This could be the fatal flaw in the ESPN consolidation move.
On the positive side, consolidation means fewer teams, so fewer slices of the pie, and better average quality of game televised, at least theoretically, since you'll have, even just with UT/OU in the SEC and no other major changes, more games where a brand name is involved and more of two brand names matching up.
On the negative side, though, it's like, the NFL (or NBA/MLB/NHL) has a stable group of teams, which rarely changes with expansion or maybe a team moving to a different city, and they're evenly distributed across the country. If you grow up in Texas, you can choose the Cowboys or the Oilers/Texans, or you can just follow whichever team you want, for whatever reason. With CFB, I grew up a Tech fan and did my undergrad there, so if you cut my school out, I'll still be watching them as best I can, but I'll be watching 0 Super SEC and as little as possible of anything else on ESPN. We'll have two schools in Texas in the Super League, if it comes to that, but I'm not going to be a UT or aggy fan, like some sort Texas State Bobhorn cuck, since Tech is out of the top tier. I'm just out. I won't be doing the "Tech is my favorite tier 2 team, and UT is my tier 1 team". Fuck no. I know there are plenty of t-shirt fans that do follow UT/aggy - and there will be more - and there will also be big fans of the IR8 schools that still watch the SEC and whatever comes after it because they just love college football, but I think most of us will just watch our teams in our minor leagues, if that, and otherwise find some other form of entertainment. I also think, when you see more and more entire states or even regions of the country with no representatives in the top tier if it gets down to as small as 48 or less, you'll lose a lot of casual fans there too.