ESPN.com Animation on the History of Conference Realignment

ESPN.com has an animated, interactive slideshow on the history of conference realignment (link). The exhibit goes beyond merely presenting factual information, also analyzing larger trends that brought us to where we are today. The 1984 Supreme Court ruling that the NCAA could not limit the amount of weekly college football telecasts stands out as a major turning point. This decision, along with formation of the College Football Association (CFA), preceded, if not directly caused, a number of East Coast independents seeking conference memberships and existing conferences expanding their numbers of schools.

ESPN.com Offers Historical Review of Football Programs Left Behind in Previous Conference Realignments

The old Southwest Conference left behind Houston, Rice, TCU, and SMU when it merged with the Big 8 to become the Big 12. An older version of the Pac 12 left behind Idaho and Montana many years ago and now the conference is leaving behind Oregon State and Washington State. Other conferences have done similar things.

What has happened to these "left-behind" schools in terms of their football competitiveness in later years? This ESPN.com investigation provides the answers. Here is some background on the SP+ metric used in the ESPN article.

ACC Reversal: Stanford, Cal, and SMU Are In

The addition of Stanford, California (Berkeley), and Southern Methodist University to the Atlantic Coast Conference, which looked to be in critical condition two weeks ago, is now a reality. ACC rules require a three-fourths majority vote of member institutions to admit new schools. Previously, 11 of the 15 (73%) schools were reported to have been supporting the additions, with the opposition coming from Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina, and North Carolina State. NC State was reported as the school that flipped to OK the move.

The expansion makes sense in the academic domain, as Stanford, Cal, Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, and Virginia are members of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The AAU is an "honor society" for universities, if you will, based on faculty members' receipt of federal research grants and other markers of academic eminence. However, as shown in the following map, Stanford and Cal are an enormous distance away from the existing ACC schools, SMU somewhat less so.

Both the three new schools and many of the 15 pre-existing ACC members had incentives to support the merger:

• Stanford and Cal were without a major conference connection after the Pacific 12 imploded (four members each going to the Big Ten and Big 12), so, as several sports commentators suggested, the ACC gave the two northern California schools a respectable landing spot. So seemingly desperate were Stanford and Cal to get into the ACC that they agreed to accept only 30% of what the other schools receive from the conference's football television deal with ESPN for their first few years in the league.
• Stanford has a huge athletic department, fielding teams in 36 sports (20 women's, 16 men's). Further, the Cardinal athletic department has won the Learfield Director's Cup -- in which schools' sports teams are awarded points for capturing national championships, taking second, advancing to various rounds of postseason tournaments, etc. -- in 26 of the award's 29 years. To fund such a large athletic department, with top-notch coaches and facilities, naturally requires a lot of money, a good chunk of which comes from football television revenue. 
• For SMU, the move finally puts the Mustangs in a major conference for the first time since the days of the old Southwest Conference. To gain entrance, SMU is making an even bigger financial sacrifice than Stanford and Cal, agreeing not to receive any money from the ACC television package for several years.
• For the 15 pre-existing ACC members, there are two provision in the conference's television deal with ESPN (good through 2036) that are of interest. 
• First, if the conference drops below 15 schools, that could adversely affect the conference's television deal. With Florida State and Clemson making noises about leaving the ACC -- although there seem to be financially prohibitive barriers to them actually doing so before 2036 -- adding schools thus gives the ACC strength in numbers.
• Second, adding schools increases the ACC's television revenue* and with the three new schools initially taking less than full shares, that means more money is available for the other 15 schools. According to an August 2 ESPN.com article, "The ACC recently changed its revenue distribution model to reward success on the field in football and basketball. But Florida State has also pushed for changing the model to reward programs that generate higher television revenue and marketability, areas where FSU believes it has an advantage." Hence, some extra revenue could be directed disproportionately to Florida State and Clemson, although one article calls such potential enticement to the Seminoles and Tigers "too little, too late."

As for the long distances between some members of the new 18-team ACC, one idea that has been floated to minimize the extent of travel is to have multiteam gatherings in Dallas, a location midway across the country and home to SMU. Hypothetically, teams from Cal, Stanford, Syracuse, and Boston College in a given sport (e.g., baseball or women's tennis)  could all visit Dallas over a weekend and each play three games or matches (Cal vs. Syracuse, Cal vs. BC, Cal vs. SMU, Stanford vs. Syracuse, Stanford vs. BC, Stanford vs. SMU). Several of these athletic festivals, each featuring Stanford, Cal, and different schools from the ACC's eastern base, could take place during the year. 

The University Athletic Association, a Division III conference of academically elite private schools, uses such a neutral-site, festival approach and could thus serve as a model for the ACC. Below is a screenshot showing how Emory's women's volleyball squad is scheduled to play conference matches against Chicago, Rochester, and Carnegie Mellon, all hosted at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

There you have it. How the ACC moves forward, dealing with logistics, television deals, disgruntled member schools, and probably other challenges, will certainly be interesting to watch!

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*According to Yahoo! Sports, "The ACC’s television contract with ESPN includes a pro-rata clause requiring the network to increase the value of the deal by one Tier 1 share for every new member — believed to be about $24 million a share, or about 70% of a full ACC share, which includes Tiers 1-3." In other words, when a new school joins the ACC, ESPN pays the conference an additional amount per school, so the pie gets bigger rather than all the schools having to take smaller slices of a static pie. The "pro-rata" language appears to refer to how, with approximately 30% of the 2016-2036 ACC/ESPN contract length having elapsed as of 2023, any new members as of this time would receive at most only 70% of what a full 20-year payout would have amounted to. And we know that Stanford, Cal, and SMU are each taking far less than the amount potentially available to them. Tier 1/2/3 rights are explained here.

Behind the Scenes Look at ACC as Stanford and Cal Rejected

The potential move of Stanford and Cal to the Atlantic Coast Conference -- an interesting plan on paper to bring together academically elite schools but a dubious geographic proposition -- appears dead for now. ESPN.com's Andrea Adelson spoke to various ACC school officials and reports on some of the apparent reasons the plan failed. Note, however, that inviting Stanford and Cal into the ACC failed by only one vote, so perhaps the issue will be revisited at some point.

Pac 12 Shrinks with Departures to Big Ten and Big 12

The Pac 12 is now down to four schools, as Washington and Oregon have joined the Big Ten and Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah have followed Colorado's lead and departed for the Big 12. The only remaining Pac 12 programs currently are Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State. 

The new configurations of the Big Ten and Big 12, respectively, appear below, with the former Pac 12 schools underlined.

With Washington and Oregon joining UCLA and USC in their move to the Big Ten, these four schools will get to stay on the West Coast for some of their conference road games, rather than having to travel to the Midwest and East Coast for nearly all of them.

Meanwhile, the addition of the two Arizona schools, Utah, and Colorado really establishes the Big 12 (which now has 16 teams) as the conference of the American Southwest. It also puts Utah and BYU back in the same conference to resume their "Holy War" rivalry. 

Going back to Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State, observers have suggested some sort of merger or absorption of teams between the Mountain West (featuring schools such as San Diego State, Fresno State, Nevada, UNLV, and Boise State) and the depleted Pac. I'll revisit the situation of these schools when new realignment plans start to emerge.

Colorado Returns to Big 12

The first change in the Pac 12's composition since the June 2022 announcement that UCLA and USC would be joining the Big Ten has taken place and it's not a good one for the Pac 12. Colorado will be leaving the Pac 12 to return to the Big 12. Before joining the Pac 12 in 2020, the Buffaloes had been a member of the Big 12 and its predecessor, the Big 8.

Enticing Colorado to return gives the Big 12 a short-term psychological boost after its loss of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, if not a marquee football program (CU's record is 44-73, .376, over the past 10 years).  The upcoming debut of former star player Deion Sanders as the Buffs' coach has created some excitement, though.

The loss of Colorado, meanwhile, is a major embarrassment for the Pac 12 (in the short term, at least), as the move highlights the Pac 12's failure to land a new television deal. The Buffs' move is widely attributed to the Big 12's deal. According to the Associated Press:

Colorado is expected to get $31.7 million in annual TV revenue in the Big 12, which last year came to an agreement with ESPN and Fox on a six-year extension worth more than $2 billion that runs through 2030-31. 

As shown in the following map, Colorado is not far from the Big 12's main geographic cluster of schools running from Kansas down through Texas (underlined schools are new members that will be joining the conference this fall or the year after).

Assuming the Big 12 wants an even number of schools, it will need to add one member (to go up to 14) or more to go higher. Landing additional Pac-12 schools such as Oregon, Utah, Arizona, and/or ASU would certainly boost the Big 12's stature. 

Another question for the conference is the excitement value of matchups between teams that are geographically distant and have no history of sports competition. BYU vs. Central Florida, anyone?

CU's departure leaves the Pac 12 with only nine schools, so the conference will need to bring in some new ones to get back to a respectable size. The school that has gotten the most attention is San Diego State, which would fill the Pac 12's void in southern California (although with nowhere near the cache of UCLA and USC). On the positive side, SDSU has built a new football stadium and the Aztec men's basketball team made the NCAA national championship game this past spring.

Other candidates for Pac-12 expansion include Southern Methodist University (giving the Pac 12 a foothold in Texas), Boise State, Fresno State, and UNLV.

Compilation of All Conferences' Changes Slated to Take Effect by 2025

Zach Miller has put together a summary of realignment-related changes scheduled to take effect by 2025 (link). For each conference, Miller lists the entering and departing teams and offers some observations.