Part of the allure of college football is the environment in which it’s played. A college football team’s stadium can bring as much to the sport as what happens on the field. You can’t think of Oklahoma Sooners football without hearing the great Toby Rowland’s voice booming the “Palace on the Prairie” in a pre-game hype video.
If there’s one thing that stands out about the Southeastern Conference, it’s the grandeur that comes with a Saturday in the SEC. The University of Oklahoma and the Texas Longhorns can match the environments that the SEC puts on display every Saturday, but nothing else in the Big 12 comes close to the atmosphere that’s created at an SEC School.
From a capacity perspective, they’ve got some of the biggest stadiums in the world and several venues that dwarf many of the Big 12 schools. The Big 12’s current members have an average capacity of 61,536.5. If you were to take Oklahoma’s Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium out of the equation, the conference’s average capacity drops to 53,651. No other school carries a capacity more than Iowa State’s 61,500 at Jack Trice Stadium.
The SEC’s current members boast an average capacity of 80,262. They have four schools with more than 100,000 seat stadiums led by Texas A&M’s Kyle Field. 11 of the 14 SEC schools have a stadium capacity greater than everyone other than OU and Texas in the Big 12. And while Vanderbilt Stadium’s 40,350-seat capacity would rank last in the Big 12, 13 of the 14 SEC stadiums have a higher capacity than every other school not named Oklahoma, Texas, and Iowa State.
As far as stadium size, the Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas Longhorns are a much better fit in the SEC than the Big 12.
While size isn’t everything, with it, the SEC brings some of the cooler stadium nicknames in all of college football. From Florida’s “The Swamp” in Gainesville to “Between the Hedges” in Athens to Death Valley in Baton Rouge, the SEC venues are just awesome.
While some of those Big 12 matchups will be missed, namely Bedlam, the Longhorns and the Sooners appear to be a better fit as two of college football’s “blue bloods.” The traditions, atmospheres, and stadium capacities you find in Norman and Austin will fit right in among the SEC’s hallowed football stadiums.
Let’s take a look at where Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial and Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial stadiums fit in the SEC capacity rankings.