who worked for the SEC around that time. He told me this similar story. The original plan was to go to 14. Arkansas, Texas, South Carolina and Florida State. (Texas and Arkansas were huge rivals, bigger so than Texas/Texas A&M). There was a push for Miami, Georgia Tech and Tulane, but ultimately something was up with all of those schools and they were dropped from the conversation.
It was about to happen. An expansion to 14. The papers were sent to all four schools and Texas called Arkansas and said hold up - trying to convince them to listen to a possible merger with the Big 8 (Arkansas would have taken Baylor's spot, as Baylor beat out Houston for the last spot in the Big 12). Arkansas was committed to joining the SEC to better their basketball program (the commitment to build Bud Walton was in place, and Arkansas was becoming a national power in the early 90s).
Anyway, just as the story says, the Texas legislature took the measure up, and said they would block Texas from going without Texas A&M, which there really was no mutual interest from either A&M or the SEC. So Tcxas was essentially out, and there was a resurgence in the push to add Tulane or Georgia Tech (both independents at the time).
Georgia Tech had won the national championship in football in '90, and was being wooed by the ACC as well. Tulane got a little more interest than they probably deserved, but Kramer came in and changed the plan from 14 to 12, with Arkansas getting one spot and the last spot going to one of the two Metro Conference schools - Florida State or South Carolina.
The original SEC football schedule called for each team to play all five teams from their division, and have one rotating and two permanent opponents from the opposite division. To create some buzz, Alabama was to play Tennessee and Florida State on a permanent basis, and Florida State was to play Arkansas and Alabama on a permanent basis. Bobby Bowden had built the FSU program up to a championship contender, and did not want to play Florida and Alabama every year, so basically Bowden and FSU told the SEC that they wanted to switch permanent opponents with Kentucky (ironically their permanents were originally Mississippi State and a down LSU). CM Newton said hell no and Kramer basically told Florida State to 17 off and added South Carolina, which did not want to go back to the ACC, but it was their only choice besides the SEC, so they didn't care. Florida State joined the ACC with Georgia Tech the next year. Just to piss Florida State off, South Carolina was given Mississippi State as a permanent opponent.
