Today's Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, my hometown newspaper, provides an in-depth historical overview of college football, conference realignment, television, and money. The article, not surprisingly, is Texas Tech-centric, but also quotes sports historians and economists from elsewhere. One thing I had not known about is the cyclical nature historically of teams aggregating into large conferences and then the large conferences splitting back into smaller ones. Quoting from the article:
Superconferences are not a new concept. [Historian J.S.] Watterson said they’ve existed in similar forms before. For instance, the Southern Conference was what he called a “fairly decentralized” league that swelled to 23 teams during the 1920s before splitting into the SEC and ACC some 30 years later.
The article also helps break down the recent mindboggling television contracts into how much exactly each school in a given conference will receive. For example, the Big 12 has a $1.17 billion deal with Fox Sports, but it's over 13 years, making it $90 million per annum. Divided 10 ways ("provided the league replaces SEC-bound A&M"), that's $9 million per school, per year.
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