by Travis Normand

The guys over at TexAgs.com recently had Clay Travis on their radio show to discuss many things, including the SEC Network.  As always, Clay Travis did a great job of explaining why he believes the SEC Network will be extremely successful.

The interview is only about 16:30 minutes long and is worth the listen.

However, if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, there are some notes from the conversation posted at TexAgs.com as well.

Click HERE to listen to listen to the show with Clay Travis.

Clay Travis says that he doesn’t think the SEC Network will struggle like the Longhorn Network has (despite the fact that both will be run by ESPN).

He points out several reasons for this:

1. Fans of SEC schools enjoy watching any and all SEC games.  This is not the case for Longhorn fans and/or Big 12 fans.  The result is that there will be an entire conference of fans who want to watch the SEC Network, while there is not nearly the same amount of people who are interested in watching the Longhorn Network [LHN].  Another way to look at this is that the SEC Network will carry a lot of content that appeals to fans from ALL SEC schools and not just one.
2. One of the reasons the LHN has not been successful so far is that it doesn’t carry any programming that Longhorn fans feel that they must see.  If it did, then there would be Longhorn fans calling their cable providers and asking/requesting them to start carrying the LHN.  As of right now, that is just not happening.  Even though the LHN does carry one or two football games a year, they have been games that most fans don’t mind missing, and therefore the LHN is not viewed as a necessity.
3. The SEC Network is rumored to have somewhere between 40 and 50 football games in its first year of existence.  With that many games only being aired on the SEC Network, most SEC fans should view the channel as a necessity and will demand that their cable operator provide the channel.
4. Clay Travis also mentioned that some people (most likely Longhorns) who have criticized the SEC Network and said it won’t be successful (at least not in the state of Texas) due to the fact that there are not enough fans of Texas A&M football in order to support the network.  In other words, their argument is that cable providers won’t feel that carrying the SEC Network is a necessity in Texas.  Travis counters this argument by pointing out how illogical this line of thinking is.  Travis states that there doesn’t have to be enough A&M fans, but that there has to be enough people in  Texas that want to see these SEC football games.  In my opinion, there are plenty of people who want to watch A&M football games, however, there are many other people in Texas (fans of LSU, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, etc.) who will want to see the SEC Network on their TV.

Makes sense to me.