As only the preeminent heavyweight entity in college football could do, someone within the Southeastern Conference yesterday leaked to Saturday Down South’s Matt Hayes that league presidents would rather not expand further, at least not in the foreseeable future.

Which, in this realm at this time, extends well into next week.

But seriously, folks… That the SEC would take the trouble to disseminate that it intends to do nothing was meant to do something. It was meant to protect the status quo which, for the SEC, is hunky dory. And I think it will. I think it could easily unplug at least for a year what had been considered a sort of Manifest Destiny that major college athletics would consolidate into two “super-conferences” and a third sprawling second-tier league.

First, why would the nation’s most powerful college athletics association do such a thing? What’s the point of making a point of inertia? A few theories:

• It’s a chess move to diminish the Big Ten’s pursuit of Notre Dame.

If UND might join a conference substantially to remain fiscally competitive in a super-conference landscape, this removes a lot of the impetus. The SEC would love for the Irish to not be a part of its only real fiscal competitor.

Notre Dame might not have felt the need to join up with any league, anyway. It has always valued its independence. But an implicit pledge by the SEC not to expand further leaves a key Jenga piece within the block that might have signaled a degree of inevitability to UND – that either it boards the super-conference train or be left fiscally vulnerable. Notre Dame certainly has time to carefully scan the landscape now. And I think the longer it takes, the more likely nothing happens.

• The SEC ran the numbers and decided that no combination of North Carolina, Clemson, Florida State and Miami (FL) as expansion targets makes financial sense.

The phrase pro rata is thrown around by network types in these discussions. What it means is, proportionate worth. In other words, does it make financial sense to divvy up another share of the projected SEC broadcast/streaming pie to bring aboard any of them?

The answer is: Well, probably not. And we’re not even considering the expense of breaching the ACC’s Grant of Rights (more of that in a minute).

Though, as fans, we might think of two of these ACC programs (Clemson and FSU) as bluebloods in that they have accounted for three of the past 10 national titles, they really don’t pull in that much football revenue – either gross or profit – relative to many SEC schools. In the most recent pre-pandemic figures (fiscal 2019-20), FSU ranked #19 and Clemson ranked #24 nationally in football gross revenue (Miami was #29 and North Carolina #41). Nine of the 16 current or invited SEC schools (including Texas and Oklahoma) ranked higher than all four of those ACC programs. And that doesn’t even account for the annual share of SEC rights money doled out at about $53 million in 2020.

Why expand just to expand? Most of the SEC’s current and projected members already make the conference more money.

• The SEC lawyers took a granular look at the ACC’s Grant of Rights and decided challenging it through some sort of legal loophole was a fool’s errand.

For those unaware, the current ACC members signed an agreement when the conference inked its latest media-rights deal with ESPN back in 2016, a 20-year pact through 2036 which has since been widely panned from the league’s standpoint. Penalties include relinquishment of all broadcast revenue as well as an exit fee of $120 million.

Where it’s been reported in other cases that a new league might be willing to chip in and help buy out certain schools’ broadcast agreements to recruit them, there is no way the SEC would do this for FSU, Clemson or anyone else in the ACC. No bang for the buck. It would be all on each school to pay the penalty.

All right, then. For the time being — at least the remainder of this summer — it appears we have reached a point of stability with only the USC/UCLA> B1G rockslide and no avalanche imminent.

So, what are the near-term ramifications?

Maybe the Big 12 doesn’t feel the need to poach the Pac-12’s Rocky Mountain members simply as a hedge against extinction.

The conference is about to hold its media days in Dallas-Fort Worth, and certainly new B12 commissioner Brett Yormark will take the temperature of the 12 schools who’ll remain after the departure of Texas and Oklahoma. You’d expect him to eventually make some statement about expansion – the inferred targets being Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado.

Everyone has already taken what it wants of the Big 12, anyway. The SEC previously swiped Missouri and Texas A&M. The Big Ten took Nebraska. With Texas and Oklahoma now departing and Cincinnati, Central Florida, Houston and Brigham Young coming aboard, there really isn’t anyone within the Big 12 in danger of being poached.

For the Big 12, an expansion into the Pac-12′s Mountain Time Zone was simply a matter of survival in a super-conference world. If it’s not happening, does the Big 12 move preemptively and think bigger — and perhaps Oregon and/or Washington — or allow the Pac-12 to coexist?

• Then maybe the Pac-12 can survive?

With USC and UCLA’s stunning departure, it’s certainly the most vulnerable of the former Power Five conferences. Only Washington, Oregon and Utah really take football seriously. Previous commissioner Larry Scott, once seen as some sort of visionary, clearly overplayed his hand in rejecting contracts that could’ve given the league some stability.

Now, it’s up to yearling commissioner George Kliavkoff to rally the remaining 10 members, perhaps run an invitation of Boise State and San Diego State by the presidents and ADs and cling to survival. I think Oregon and its 84-year-old Nike-founder patriarch Phil Knight are the linchpin. If the Ducks decide they want to stay in a West Coast conference and believe they can have a viable path into the College Football Playoff from whatever comes of the Pac-12, then the conference will survive. If not, it’s over.

But the Pac-12 is at the mercy of UO, the Big 12 and Big Ten now. If the “Conference of Champions” is to be finished off, the defections of any more members would spell doom.