MIAMI — How to summarize the shifting of tectonic plates in the Power 5 college conferences? Here it is in a nutshell (and I use the word with care because this whole thing seems a little nutty):
— The Southeastern Conference, already reigning and preening on account of the Alabama dynasty, gets appreciably stronger, more prestigious and richer by poaching traditional powerhouses Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12 effective in 2025 at latest.
— The suckerpunched Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten and Pac-12, scrambling in the wake of the SEC’s audacious power grab, meet and quickly form an “alliance” as everybody else scrambles to figure out exactly what that will mean.
— The already diminished Big 12, bracing to lose its two biggest football programs and drop to eight schools, and left out of the ACC/Big Ten/Pac-12 alliance, drifts like a forlorn tumbleweed through a ghost town.
Is any of this good for college football? No. Instability seldom is.
What this is good for is the SEC and its soon-to-be-enriched 16-team super-conference, and everybody else be damned.
It’s a time of tumult in college football beyond teams switching conferences.
The NCAA oligarchy is losing power by degrees. The NIL law (name, image, likeness) means college athletes can be paid. The College Football Playoff weighs major expansion.
So now the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 join hands and start singing “Kumbaya” in a show of solidarity.
But why? To what end?
“The three conferences remain competitors in every sense but are committed to a collaborative approach surrounding the future evolution of college athletics and scheduling,” read the joint statement, in vague corporate-speak.
The alliance seems largely philosophical but means the three conferences will stand strong against poaching from the SEC or others, and form a voting bloc in matters such as College Football Playoff expansion, in addition to the scheduling component in football and men’s and women’s basketball.
For an ACC school like the University of Miami, it could mean Ohio State or Southern Cal on future football schedules, or maybe Indiana in basketball. (Nothing imminent, though. UM football schedule is totally booked until 2027).
Said UM director of athletics Blake James earlier this week: “The announcement was to put a stake in the ground and bring together 41 institutions that have the same vision of what the student-athlete experience should look like.”
Thursday James told the Miami Herald: “The alliance further strengthens our position in college athletics by expanding our alignment with like-minded institutions.”
All of this is vaguely fine. But imagine what could have been?
When first hearing of an ACC/Big Ten/Pac-12 “alliance,” my mind wandered into a rather sweet daydream.
Imagine a football super-league of teams from those three conferences? A best-of league?
In my dream, the 40 schools divide into two leagues, 20 each in a first and second division, determined jointly by current form and program heritage. Then moving forward — taking a page from English Premier League soccer — the bottom two to four first-division teams are relegated each year and the top two to four second-division teams are promoted.
Any school assigned to start out in the lower division that wanted out would be free to leave. (See ya, Rutgers, Wake Forest and Colorado!). After attrition, the super-league might have, say, 32 schools split into first and second divisions.
Imagine these 16 teams in an ACC/Big Ten/Pac-12 first division super-league:
Clemson, Miami, Florida State, North Carolina, Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Southern Cal, UCLA, Oregon, Stanford and Washington.
I know. That’s only 15 teams.
We’re holding a spot for Notre Dame! (Not a big stretch, since Fighting Irish are in the ACC in basketball right now, but an independent in football).
Top to bottom, this ACC/Big Ten/Pac-12 super-league would out-SEC the SEC. TV would love it. The revenue stream would be a torrent. Fans would love it.
Bzzzzzz. OK my alarm just went off. Back to reality.
The damned SEC is still king, and getting kingier.
