We realized yesterday that it might be useful to have some central post on here with everything we’ve established in our conference realignment theorizing these last 25 months. We find that every time there’s a whiff of a new development, we rehash a lot of our previous thinking, which feels tedious for older readers but necessary for newer ones. So, we’re writing this, and we’ll timestamp it:
- 1 Day After Colorado Made Its Return to the Big 12 Official (or: Friday, July 28th, 2023)
Now, let’s go through league by league, with our impressions—only our impressions—on each:
Big Ten, SEC
The Big Ten and the SEC do not appear to want to add any more schools right now. They might want to in the long run, but at the moment, each seems very content with its respective upcoming 16-team membership. Washington and Oregon made overtures to the Big Ten. Those overtures were rebuffed.
It’s possible there are ACC schools either the Big Ten or the SEC would like and can’t get because of the ACC’s Azkaban of a grant of rights, but even on this point, we’re skeptical. It took Texas, the biggest college athletic brand in the country, to get the SEC to expand. Oklahoma caught a ride on the coattails. It took two marquee brands in Los Angeles, the second-biggest television market in the country, to get the Big Ten to expand. Streaming is on its way, and with it, geographic television markets will matter less and individual brands will matter more, but at the moment, cable is still a big deal, especially to the Big Ten.
In the long run, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Big Ten and the SEC gobble up high-achieving athletic departments with similar institutional philosophies to their own. UNC and Virginia and Washington and Oregon are similar to Michigan and Wisconsin and Indiana and Illinois in ideology and personality. Florida State and Clemson and maybe TCU and Baylor are more similar to the SEC. We seem to be a long way from that day, though.
Of equal importance, neither the SEC nor the Big Ten seems to have any desire to kick anybody out. Kicking someone out is a highly unusual move in the conference realignment world, but in the far-off future, it’s not impossible, so keep an eye on the smaller brands in each league over the long term. If streaming makes New York City less valuable, Rutgers is in a tough spot. If the rest of the SEC realizes it can make more money without Mississippi State, it might one day do just that.
ACC
The ACC is in the weirdest place for conference expansion thanks to the unfortunate situation surrounding its TV rights deal. That situation is that the ACC signed a bad contract for them and a good contract for their TV providers, and in their efforts to make sure the SEC and Big Ten didn’t raid them, they made it so ironclad that no one can get out of it for a long, long time. Half the ACC schools—they call themselves the Sultry Seven or something else weird and stupid, I forget what it is—would like to leave and to leave smaller brands like Wake Forest, Boston College, and even Duke (no good football!) in the dust. They have been unsuccessful in this mission, and they will continue to be unsuccessful in this mission. Although!
Two developments in the ACC over the last few months:
First, the ACC decided to give teams bonuses for good performance—a larger share of their College Football Playoff or NCAA Tournament earnings—in an effort to hold things together. Not a bad idea. If Clemson’s the only competent football program, Clemson gets more, if Duke rakes in basketball income, Duke gets more. Fair is fair, but fair is unusual on this front.
Second, the ACC is saying it could expand. Commissioner Jim Phillips said as much yesterday, with ESPN reporting that more than two ACC athletic directors have expressed concern the Big 12 is passing them in strength and that the ACC needs to add schools for no other reason than to contain a suddenly scary Big 12. If the Pac-12 is indeed a carcass, the ACC has as much right to it as the Big 12 does, and the ACC would be a better cultural fit for Washington, Stanford, Cal, and maybe Oregon than the Big 12 would be. It would not, of course, be a better geographic fit, especially with Colorado and—in these scenarios—potentially the Arizona schools in the Big 12. Geography might not matter to everyone with conference realignment, but if you’re as remotely located as Washington, it probably matters more, and one trip every two years to UCF is different from consistently visiting the Eastern Time Zone several times a season.
ACC expansion is a massive curiosity because of the grant of rights. My understanding is that a new conference member would have to sign the same grant of rights we’ve all agreed is terrible for strong brands in the ACC, but I don’t know if that’s correct. Would a new school get a new deal? Would a new school break open the old schools’ deals? If it is the current grant of rights that a hypothetical new member would sign, would it be a terrible grant of rights for that new member, or does it just stink for UNC? I don’t know. If the choice for Stanford is the ACC, the Big 12, the Mountain West, or independence, the ACC could make a lot of sense, especially given Stanford’s administration’s good relationship with that of partial ACC member Notre Dame, who seems to be loving its friend with benefits situation with the conference.
One thing to remember on this front is that West Virginia and Cincinnati and Memphis and UCF do not make sense for the ACC. This is why West Virginia and Cincinnati and Memphis are not in the ACC today. West Virginia isn’t the biggest brand, and it’s not in a good media market or one that would be unique for the ACC. Cincinnati and Memphis and UCF are too small of brands (and it remains possible there are skeletons in Memphis’s closet, their continued rejection by power conferences has little other compelling explanation), and Cincinnati and UCF exist in media markets where the ACC is already present and active. When Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC, we were still thinking of realignment geographically, and the thought became that the Big Ten and ACC would gobble up Big 12 members in their own areas. This didn’t happen because the Big 12 members available were less valuable than the average Big Ten and ACC programs, meaning that in this world of equal revenue sharing, Big Ten schools would lose money by adding Kansas and ACC schools would lose money by adding West Virginia. At a point, it’s worth it to exchange some money for stability, but the Big Ten and ACC aren’t lacking for stability right now. In five or ten years, that will change for the ACC if they don’t correct their course, but the Big Ten is stable, and the ACC’s future instability would not be eased by adding West Virginia. ACC stability probably has to come from within, from UNC and Virginia and Duke and others doing more to pull their weight.
I will say—and this feels relevant given there was another report yesterday that Florida State is trying to find its way out of the legal deal—that if anyone is close to finding a loophole which they think allows them out of the ACC, or if anyone is accumulating the money necessary to pay what would be the Mount Everest of buyouts mixed with legal fees, they will not tip their hand. We don’t think anyone can leave the ACC. But we sure didn’t think UCLA and USC would join the Big Ten until about twelve hours before it happened. It wasn’t even on our radar.
Big 12
The Big 12 is on the warpath, playing the conference realignment game differently than we’ve ever seen it played before. Leaks are constant. Media manipulation is immense. Commissioner Brett Yormark has spoken openly about wanting Pac-12 schools, something at least I had never previously seen. It might not be actively working, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be hurting the cause, and one could argue that the Big 12’s ability to keep the topic in the conversation (Report: Big 12 Talking to Arizona; Report: Big 12 Considering UConn; Report: Big 12 Talking to Gonzaga; Report: Big 12 Would Like to Remind You That the Pac-12 Still Doesn’t Have a TV Deal) helped pressure Colorado to make the jump when they did.
It’s worth remembering how the Big 12 got here. After Texas and Oklahoma left for the SEC, the fear was that the Big 12 would be the league scavenged for parts. The Pac-12 was assumed to be circling. People pondered whether the Big Ten would respond (they did, but not in the expected manner). ESPN put heavy pressure on the Big 12 from numerous angles trying to force its collapse, looking to get out of what was suddenly a tough television deal for themselves while pushing less valuable schools like Iowa State and Kansas State down to the AAC. It didn’t work. The Big 12 fought ESPN hard enough in public to win on that front, and on the Pac-12 side, the Pac-12 inexplicably failed to act. UCLA and USC may have slowed any Pac-12 overtures, for obvious reasons in hindsight, but it still seems that the Big 12 may have been saved by Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff fundamentally misunderstanding the situation, a foreboding piece of the story. One explanation of why the Pac-12 did not immediately add TCU and Kansas or some other combination of two to four Big 12 schools is that the Pac-12 could have held some scorn for the eight remaining Big 12 institutions, a ragtag group of colleges mostly on a line from Waco, Texas to Ames, Iowa. This is also a potential explanation for why the Pac-12 reportedly rebuffed the Big 12’s request to merge leagues. In the immediate wake of this rejection and the failure of the Pac-12 to pounce, the Big 12 successfully circled its wagons and added arguably the four biggest mid-major brands available. It was a weird assortment, but it’s one we’ll grow accustomed to quickly, and it did geographically deepen the Big 12’s roots in Texas while fleshing out its presence in the Ohio River valley and reestablishing the league in the mountain west.
Then, a year later, UCLA and USC jumped ship, and the shoes were on the other feet. Now it was the Pac-12 in need of a lifeline, and, per reports, a merger was again discussed, but the impression was that the Pac-12 was again the league saying no?***** A strange decision, but before the smoke could clear, Yormark had opened the Big 12’s TV negotiations a year early and beaten the Pac-12 to a number of time/channel slots for football broadcasts. Also, of gigantic importance, he secured a provision in those TV contracts which allowed for a proportional increase in revenue if the Big 12 added any Power Five conference team.
*****Update, August 2: Further reporting has made clear it was the Pac-12 proposing a merger in 2022, and the Big 12 quickly rejecting it. We’ve deleted a sentence further down to help clarify this as well.
This proportional increase is, again, we cannot say this enough, of gigantic importance. What it means is this:
If the Big 12 is earning (these are not real numbers so I’m not using a real currency) 120 sprackles a year split evenly across its 12 schools, each school is earning 10 sprackles annually. In the normal state of things, the 120 number would be open to renegotiation if the Big 12 tried to add anybody. In the deal Yormark struck, the 120 number would increase by 10 sprackles per school so long as the additional school was joining the league from the Pac-12, ACC, Big Ten, or SEC (so, the Pac-12). This makes expansion much, much simpler for the Big 12, because the Big 12 doesn’t have to wonder what every new member is worth. Power conference schools are worth more stability at no cost. Non-power conference schools cost money. This is probably part of why Yormark can be so brash in talking about it. If the ACC wants to expand, it has to scurry over to ESPN and ask how much a Washington is worth. The Big 12 knows Washington is worth 10 sprackles, and ESPN is advantaged in return by the possibility of landing Washington and Oregon and Stanford for only 10 sprackles apiece when they’re maybe really worth 11.
Yormark is reportedly keen on adding UConn, who would not earn the Big 12 its 10 more sprackles and would therefore cost each existing Big 12 school money. What to make of this? Either Yormark is in disagreement with his bosses (the schools) and will be overruled, or Yormark is trying to use the UConn possibility to pressure Arizona or another Pac-12 school to get it over with and follow the Buffs out the door before their spot in line is taken. Both explanations lead to the same likeliest next step.
Update (7/28): It’s possible the Big 12 can only add four schools at that pro rata, “10 sprackle” rate. This has been reported but we have not seen it confirmed.
Pac-12
Oh boy.
If you really want to trace the Pac-12’s failure back to the source, you have to look back to the last major realignment wave, when Oklahoma and Texas nearly joined the league but it never quite happened. In the years that followed, commissioner Larry Scott spent big on a San Francisco office, created a convoluted network of Pac-12-specific channels which were not consistently carried by cable providers nationwide, and watched the league’s football performance fall off a cliff as USC took a step back and the rest of the league was caught with its pants down. It was a bad combination which ultimately led to UCLA and USC’s departure. Had the Pac-12 successfully added Texas and Oklahoma, UCLA and USC would likely have never looked elsewhere. Maybe it wasn’t possible, but oh boy, does that failure suck for Cal fans right now.
In the more recent past, another apparent dunce of a commissioner is at fault, though to be fair, Kliavkoff may have been fighting a losing battle. Perhaps it was Pac-12 schools and not Kliavkoff who made the decision to reject the Big 12’s cry for help in 2021. It’s hard to blame Kliavkoff for losing the media race to the Big 12 and having to scavenge for scraps, but it might be his fault. It’s possible he should have known better, especially given he came to the Pac-12 from the television industry. Whatever the case, Kliavkoff is scavenging for scraps, with the Pac-12 linked to everyone from Amazon to the CW in its effort to find a media partner who will pay its schools to broadcast their football games through streaming or traditional television. Kliavkoff and his leakers continue to confidently state that the eventual Pac-12 deal will rival the Big 12 and ACC’s in revenue per school, but visibility is a major concern for schools like Oregon, whom casual national fans will not watch if their games are carried on Apple TV+ rather than even ESPNU. Also? The deal still isn’t on the table. Not only did the Pac-12 fail to act early, but they are now extremely late on the traditional conference–TV negotiation timeline. They are less than a year from their current TV deal expiring. That current deal is the last thing holding together a 100-year-old conference.
Another issue facing the Pac-12 is how disparate its schools are in value. The Big 12 had this problem too before Oklahoma and Texas left, but in the wake of those schools’ departure, the remaining eight schools were all very middle class by the standards of college athletic brands. There was and is no obvious top dog. The Pac-12 has no such arrangement. Its nine remaining schools, plus Colorado who just left, break down as follows:
- Washington: Strong academic public school and traditionally strong brand in a unique and valuable media market. Not on the plane of USC or Texas, but not dissimilar in value to many individual Big Ten schools.
- Oregon: Strong brand with Nike backing in a unique but small media market. Similar to Washington in value once Nike balances out the disadvantage of not being in Seattle. (Seattle is the 12th-biggest media market nationally; Portland—the closest large one to Eugene—is 22nd.)
- Stanford: One of the best academic schools in the country and the best athletic department nationally if you exclude big-money sports, located in one of the ten best media markets in the country. Not a ton of student support for athletics, though.
- Cal: Another strong academic public school, again in a spectacular media market (the Bay Area ranks 10th nationally). A weaker athletic department, though, and again not much student support, and some questions about administrative support. (Does Cal want to have power conference sports anymore? This is also a question being asked of Georgetown, on the basketball front, and it may soon be asked of Northwestern, so we’re not just picking on Cal.)
- Arizona and Arizona State: Two solid brands with presence in and/or access to another great media market in Phoenix (11th nationally). Again, good enough value to be well worth 10 sprackles for ESPN.
- Utah: A solid brand with a very good football program in a small but rapidly growing media market.
- Colorado: One of the lowest-revenue public athletic departments in the power conferences, but located in a decently sized and rapidly growing media market in Denver which also serves as a cultural hub for the entire Mountain Time Zone, something that’s useful for alumni relations for its conference’s member schools. Some great football history, too.
- Oregon State and Washington State: I believe these are the two lowest-revenue public athletic departments in the power conferences. They are also located multiple hours from major cities. ESPN would have to pay 10 sprackles apiece for them if they joined the Big 12, but they would lower the Big 12’s sprackles significantly the next time the league has to negotiate a TV deal.
What the Pac-12’s dealing with, then, is a tough collection of interests to align. Stanford cares about things like not making its athletes travel exorbitant amounts and allying itself with respectable academic institutions. Washington and Oregon want to be paid what they’re worth, and enjoy being the top dogs. Utah retains its combative mentality, having only recently entered the world of power conference athletics, and also might have some personal dislike of new Big 12 member BYU. Arizona cares about basketball. Cal isn’t sure it’s into the whole sports thing anymore. I personally love Washington State and Oregon State, but they are the deadest of weight for a power conference.
In other words, I don’t envy George Kliavkoff. He has a really tough job. It might get easier soon, though, because it might no longer exist.
I will say: The Pac-12 started it. They went for the Big 12 long before the Big 12 went for them. If Oregon doesn’t like it, they shouldn’t have invited Colorado in the first place. Not that the Big 12 wouldn’t have done the same, but the Pac-12 is no innocent victim here. They’re just the weakest guy in the ring.
The Pac-12 may still hold together, with potential reasons being that Stanford doesn’t want to travel, Washington and Oregon like being top dog and do think the Big Ten will relent and let them in soon enough to not bother with the hassle of joining a new league, and that state legislatures in Washington and Oregon might raise holy hell if their flagship institutions abandon the ag schools. But for Arizona and Arizona State, the choice appears eminently straightforward right now. The Big 12 invitation is on the table. The Big 12 will give them more visibility and more stability than the Pac-12 is offering, all for a similar amount of revenue. There is no weird public aversion to the Big 12 like that expressed by Utah athletic director Mark Harlan (which is what has us hypothesizing about BYU so often—also, though, Utah could join the Big 12, either because Harlan is bluffing or because Harlan could be overruled). The only good reason for Arizona and Arizona State to wait is that they think someone might pull a rabbit out of a hat and let them merge with the ACC or something wild like that. It might be a good enough reason. Time will tell.
Mountain West
The Mountain West is in an interesting position now. They would be a logical landing place for Washington State and Oregon State if those two really did get cut loose, sitting as a good geographic and cultural fit for each. This would strengthen their conference immensely, especially in this new era where six conference champions will receive automatic berths in the College Football Playoff. The Mountain West also managed to retain San Diego State despite San Diego State’s belief a Pac-12 invitation was coming. The MWC didn’t do anything here—it’s not like they magically persuaded SDSU to stay—but this was great for the conference, with SDSU probably its current most valuable member. SDSU is now apparently locked in at least through 2024–25, with there appearing to be no chance in hell that the Pac-12 comes up with the money necessary to pay the extra $17 million now attached to SDSU’s MWC exit fee since the proceedings went past June 30th.
Big East
It’s worth looking at basketball for a minute, with UConn’s dalliance with the Big 12 in the media crosshairs. UConn is a basketball school, the Big 12 is a great basketball league, UConn basketball would prefer to be in the Big East but if UConn could get a football lifeline and all the sprackles which come with it, UConn would take that deal. Bad football is vastly more valuable than good basketball. This might lead Duke to the Big East sometime down the line, but let’s not get that far ahead just yet. In the meantime, the Big East should probably watch its back for the Big 12 to poach basketball-only members (I continue to think Creighton would make a ton of sense for the Big 12, and they wouldn’t have to change their football contracts to add them), but the Big East thrives on its East Coast membership, and aside from UConn, it would be far more shocking to see any of those members poached than it was to even see UCLA join the Big Ten.
AAC
The AAC has to deal with SMU very openly wanting a Pac-12 invite (and making some sense as a Pac-12 member, giving the league a weak athletic department and a small brand but a terrific media market and plenty of upside), but the AAC’s fate isn’t really tied to SMU right now. It is a purgatorial league, one into which low-majors are thrilled to step and one out of which mid-majors would love to rise, and it will remain so.
Sun Belt
The Sun Belt is interesting because they’ve played the game so well despite playing on the kiddie fields. They’ve quietly built themselves from the FBS’s worst conference into one of comparable strength to the AAC, passing Conference USA in the process. They aren’t in a position to add anyone just yet, but if the ACC were to somehow blow up, Wake Forest would at least have a softer landing spot than was previously the case.
Wild Cards
North Dakota State is still out there, but Fargo isn’t going to be big enough anytime in the foreseeable future for that to be a valuable media market, and the football program has taken a big step back in recent years. Maybe the Bisons’ fade behind South Dakota State is similar to Alabama’s fade behind Georgia and it’s fair to forecast a resurgence, but at the moment, NDSU is not looking like something anyone outside of the AAC or Sun Belt would want.
Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s are likewise still out there, with Gonzaga worth a lot of sprackles and Saint Mary’s benefiting from the association but probably not worth anything at all by themselves. It would be surprising if Gonzaga doesn’t join the Big 12 in the next five or ten years, but basketball is worth so much less money than football that adding the Zags is a miniscule priority for Big 12 presidents right now.
Notre Dame
Oh yeah. These guys.
Notre Dame remains one of the most valuable brands in college sports, and Notre Dame remains steadfastly committed to independence in football, largely because there’s no good landing spot. Strategically, joining the Big Ten would be a risk because it could leave the Irish as just another Big Ten school in Indiana sometime down the line. Culturally, the SEC would be a bizarre fit. Financially, it doesn’t make any sense to join a league other than the Big Ten or the SEC. Historically, the Big Ten straight-up tried to kill off Notre Dame as an institution when legendary bigot Fielding Yost convinced his leaguemates not to schedule the Irish Catholic kids (in a very Michigan move, this is what made Notre Dame successful in the end, sending Knute Rockne’s teams east to play at West Point and west to play at Southern Cal), and many Notre Dame boosters have not forgotten. In fact, the story gets bigger for some of them with age.
Practically, Notre Dame has no reason to join a conference as long as it has a path to the College Football Playoff, and if either the Big Ten or the SEC tried to force it to join a league to make the playoff, it would simply join the other league, creating a strong incentive for the Big Ten and the SEC to not try their luck. (Outgoing Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick was also a pretty good ally with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, working with him and former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby to design the new College Football Playoff.)
One interesting current within Notre Dame that is worth watching is the administration’s recent frustration with college athletics as a concept. Some people at Notre Dame really liked the rosy-eyed vision of amateurism, and those people still hold onto that vision even as so many of the rest of us have come to more realistic ways of looking at the world. A few years ago, Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins theorized about leaving the NCAA and trying to do college sports in a different way. I don’t really think this would happen—the school finances so much of its academic growth through football, and it’s likely that Swarbrick’s recent decision to move on had something to do with his resignation to the fact that big-time college athletes are going to be semi-employees whether he likes it or not—but it’s not inconceivable that Notre Dame and Stanford could get together and try to do something wacky.
