticket sales. That still only ranks 13th best in the SEC -- 30th best nationally -- but has been important as it fights to stay vital in an athletics landscape where displays of ostentatious wealth are often the marks of relevance.

"The revenue has really helped us grow the program and be able to develop facilities," says Sterk who has been Missouri's AD since September. "They did a lot before I arrived and we continue to do that."

Beyond geographic, there have been questions from the start about the cultural fit of Missouri in the Deep South-centric SEC. Do the Tigers fans of Columbia, Mo. have all that much in common with the Tigers fans down in Baton Rouge? Missouri leaders initially expressed interest in joining the Big Ten during the realignment carousel -- the conference ultimately took Nebraska -- and at least on paper, there's a reasonable argument to be made the school has more in common with Iowa, Indiana and Illinois than Alabama, Mississippi State and Georgia.

Loftin, who served as Missouri's chancellor for 22 months before resigning in Nov. 2015, believes it works when you consider the other type of schools in the SEC. It fits with the land-grant institution makeup of the conference and shares specialties in agriculture and engineering with quite a few of the conference's other universities.

"I think the A&M fit is probably, if you measured every way possible, a little bit better than Missouri's," he concedes. "I think five years in and there's recognition how competitive Missouri can be in some areas."

Missouri does own something Texas A&M doesn't: two SEC football divisional titles. The Tigers won the SEC East twice in its first three years in the SEC, quickly exceeding expectations for a school that wasn't a traditional Big 12 power. There has been a drop-off since head coach Gary Pinkel retired following the 2015 season -- the Tigers won only two league games last year -- but winning two titles in a division with the likes of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee proved Missouri can be competitive in the SEC. The basketball program hasn't been quite as stout, but the recent hiring of Cuonzo Martin and arrival of five-star phenom Michael Porter Jr. has the fanbase fired up.

Stealing Martin away from California, another Power 5 school, and giving him a 7-year, $21 million deal might not have been possible for Missouri before the influx of SEC money. It's one more piece of a compelling argument that the move has been smart for Missouri even with the geographic and cultural fit questions. Sterk says he'd like to win more championships, calling the SEC a "tough, tough league," but loves the overall trajectory of his athletic department.

"I think there was an opportunity that Missouri couldn't turn down as far as joining the SEC," he says, "and it's proven to be a really prudent move."





"It's been 100 percent positive"

After stealing Texas A&M and Missouri away from the Big 12, and later launching the most successful network launch in cable television history, it's easy to imagine Mike Slive as Scrooge McDuck diving into the SEC's massive pile of doubloons. Slive is, by all accounts, a humble man but could you blame him after securing such a massive windfall for the SEC?

If the SEC wanted a vault full of gold coins, it certainly could afford to get one. And that, in itself, is the most tangible benefit of adding Texas A&M and Missouri. It made all 14 conference schools richer -- it's striking just how much additional revenue schools have added in the last five years -- and further solidified the premier football conference brand. Six of the top 10 athletic department revenues reside in the SEC, according to 2015-16 numbers.

"It's funny because you almost have to think back to when we didn't have them," says David Williams, Vanderbilt's vice chancellor of athletics. "But I think it's been 100 percent positive. I think they've been great."

It has unquestionably helped in other areas, too. South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp says it's improved visibility and recruiting in Texas, one of the nation's most fertile recruiting areas. In the state of Alabama alone, the two expected starting quarterbacks, Jalen Hurts (Alabama) and Jarrett Stidham (Auburn), are both Texas natives and may have never made it to the SEC otherwise. Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin believes the Aggies' offensive philosophy has led to a shift in the SEC to more open, spread-friendly offenses. It certainly forced schools to start recruiting differently after Johnny Manziel tore up the league. The SEC Network has provided comprehensive coverage for smaller sports like softball and gymnastics, among others.

Like most things in life, though, it all comes back to the money. The money is so good and lets schools do so much, for everyone from their student-athletes to their fans, that it will always be the most significant impact of the expansion. The SEC's decision guaranteed that it would be a leader -- and not fall behind -- in revenue.

Five years later, there is no buyer's remorse for the SEC's most significant decision in decades.

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of stories looking at the five-year anniversary of Texas A&M and Missouri joining the SEC. The first story looked at what realignment would look like should the SEC expand again. The second story looked at the lost rivalries between A&M-Texas and Missouri-Kansas since the move.