Inside the logistical challenges of moving conferences - ESPN

LONG BEFORE MONDAY'S celebration in Norman marking the dawn of Oklahoma's new era in the SEC, Greg Tipton, the school's executive associate athletic director for internal operations, facilities and events, had an epiphany.

It was last July, and Oklahoma was already well into its process to chronicle all of the Big 12 logos around campus to be replaced with new SEC marks.

«I need to go count those flagpoles,» he thought, about the flags that fly over the south end zone videoboard at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and represent each conference member. «You have your American flag, your state flag, your OU flag high up in the center, but then there were 10 flagpoles. I'm like wait, there's this… We've got to fix this.»

As the college sports landscape continues to change, fans will focus on the intricacies of the schedule or new road trips. But there are also plenty of conversations about smaller logistical hurdles going on inside athletic departments when they're told they're taking their ball and going to a new conference. Yes, staff members are changing budgets and managing resources, but there's also so much more. They're documenting logos. They're sanding basketball courts, mocking different routes to new cities, buying new stencils for athletic fields and ditching old quarter-zips and polos with unsightly old emblems.

And they're counting flagpoles. Welcome to the glamorous world of realignment.

The Sooners renovated their stadium in 2017, when the Big 12 had 10 teams (naturally, due to realignment). But with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, the SEC will now have 16 teams. The flags, long-standing symbols of conference unity at stadiums across the country, needed more poles on which they could fly