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Conference Realignment
- Status
This is just my opinion no inside knowledge
Utah to the Big 12 would make sense from a BYU rivalry standpoint
Getting Zona and ASU would be a good rivalry to preserve
The Big 12 would be ok at football but basketball would be great with KU Houston Arizona Baylor. Plus you would have good rivals.
The thing about rivalries is they take time to develop. You make schools play games that decide things you can create a rivalry. Just because you are a rival in one sport doesn’t make it in another. Duke-UNC football is not the same as basketball
Utah to the Big 12 would make sense from a BYU rivalry standpoint
Getting Zona and ASU would be a good rivalry to preserve
The Big 12 would be ok at football but basketball would be great with KU Houston Arizona Baylor. Plus you would have good rivals.
The thing about rivalries is they take time to develop. You make schools play games that decide things you can create a rivalry. Just because you are a rival in one sport doesn’t make it in another. Duke-UNC football is not the same as basketball
Aren't these mega conferences starting to eat their own tails?
I mean, if there ends up being 3-4 totally diffuse amorphous leagues in name only, much of the competition within those leagues will fail to be compelling to much of the fans within that league's "footprint".
Presumably, Clemson fans will never notice the IU-Purdue thing in the same way they may enjoy, say, NCST-UNC from afar.
And then what, within these leagues we start to see pockets of "regional" tribal interest emerge? Kinda like the way it was the day before yesterday, with geographic rivalries?!
I hope this all backfires on ESPN and Fox, and the commissioners tbh.
Shief
- Champaign Area
As for the 4x named, I am open to Oregon and Washington and I could be talked into FSU but Clemson is a stretch. Oregon and Wash are AAU members and it is my understanding that FSU is working to improve their academics, but Clemson has a long way to go. If we take another team from the ACC to bring the B1G to 20x teams, I would look at ND, UNC, UVA, and Miami before Clemson.
If B1G goes above 20x, likely 24x in that case, ND, UNC, UVA, Miami, and Stanford should be priorities. That way, B1G completely incircles the SEC and the academicside will hopefully be satisfied. I'd then like to see the Big 12 get PAC and ACC teams like Arizona, ASU, Utah, Louisville, Pitt, and others.
Besides ND who brings the most money
Shief
- Champaign Area
You are correct, B1G leadership needs to keep an eye on the athletic money supply but the B1G academic leaders will want schools with high credentials. Good schools that will likely be money positive would be Notre Dame, Oregon, Washington, Florida State, and Miami. UNC may be positive or breaks even but Virginia and Stanford are question marks and would likely be losses. To keep rivalries alive and entice certain teams to join the B1G, some team pairs may need to be brought in - Oregon & Washington, ND & Stanford, FSU & Miami, UNC & UVA/Duke - and those pairings will hopefully become a net positive in the long run.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
The way the academic elitism canard has worked to cause fans to cheer on the destruction of college sports is such a fascinating study of human psychology.
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
other than ND, which doesn’t reality count in the GofR discussion , there are 3 or maybe 4 ACC schools that move the needle to at least start the discussion .
The vast majority do not .
I'll play... think the 3-5 that might move the needle is about right...but side note I really don't think anything happens here short term because of GOR
...so ACC schools that might move the needle
UNC - Seems like the first school mentioned; Blue blood basketball; overall long term Meh football (not clearly football power even in state), state of NC is growing & still the biggest brand in NC - Academic ++
VA - similiar to UNC (maybe some overlap in DC market with MD)
...so if this is an academic driven/grow organic growth from current footprint (ignored for the CA schools) /grow south for future population growth these are worthy of discussion - but IMO both have football problems, bit bigger football problem for VA & UNC is bigger basketball brand
FSU - Historic Football program, Florida market
Miami - Historic Football program, Florida market/ South FLA in particular (not sure I take 2 in Florida & like the larger alumni base of FSU & maybe some bias from Florida days w/personal dislike for Miami)
Clemson - Very big football; even before recent success, don't underestimate them in Charlotte market
...so if it is about maximizing football & football media rights; I think all 3 are in play, with Miami/FSU w/some market overlap competition...personally I take the state school. I also think Clemson should be on the short list, would put them a much better take than Neb back in the day...maybe some market competition with UNC in Charlotte metro if UNC is already on board...but I think they add value to other big football brands in B1G as well OSU/MI/PSU/USC
GA Tech - speculation based on Atlanta market...but a distant football 2nd in GA... not really seeing it
VA tech - better than VA in Football, I think pulls a bigger football presence in VA than VA, but no
NC State - I think slightly better football presence/history in NC than UNC, but UNC basketball & UNC national brand clearly trump NCSU
Duke - no football, more of a national brand in B-ball, but no
...all downhill from there
At what point do B1G and SEC decision makers get together and lay out an absolute plan to work together and formalize this entire process into the eventual end game? I could see something along the lines of "let's get to 48, combined, and break off. Let's share lists of targets and go about making that happen, over X years". Heck, maybe that level of collaboration is already happening to some degree. Nothing would surprise me.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I'm sorry, but the second you use the word "market", you out yourself as being a decade behind on this story.
The important thing to understand is that with the exception of Notre Dame, every other left behind school would accept an invitation to either the B1G or SEC today, instantaneously. They all face a future in which their revenue gap to the big two grows and grows and grows by the year.
And in the B12/P12 wreckage, any one or combination of those schools joining the big two dilutes the money for everybody else. Then on the other half of the country the ACC schools can't move and Notre Dame doesn't want to.
And remember, of course, the actual power here is not the B1G and SEC league offices, nor the University presidents like we're supposed to pretend, it's ESPN and Fox, subsidiaries of companies that are fighting for their lives in labor union battles with the writers and actors of all their scripted entertainment currently.
It's a completely frozen landscape for the foreseeable future.
And then the dynamics of that future are not about what additions may or may not be right for the B1G or SEC, but how expansion would effect the race between the two in the only metrics that matter: per-school media rights fees and slots in the 12-team CFP. It's a cold war. These are very precisely cold war dynamics.
The Big Ten diluting itself going mega-national, the wet dream around here, does not scare the SEC at all and is clearly a net negative. What scares the B1G is a world where in 2031 or something, as the ACC GOR ending starts to peek over the horizon, the SEC adds Notre Dame and Clemson and that puts the league on the back foot from a strictly winning the biggest games at the pinnacle of the sport perspective that it can't make up.
What scares the SEC, or should, is that in the emerging media landscape ESPN may not be the rock-solid partner for the long haul that it appeared when they sold the whole package to them in 2020.
But then that's the thing, both college football and broadcast media are industries that have permanently disfigured themselves and totally lost any tethering to what made them valuable to their audience in the first place. What gets reported on as titanic battles of business gods is in fact the desperate squabbling over the few remaining resources between the survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The important thing to understand is that with the exception of Notre Dame, every other left behind school would accept an invitation to either the B1G or SEC today, instantaneously. They all face a future in which their revenue gap to the big two grows and grows and grows by the year.
And in the B12/P12 wreckage, any one or combination of those schools joining the big two dilutes the money for everybody else. Then on the other half of the country the ACC schools can't move and Notre Dame doesn't want to.
And remember, of course, the actual power here is not the B1G and SEC league offices, nor the University presidents like we're supposed to pretend, it's ESPN and Fox, subsidiaries of companies that are fighting for their lives in labor union battles with the writers and actors of all their scripted entertainment currently.
It's a completely frozen landscape for the foreseeable future.
And then the dynamics of that future are not about what additions may or may not be right for the B1G or SEC, but how expansion would effect the race between the two in the only metrics that matter: per-school media rights fees and slots in the 12-team CFP. It's a cold war. These are very precisely cold war dynamics.
The Big Ten diluting itself going mega-national, the wet dream around here, does not scare the SEC at all and is clearly a net negative. What scares the B1G is a world where in 2031 or something, as the ACC GOR ending starts to peek over the horizon, the SEC adds Notre Dame and Clemson and that puts the league on the back foot from a strictly winning the biggest games at the pinnacle of the sport perspective that it can't make up.
What scares the SEC, or should, is that in the emerging media landscape ESPN may not be the rock-solid partner for the long haul that it appeared when they sold the whole package to them in 2020.
But then that's the thing, both college football and broadcast media are industries that have permanently disfigured themselves and totally lost any tethering to what made them valuable to their audience in the first place. What gets reported on as titanic battles of business gods is in fact the desperate squabbling over the few remaining resources between the survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
TentakilRex
- Land O Insects between Quincy-Macomb-Jacksonville
Not going to lie, I want the three superconference system (the Big XII being the third) for paranoia sake, because if it is TV execs making these decisions I have those executives may someday want to "cut the fat" of the B1G/SEC superconferences and that doesn't fill me with hope.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I agree that that's the smart way of thinking about it. Three caveats though:
1. You can see in the B12/P12 stuff the cultural aversion in this space to anything other than selfish, short-sighted, hand-to-mouth desperation. These people badly lack vision, that's the water this situation has always been swimming in. The BTN was the last actual lightbulb that went on in the brain of this industry and that was 17 years ago now.
2. At the very least ESPN and Fox are co-equals in any such discussions, to the extent they aren't just the sole members of those discussions. And as I mentioned above, those are entities with their own fish to fry at the moment and don't have a history of playing nice.
3. Who says we aren't already at the end game? A duopoly that occupies more and more and more weight as the years go by in a deregulated landscape kinda suits everybody's purposes. I think people here mistake letting a dominant situation play out with some sort of hesitation or uncertainty.
Edit: Forget it. While I was busy typing my nonsense Gritty just went and said it all.
Ever since the UCLA/USC announcement, I’ve been struggling to get my head around the financial and power dynamics that are really driving these changes. So much of it is counterintuitive to me and I admit I’m still pretty lost here.
There’s a lot of focus on the current media rights contracts but ultimately contracts come and go and are always going to be broken when the incentives outweigh the penalties. We talk a lot about TV markets and footprints but if you are THE LEAGUE, you don’t care about that. The NFL is not trying to figure out how strengthen its brand and reach in new markets. They are the market. And certainly the important people at the top of the B1G and SEC know all this.
So ultimately what really matters to the B1G and SEC? What gives them total control over the game, the chips, the table, the room, and the temperature on the thermostat? IF they can arrange it so that membership in one of these two conferences is the sole and exclusive path to the college football playoffs and national championship game. Taking the long view, is that not the only meaningful objective? From that perspective, there are very few schools to add that get the B1G/SEC closer to that goal. Notre Dame does. FSU, Clemson, Oregon, Washington? Maybe. Then you start getting into the UNCs and Stanfords and Miamis and at that tier it’s getting a lot harder to see it.
Absolutely agree that in substance, we're already at the end game. That's why it seems like it might be an easy way to clean all this up by B1G/Fox and SEC/ESPN just agreeing on the final head count and timing, and removing what little doubt remains. To that point, I'm interested to see where ND and Clemson wind up. All the rest just don't move the needle much, if at all, and basically just fill out the rosters for each conference.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
It's actually relatively simple.
While lots of games in lots of sports are sold as part of these TV deals, the big money gets paid for the big viewership, and that's football games with, and especially between, the biggest brands.
There were a few years there where a side quest to collect monthly cable fees from non-sports fans who never watched a game was a big part of this thinking (which is where thinking in terms of "markets" came from), but cable is dead, that whole way of looking at it is dead, not part of the calculation anymore. It's about actual eyeballs again.
The higher percentage concentration of big football brands you can stuff in your conference, the more the TV networks will pay you.
The landscape from the 90's when this really got going to a few years ago was one where the Power Five operated regionally and on a roughly equal basis, though with the B1G and SEC as market leaders. The summer of the failed Pac 16 and Nebraska to the B1G destabilized that ecosystem and left the three non-market leader conferences and their schools in a vulnerable and frightened position.
The ACC eventually, in 2016, moved to address this by locking in their market position for 20 years, which was a bet (correctly) that such an arrangement would be durable and enforceable and (not as incorrectly as it looked a few years ago tbh) that with the media industry looking shaky the long tail of the agreement wouldn't put it in a bad financial position relative to its competition.
Then Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC happened. Which had two important effects: (1) the Big XII was and is thereby dead forever as a co-equal "Power Five" conference. It got nuked from the playing field. And then (2) the SEC thereby became capable of leapfrogging everyone from a TV marketability perspective (remember above, concentration of football brands = money) into a new previously unforeseen level, which now meant the ACC, trapped in its 2016-vintage deal, was out of the top tier as well.
So that briefly created sort of a 2-2-1 landscape. SEC as the new top dog with the prior leader B1G still in the top mix, the ACC trapped at a rung below, the Pac-12 on that rung below, and the B12 gone forever.
Then the Big Ten swooped in and perma-nuked the Pac 12. Retook the top spot in a now-duopoly with the SEC. The ACC is still frozen out on rung 2, and the B12 and P12 are squabbling among the scraps to see which schools get to be in rung 2.5 behind the ACC and which ones get to enjoy the fate of Rice and SMU from the old SWC.
The moral of the story, the tl;dr, is that what was once a 5-way regionalized competitive landscape is now a permanent duopoly in which the other players don't matter and will be fading into the background by the year.
And it's quite an accounting trick to call this "growth" when the upshot is there being way fewer major conference football teams in 2025 than there were in 2015, 2005, 1995, 1985, take your pick.
They already have it. That's the important thing to understand. Their only competition today, tomorrow, and forevermore is between each other.
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How did you calculate that 80% number ? ? I know I'm old, but I can't see that....
redwingillini11
White and Sixth
- North Aurora
If the B1G and SEC end up at 20-24 teams each, I have to wonder whether we will end up with a two-tier relegation system, and a four-team conference playoff. Maybe top 3 schools in Tier 1 and top school in Tier 2 play in the playoff for the conference championship?
Hypothetical two-tier B1G with 24 teams (Oregon, Washington, Cal, Stanford, Florida State, Miami, Clemson, Georgia Tech added (I have no idea where we stand with the west coast schools now)) with the teams split by 2023 ESPN FPI just to see what this could look like:
B1G Leaders Tier (Tier 1)
Ohio State
Michigan
USC
Clemson
Penn State
Oregon
Florida State
Wisconsin
Washington
Miami
Michigan State
Minnesota
B1G Legends Tier (Tier 2)
Iowa
UCLA
Maryland
Illinois
Purdue
Nebraska
Georgia Tech
Northwestern
Indiana
Rutgers
Stanford
Cal
As long as we can't get relegated out of the B1G, maybe this is ok? Conference rivals could get split up, but at least (if you are one of the power brokers) you can get a super league while still keeping the idea of the B1G intact.
Hypothetical two-tier B1G with 24 teams (Oregon, Washington, Cal, Stanford, Florida State, Miami, Clemson, Georgia Tech added (I have no idea where we stand with the west coast schools now)) with the teams split by 2023 ESPN FPI just to see what this could look like:
B1G Leaders Tier (Tier 1)
Ohio State
Michigan
USC
Clemson
Penn State
Oregon
Florida State
Wisconsin
Washington
Miami
Michigan State
Minnesota
B1G Legends Tier (Tier 2)
Iowa
UCLA
Maryland
Illinois
Purdue
Nebraska
Georgia Tech
Northwestern
Indiana
Rutgers
Stanford
Cal
As long as we can't get relegated out of the B1G, maybe this is ok? Conference rivals could get split up, but at least (if you are one of the power brokers) you can get a super league while still keeping the idea of the B1G intact.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I would give anything for the conferences of my youth, don't get me wrong ... but I think there is also room to want to "ruin college sports correctly," at least in so far as it actually keeps giving Illinois an advantage over non-Big Ten and non-SEC schools.
Pretty much, I am resigned to this happening, and I have given up on hoping for teams that would be better fits from a "fan" perspective (e.g., I think it would be a lot more fun to add Iowa State or Kansas than Rutgers or Maryland, but I know the fan experience will sadly never carry much weight).Maybe the deaths of these conferences was inevitable, but I really do wonder if there was a way to save conferences like the Big Eight or the Pac Ten in some way. Obviously long past that point.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
"The customer is never right", famously the motto of successful and thriving businesses that have bright futures.
It wasn't. There were so many opportunities for this to go a different way across so many domains, conferences, playoffs, NIL, transfers, it's all been contingent on individual decisions, so many of which were obviously bad and shortsighted at the moment they were made, let alone in retrospect.
The biggest one is all the way at the dawn of college sports media rights. If the Big Ten and Pac 10 had joined the CFA when schools and conferences were first given the ability to sell their own TV rights, all the contingencies of history start trickling down a different path, probably one in which college football has long since left the NCAA as we knew it behind.
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A remarkably large number of the most watched televised programs are football, mostly NFL:
College football, particularly big name match-ups, draws a lot of eyeballs -- more than any MLB or NBA game.
This makes college football content one of the most valuable properties to broadcasters. And, as Gritty notes, the more "big name" content, the better.
The SEC and B1G have now assembled most of the "big name," most watched programs. Arguably, 20 of the Top 25.
The only other two that really consistently move the needle are Notre Dame and Clemson. There are a few other "would be nice to haves" that include Florida State, Oregon, and maybe TAMU and (lately, but can they sustain?) TCU. Here's a couple viewership lists, among the many available online:
medium.com
thefootballusa.com
Reading these links makes clear why the PAC is a dead conference walking, and why the ACC remains the solid #3 as long as Clemson, ND, Florida State and Miami don't bolt.
94 of the top 100 most-watched telecasts of 2022 were sports, and 82 of those were the NFL
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Americans enjoy watching sports. Per the Sports Business Journal, of the 100 most-watched telecasts in 2022, 94 were sports. Of those 94, 82 were NFL games, a staggering amount. There were also five college football games in the top 100 (the Rose Bowl and...
awfulannouncing.com
College football, particularly big name match-ups, draws a lot of eyeballs -- more than any MLB or NBA game.
This makes college football content one of the most valuable properties to broadcasters. And, as Gritty notes, the more "big name" content, the better.
The SEC and B1G have now assembled most of the "big name," most watched programs. Arguably, 20 of the Top 25.
The only other two that really consistently move the needle are Notre Dame and Clemson. There are a few other "would be nice to haves" that include Florida State, Oregon, and maybe TAMU and (lately, but can they sustain?) TCU. Here's a couple viewership lists, among the many available online:
Which college football programs bring in the most TV viewers?
TV viewership isn’t always the best way to measure a college football program’s value. But here’s how each school ranks since 2015.
medium.com
College Football Viewership By Team
College football viewership by team was the highest for Ohio State Buckeyes with 70.3 million viewers. Michigan Wolverines had 70.1.
Reading these links makes clear why the PAC is a dead conference walking, and why the ACC remains the solid #3 as long as Clemson, ND, Florida State and Miami don't bolt.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but I want to throw out one nitpick. Average viewers can be a little deceiving over a short timeframe. For example, Indiana had very good TV ratings in 2020 because they were surprisingly good, and they played Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State, didn't play any cupcakes and played on ABC or FOX for HALF of their games. Fast forward to 2022, and their ratings (even with Michigan, OSU and PSU on the schedule) kind of sucked because they played on BTN and FS1 a lot more. Of course, the teams with the most viewers are theoretically on the big-time channels BECAUSE they deliver ratings and don't get the ratings as a favor from that broadcast slot, but Illinois drew very good ratings whenever we got the chance to play on a big-time channel like ABC or FOX or ESPN. Conversely, Penn State did not draw much better than us for their games on BTN.A remarkably large number of the most watched televised programs are football, mostly NFL:
94 of the top 100 most-watched telecasts of 2022 were sports, and 82 of those were the NFL
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Americans enjoy watching sports. Per the Sports Business Journal, of the 100 most-watched telecasts in 2022, 94 were sports. Of those 94, 82 were NFL games, a staggering amount. There were also five college football games in the top 100 (the Rose Bowl and...awfulannouncing.com
College football, particularly big name match-ups, draws a lot of eyeballs -- more than any MLB or NBA game.
This makes college football content one of the most valuable properties to broadcasters. And, as Gritty notes, the more "big name" content, the better.
The SEC and B1G have now assembled most of the "big name," most watched programs. Arguably, 20 of the Top 25.
The only other two that really consistently move the needle are Notre Dame and Clemson. There are a few other "would be nice to haves" that include Florida State, Oregon, and maybe TAMU and (lately, but can they sustain?) TCU. Here's a couple viewership lists, among the many available online:
Which college football programs bring in the most TV viewers?
TV viewership isn’t always the best way to measure a college football program’s value. But here’s how each school ranks since 2015.College Football Viewership By Team
College football viewership by team was the highest for Ohio State Buckeyes with 70.3 million viewers. Michigan Wolverines had 70.1.
Reading these links makes clear why the PAC is a dead conference walking, and why the ACC remains the solid #3 as long as Clemson, ND, Florida State and Miami don't bolt.
What I am trying to say is that "average viewers" over a short timespan will correctly capture that Michigan and Alabama are ratings darlings, and it will likely capture that not a lot of people tune in to watch Northwestern or Vanderbilt, regardless. However, schools like Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan State, etc. will be at the mercy of when they're playing. Our ratings were MUCH better last year than the year before, and it's because we got some great opportunities to play on national TV. FOX, ABC and CBS get great ratings almost no matter what ... sure, it's way better when it's OSU/Michigan, but we already knew that. You cannot watch Illinois play Purdue on BTN and watch Wisconsin play Purdue on FOX and assume Wisconsin has more fans based on those ratings, for example.
Here's to hoping the Illini get plenty of chances to be seen by a national audience this year! The chance to play PSU on FOX for Big Noon Kickoff is massive, and getting a night game audience on NBC for Purdue is great, as well. Not sure how ESPN2 would draw on a Friday night for the Kansas game, but maybe better than we think.
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In the theater of my mind.
I want nothing to do with two-tier/relagation conference play. College football is already trying to copy March Madness. We don't need Euro-League soccer.
- Status