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.

Five-Thirty-Eight on Evolution of Conference Realignments

Five-Thirty-Eight, the website famous for quantitative analyses of sports, politics, and culture, examines the evolution of conference realignments (link). What I found most interesting are geographical "footprint" maps for five conferences -- the Big Ten (B1G), Big 12, SEC, ACC, and Pac 12 -- in the years 2000, 2010, 2015, and 2025. Each of these conferences' land mass has greatly expanded from 2000 to 2025. The article also describes how, for each conference, each school's travel distance to the geographic center of each conference has grown:

In 2010, the average distance for an FBS team to its conference center was 336 miles. By 2021, that average rose to 365 miles. Within four years of that, the average will be 412 miles.

Once UCLA and USC (both located in Los Angeles) begin play in the B1G, their distance to the conference center will be 1,621 miles!

UCLA and USC to Big Ten

This came out of nowhere! As I started listening to a Lubbock-based sports radio show this afternoon at 3:00 pm Central, I was shocked to hear that longtime Pacific 12 schools UCLA and USC would be joining the Big Ten (B1G), effective 2024. As someone who attended both UCLA (undergrad) and Michigan (graduate school), I'm very excited about the move. Let's go to the map...

As you can see, the two Los Angeles-based schools are geographically distant from the rest of the B1G schools. It is approximately 1,500 miles from LA to Lincoln, Nebraska (previously the westernmost B1G institution). Aside from distance, however, UCLA and USC are a good fit for the B1G, athletically, academically, and culturally.

Athletically, UCLA and USC have a long history of competing against B1G schools in major events. From New Year's Day 1947 to 2001, the Rose Bowl football game always matched the winners of the Pac 12 and B1G (or their predecessor conferences). The Pac 12-B1G Rose Bowl rivalry was sometimes disrupted post-2001 to accommodate the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and College Football Playoff systems, but Pac 12 and B1G teams still met in the Rose Bowl as often as possible in more recent years. Hence, fans of USC and (to a lesser extent) UCLA have lots of memories of their teams taking on Ohio State, Michigan, and other B1G schools in the Rose Bowl. 

The Bruins and Trojans have faced off with B1G schools in NCAA-tournament competition in other sports, as well, such as men's and women's basketball, men's and women's tennis, women's volleyball, baseball, and softball (UCLA only, as USC does not participate in this sport).

Academically, UCLA and USC are members of the elite 65-school Association of American Universities, as are 13 of the prior 14 B1G members (all except Nebraska). If academics were the major driving factor of conference realignment -- rather than football success and television viewership -- then Stanford and UC Berkeley would almost certainly be joining UCLA and USC in switching from the Pac 12 to the B1G (although, Stanford and Cal's television market of San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose is No. 6 in the US).

Culturally, with enrollments in the high 40,000s, UCLA and USC resemble many B1G schools. Also, like UCLA and USC, some B1G schools are in or near large cities (Northwestern, Minnesota, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Maryland, and Rutgers). Finally, even though current and future B1G students do well academically, they also enjoy their time outside the classroom and library. In a 2021 Newsweek magazine compilation of top party schools, in fact, Ohio State ranked No. 23, Michigan State No. 19, Indiana No. 14, Iowa No. 13, Penn State No. 11, USC No. 9, Illinois No. 8, and Wisconsin No. 3. 

Spillover effects of the UCLA and USC departures on the Pac 12 are certain, along with effects on other conferences as the dominos topple. In future entries, I will examine where the Pac 12 might go from here.

ESPN.com Introduces Realignment Tracker Focused on College Hoops

ESPN.com now has a page devoted entirely to documenting universities' conference shifts, with a focus on college basketball (LINK). Basketball has far more Division I conferences (32) than does football (10), so this new tracking site will be a lot more informative than ones dedicated to football. 

Big 12 Reportedly Eyeing Four Schools to Join Conference

The Big 12 may actually have 12 schools before long. According to reports circulating yesterday, the conference may soon invite Brigham Young University (BYU), Central Florida (UCF), Cincinnati, and Houston to become members. Currently, the Big 12 has only 10 schools and with the departure of Oklahoma and Texas in the next few years, will be down to eight. Hence the four new schools would bring the total back up to 12. 

Adding schools in the East (particularly Cincinnati) will alleviate some of West Virginia's current travel burden, with all of the other schools being well to the west. Morgantown, WV and Cincinnati are only a one-hour flight apart (about five or six hours driving).

Here in Lubbock (and perhaps in Fort Worth and Waco, as well), adding Houston to the Big 12 has not been popular, as it introduces a competing school from a huge metropolis within the same state. Others, however, see Houston's status as the fifth-most populated metro area as a strength. UH has also built a new football stadium and renovated its basketball arena, and made last season's Final Four in men's hoops.

I always come back to geographic or historical rivalries, though. Thus, prospective match-ups such as Iowa State-UCF or BYU-WVU, regardless of which sport, don't really excite me very much.

Pac-12 Stands Pat "At This Time"

The Pacific-12 Conference will remain at a dozen schools "at this time," according to an ESPN.com article published this afternoon. From my location in Lubbock, Pac-12 expansion was viewed by many as a possible landing spot for Texas Tech and other Big-12 schools in the aftermath of football powers Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big-12 for the Southeastern Conference (SEC). 

Now, speculation will only intensify regarding whether the Big-12 (now down to eight schools) will expand to get back to 10 or 12 members. According to the ESPN.com article:

If the Big 12 is able to lure in valuable programs -- most likely from the American Athletic Conference -- and remain a Power 5 entity, the overall landscape would remain relatively stable. 

If the AAC is able to hold the upper hand, though, and lure Big 12 schools to make a case to become a Power 5 league, it could create another tremor that might cause the Pac-12 to rethink its position.

Instead of expanding, the Pac-12 has formed an "alliance" with the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). The alliance has not been defined very precisely, but appears to include increased non-conference football games between teams in these leagues. According to the ESPN.com article, people within the Pac-12 seem to be banking on the alliance increasing its schools' visibility on a national scale, while maximizing revenue:

The hope within the Pac-12 is that the partnership with the ACC and Big Ten will allow the league to play across different time zones and form new rivalries -- all without having to split the revenue beyond the current 12 teams.

It's Official: Oklahoma and Texas Moving to SEC

That was fast! Only nine days after the first reports that Oklahoma and Texas could be headed to the SEC has the change been finalized. Both schools' boards of regents have now officially accepted the SEC's offer to join. According to the linked article:

The next step is to determine when the move will become a reality -- and what happens to the eight Big 12 schools left behind. On Monday, Texas and Oklahoma issued a joint statement saying that they intend to remain in the Big 12 through June 30, 2025, when the current Big 12 media rights deal expires -- but it's possible that the schools will attempt to exit sooner. Each university would have to pay a penalty of at least $75 million to $80 million to break that agreement or hope that the Big 12 dissolves before the contract expires.

Aside from the pun on "exit sooner," the interesting thing to me in that paragraph is the idea that OU and UT would stay in the Big 12 through June 2025. That would mean four more years of the two schools competing in the Big 12 as a sort of lame duck, which doesn't seem realistic. Some commentators have suggested that the $75-80 million-dollar exit fee would not be a major impediment to Oklahoma and Texas leaving earlier.

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About a week after I arrived in Lubbock in 1997 to begin my faculty career at Texas Tech (where I still am), I purchased a Big 12 t-shirt as shown below. Back during the 2010-2011 round of conference realignment, I started marking off schools' departures (on an image of my shirt, not the shirt itself). Losses back then included Texas A&M and Missouri to the SEC, Colorado to the then-PAC 10, and Nebraska to the B1G (Big 10). TCU and West Virginia joined the Big 12 at the time to give it 10 teams. It's taken another 10 years for any new changes to occur, but now they have in the form of Oklahoma and Texas's move to the SEC. Accordingly, I have updated my t-shirt diagram...

OU, UT to SEC Looking More and More Likely

From ESPN.com, things seem to be moving forward with the potential departure of Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12 to the SEC. If completed, the move would give the SEC 16 teams. Considerable media attention has been focusing on the implications for other prominent conferences. Will the Big 10 (which has 14 teams) and Pacific 12 also try to get up to 16 teams? Will Notre Dame finally join a conference for football (the Fighting Irish are part of the ACC for other sports)?

Here in Lubbock (and in other Big 12 cities, I suspect), people are speculating on what will happen to the eight schools (potentially) left behind after OU and UT are gone (although the Big 12 started out with 12 schools in 1996, it has had only 10 schools since the last major conference-realignment shuffling about 10 years ago). Though the Big 12 could try to build back up, others believe it would dissolve and its teams disperse.

Many are speculating that the Pac 12 might want to bring its membership up to 16. If so, it could absorb up to four Big 12 schools, possibly those that are in the southwestern U.S. (Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, TCU, and Baylor). I have also seen conjecture that Iowa State and Kansas State might be of interest to the Pac 12, along with Boise State and BYU (although some observers see obstacles to BYU joining the Pac 12). 

The University of Kansas (KU) and perhaps Iowa State have been mentioned as two schools that could bring the Big 10 up to 16 teams. Both are members of the academically prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU), as are nearly all of the current Big 10 schools.

West Virginia, which alone among Big 12 schools, is in the eastern U.S., perhaps would land in the ACC.

Oklahoma and Texas May Be Moving to the SEC and the Announcement Could Be Only Weeks Away

Oklahoma and Texas have reached out to the SEC about joining the conference and things look like they may be getting serious, according to reports.

UConn Said to Be Moving Back to Big East

If you've followed conference realignment over the past decade or so, you'll know that the Big East evolved from a basketball-focused conference, concentrated in the northeastern U.S., to a much larger league taking in football schools further to the south and west. It then split back up into a northeastern, basketball-oriented "Big East" and a catch-all conference of the rest of the teams known as the "American Athletic Conference." Connecticut, with a football program, went with the AAC.  I diagrammed the split in this 2013 posting.

Now comes word that UConn, an original Big East member (dating back to 1979), will exit the AAC to return to the Big East. Both in terms of tradition and geographic proximity, I think this is a good move. The one major challenge will be placing Connecticut's football team in a conference, as the current Big East does not sponsor the sport.

NY Times Analyzes: "Is Your College Football Team in the Wrong League?"

The New York Times looks at major programs such as Arkansas, Nebraska, and Texas A&M to analyze how their moves from one conference to another have affected their won-loss records and finances.

Big 12 Expansion Seems to Be Heating Up

The prospects of the Big 12 conference (currently with 10 schools) expanding seem to run hot and cold. Right now, on the heels of the Big 12's football media days, the temperature is as warm as I can remember it being in a long time.

According to this Dallas Morning News article, "The Big 12's board of directors, comprised of school presidents and chancellors, voted unanimously Tuesday in [Dallas suburb] Irving to have Commissioner Bob Bowlsby contact and evaluate schools that have expressed an interest in joining the conference, then reporting back."

ESPN reports conducting an anonymous poll of Big 12 coaches on their top-two preferences (among non-Power 5 schools) to bring into the league. Here are the results:

Houston and BYU each received five votes. Cincinnati and Memphis tied for third with four votes each, followed by Colorado State and UCF with one vote apiece.

I personally favor bringing in the top-four vote-getters (Houston, BYU, Cincy, and Memphis). Bringing in only UH and BYU would do nothing to relieve West Virginia's travel burden (and in fact trips from Morgantown, West Virginia to Provo, Utah are 1,673 miles in the air).

Five 16-Team Super-Conferences?

ESPN.com writer Ryan McGee shares his "utopian" vision of conference realignment.

Expanding the Big 12 Back to 12 Teams? The Topic That Never Dies

Sports Illustrated/Campus Rush presents a thorough overview article on the topic of Big 12 expansion and the related issue of a conference title game for football (link). I don't know that there's much new in the article, but there are some tidbits such as the implications of the leadership turmoil at the University of Texas and the possibilities for a full-time Big 12 television network. As far as possible schools to add to the current 10, the article focuses on Cincinnati (to combat West Virginia's geographical isolation) and BYU, consistent with conventional wisdom.