Everybody keeps talking about teams being left behind, but did they really ever have a chance? Take the top 10-20 teams in CFB. Year in and year out it's the same pecking order. Ohio St, ND, Alabama. All we're really fighting for is 10-20. Auburn, A&M, LSU of the CFB world. .
30-50? Fuggetaboutit. Aside from Va Tech in '99, when was the last time one of these outsider teams had a legit chance? You can give Vanderbilt all the money in the world from being in the SEC, they'll never do better than 3rd or 4th in their division. They literally have not won the conference title ever AFAIK, or if they did it was so long ago nobody remembers it. So at some point when does it really stop being all about the money, and more about success? IMO all of these "secondary" teams would be much better served having their own league anyway where they could actually compete for something instead of perennial 5th place.
And before you start in about A&M and our lack of success I'm fully aware of our lack of SEC hardware but I think you'd be foolish to think that we are incapable of winning it eventually. We won the SWC multiple times, won the Big 12, won the Big 12 South multiple times. The potential is there, the boxes are checked. Schools like TCU and Texas Tech? Where do they fit?