The 2023 round of major conference realignment was the fastest one because it was the desperate one.
Other recent announcements seemingly came out of the blue, like Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC or especially USC and UCLA to the Big Ten. However there had been talks behind the scenes between the parties for some time before those moves happened. It’s just that folks were largely able to keep their mouths shut publicly until the very end.
The only Pac-12 school ready to bail on the league before this week was Colorado, which is changing leagues for the second time in the last 15 years. I wrote last week after that move happened that nothing more necessarily needed to happen, and I still think that’s true.
With more proactive leadership within the Pac-12, we wouldn’t have had to see Washington, Oregon, Utah, and the Arizona schools leave this week. Heck, the Big Ten just released its 2024-25 scheduling format in June, complete with a cringey, overly corporate “Flex Protect Plus” branding and everything. Grabbing the Huskies and Ducks was not in their plans.
But a lack of proactive leadership is why the Pac-12 got itself into this year’s mess. The presidents of the Pac-10 hired Larry Scott back in the day to shake up their sleepy conference, and while he did that, he also stepped on every rake he could find in a very wide radius. They never added anyone after Utah a dozen years ago and refused to sell off their wholly owned Pac-12 Networks in 2018 after the channels’ failure had become obvious.
New commissioner George Kliavkoff pursued a rights deal with zero apparent sense of urgency, a reflection of how the conference never fully woke up from its slumber. The best he could deliver was reportedly a proposal to get $20 million per school per year from Apple TV+, more than $10 million per school per year less than what the Big 12 just signed up for. The Pac-12 could get anywhere from more to a lot more from incentives based on how many subscription packages it managed to sell, but no firm details have been reported yet.
And despite it all, the nine remaining members were prepared to sign up to stick together on Friday morning. A late push from the Big Ten and Oregon’s misgivings about the Apple deal were enough on Friday morning to pull the Ducks and Huskies away.
When Texas saved the Big 12 in the eleventh hour in 2010, its alternative was to get a bunch of additional money for the then-upcoming Longhorn Network. When Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Arizona State were asked to save the Pac-12 at the eleventh hour, the alternative was to take a large pay cut in guaranteed terms and then become hardcore shills for the world’s most valuable company’s TV side project.
After all the realignment since 2010, college football was still recognizable if you squinted hard enough. There were some big blows along the way, like the Big East’s fracture and the Big 12’s perpetual near-death experiences, but the basic outlines were the same. Conferences pushed up against the limits of what could work without a complete reimagining, but they didn’t breach those limtis.
The Big Ten poaching USC and UCLA was the move that put us all into completely new territory. There had been non-power leagues with far-flung members before, like when Louisiana Tech was in the WAC or those three years when UCF was in the MAC. The on-life-support Big 12 taking West Virginia to stay afloat wasn’t really the same thing either.
But with the Trojans and Bruins’ move, there would now a true power league that stretches from coast-to-coast. It also was perhaps the most naked triumph of TV over tradition since one partner in the Rose Bowl, the famed Grandaddy of Them All, was shivving the other.
The SEC may have helped light this spark when it entertained Texas and Oklahoma’s advances, but the end result was still a contiguous conference of just barely a manageable size. A schedule format of three permanent rivals and six rotating opponents — which I believe is coming eventually — can make sure everyone completes a home-and-home with everyone else at least every four years while leaving three non-conference games for a mix of cupcake tuneups, non-conference matchups, and non-SEC rivals.
Going to 18, as the Big Ten has now done, can technically be done in nine conference games with a 1+8 format. Doing so means dealing with issues like Michigan no longer being able to play Ohio State and Michigan State every year. The Flex Protect Plus™ plan wanted to make sure Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin all played each other every season, but that’s out in a 1+8. The league doesn’t have as many sacrosanct rivalries as the SEC does, but it does have series it’d like to protect but now can’t without going to a rather insular ten-game schedule with something like a 3+7.
Even more than that, though, is the incredible amount of travel. Adding Oregon and Washington does help out the Los Angeles schools some, but it’s largely only from a time zone standpoint. Both are still more than 1,200 miles from LA. Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Stanford, and Utah are all closer to Los Angeles then Eugene, Oregon is.
The thing I really don’t get is the bottom halves of these conferences keep voting for all of this expansion. What do Illinois, Northwestern, Purdue, and Rutgers get out of this westward expansion other than some more money? What do Arkansas, the Mississippi schools, South Carolina, and Vandy get out of adding Texas and Oklahoma other than some more money?
I know full well that money is everyone’s top priority here — see FSU’s bellyaching this week for a rather obvious example of this — but these super conferences are the last step before a super league. And if/when a super league comes, those schools are not going to be in it. They’re taking some short-term gains now in exchange for more rapidly manifesting a future in which they’re left behind.
The SEC doesn’t need to react to any of this. The only schools left it’d even consider are in the ACC, which still has a very expensive and very tight grant of rights. The aforementioned Seminoles are desperate enough to get out that they’re looking at asking private equity for help, but that only goes to underscore just how expensive it’ll be to fly that coop any time soon.
That’s not to say the SEC can sit back on cruise control either. That’s what the Pac-12 largely did since 2012, and you see what happened. Forces bigger than any one conference are on the move.
The Big Ten likes to put on haughty airs about this, that, and the other thing all the time, but it’s the been the cold-blooded assassin of realignment since 2009. If you think there won’t come a time when its most valuable schools will be ready to kick the Indianas and Marylands to the curb to join up with the top brands of the SEC, you’re not seeing the big pattern here. They’ll eventually start thinking about that, even if they have to sacrifice their hallowed “Big Ten” brand name to do it.
To be clear, the SEC is on strong ground. But if it wants to stay in its present form indefinitely, the league office will need to to work to make sure everyone is happy and not just rely on inertia to keep things going smoothly.
Greg Sankey and associates will need to continually convince everyone, from Alabama to Vanderbilt, that the present form is the best form. I’m convinced the Big 12 didn’t solidify itself more by expanding in the 2010s because Texas and OU didn’t want to make it too hard to get out. Reportedly the Pac-12 didn’t accept a billion-dollar private equity/media rights deal in 2018 because USC and UCLA “had one foot out the door for two decades” and pushed back on it. Any hint that any blue blood program is trying not to make it too hard to leave is a red flag, now and forever.
Florida will be fine no matter where things go from here. The program is prestigious enough with enough engaged fans that it’ll make the cut for whatever may come next.
But make no mistake: 2024 is a completely new era for college football, and no one knows yet what the big picture will look like more than a year or two beyond that.