By Drew Brawley
Fall 2023
College Football is the sport that rules America and single-handedly dictates the emotions of everyone who watches it. Football has been a part of collegiate athletics ever since Rutgers played Princeton in 1869 (Katz, 2023). From this time, not only has it revolutionized the media industry but also the athletic industry (Cocco, 2023). The early chaos of teams playing sporadically without organization could not go on forever. Thus ushering in the creation of college football conferences.
It’s no surprise that when pro sports athletes started to get paid, an argument had to be made for college athletes to get their cut. This is where the idea of NIL was born. NIL, or Name Image and Likeness, allows athletes to make money from their play on the field and endorsements off the field (Jackson, 2021, 11). I believe college football paired with NIL is the reason for realignment of college sports conferences, specifically the Power 5 conferences: the BIG 10, SEC, ACC, Big 12, and the one that was led to slaughter by the NIL, the Pac 12. To unpack this idea further, we’re going to have to go through the history of college football conferences.
First, we need to examine how the college conferences started and how they shifted. Second, we need to look at where the conferences are now and what they are doing. Lastly, where the conferences are headed and the impact of NILon them must be looked at. Examining how the conferences started required the use of a full 124-year timeline from the start to present of the teams and conferences. This is the start of a “geological journey” to argue how the conferences/teams realigned and then how NIL played a role in all of it.
Years after the first college football game 1869, legislatures came together to form the rules that would lay the foundation for college football today. To name a couple: establishing the line of scrimmage, setting the number of plays to get a first down, and offsides/false starts (Mandel, 2023). But this doesn’t explain how these conferences formed and then realigned. With the Western Conference being formed in 1896, conference realignment now has a platform to begin (Mandel, 2023).
It all started long ago when Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin and Chicago decided to come together and form the Western Conference (Editors, 2023). As they played their games, there seemed to be no drama on the surface, but down below, there was some shifting going on. The conference met with three teams who wanted to possibly join their conference: Iowa, Indiana, and Notre Dame (Mandel, 2023). After the meeting, Iowa and Indiana got invited into the conference, while Notre Dame got left in the dust (Mandel, 2023). This was the first instance of conference realignment, and little did they know this would start a chain reaction that would repeat itself throughout the course of history. Shortly after the new members came into the conference, Michigan left the Western Conference over a game’s length dispute, but then pulled a 180 and went back to the conference in 1917 (Editors, 2023). Ohio State, who now plays against their arch rival Michigan in “The Game”, joined the Western Conference while Michigan was boycotting (Mandel, 2023). The Western Conference during this time, as they were the dominant conference in American college athletics (Dunnavant, 2004, 39), but they were about to go through a change to the “brand” that would stay with the college to the present day.
This “power conference” soon instituted a name change to what we now know as the “BIG 10” (Katz, 2023). The BIG 10 continued to bolster their numbers by adding Michigan State to their ranks (Editors, 2023). Most notably, Penn State, which was one of the best independent schools in the country, joined the BIG 10 in 1990. That not only added to the BIG 10’s dominance but also led to the start of the fall of independent schools (aside from Notre Dame) (Mandel, 2023). The BIG 10 now had a monopoly over the entire east and midwest, evidenced by how many BIG 10 football games flooded their TVs (Dunnavant, 2004, 6). To add more teams to their massive coverage area, the BIG 10 went looking for a blueblood. They searched and searched, but eventually settled on Nebraska. Nebraska was a powerhouse football program back in the 90s, boasting memorable, amazing players such as Ahman Green (Babcock, 2019). This team seemed like the perfect fit for the hard-nosed BIG 10. The conference would soon add Nebraska in 2010, after they completed their last season with the Big 12 (Mandel, 2023). The final teams to round off the BIG 10 were Maryland and Rutgers, who both joined in 2012, in a period when there were a lot of rumors about teams being recruited by other conferences (Mandel, 2023). All of this being said, the BIG 10 didn’t have as much drama as the other conferences during this chaotic college football carousel. The same could not be said though for the present football kingpin of the nation, the South Eastern Conference (SEC).
Let’s rewind the clock back to the beginning once again. The year is 1921, which is the birth year of the Southern Conference (Katz, 2023). The 23 teams that made up the Southern Conference were shaping it to be the premiere conference for football in the nation. However, in 1932, 13 of the 23 teams split from the rest and ended up forming the SEC, which is now the undisputed best football conference in America (Mandel, 2023). The SEC remained strong with the teams it had, and the conference did not lose any teams until 1964, when Georgia Tech left the conference to explore independent opportunities (Editors, 2023). This proved to be a very bad business decision for Georgia Tech, because as the SEC continued to get more competitive, the conference team started raking in cash, and Georgia Tech missed out on all of it (Mandel, 2023).
The ambition of the SEC showed when they started making money moves. Rumors of who would be added to the conference next began to spread again when some thought Texas and Texas A&M would join the rising conference, when in reality, Arkansas and South Carolina both accepted their invitations to join the SEC (Editors, 2023). Unbeknownst to everyone else, that goal, as well as even more expansion, was the handiwork of the SEC commissioner, Roy Kramer; he was trying to get more teams to the conference, so the conference championship could have one team from each of the two divisions, instead of just having the same top two teams every year (Mandel, 2023). Having a team from each division play each other is the current model the SEC has now, and as the commissioner at time probably knew, this model would make the conference very rich.
Now the SEC isn’t the only conference that is making millions off their athletics. Even though NIL aspects[1] are way more prevalent today than previously, the conferences still made money off of football and other sports through viewership and sponsorships (Dunnavant, 2004, 247) . The one thing that has stayed the same throughout the history of college football especially, is the unintentional use of trickle down economics. For those that don’t know, trickle down economics is where tax breaks and benefits for corporations and the wealthy will trickle down to eventually benefit everyone (Kenton, 2022). It is way clearer today, seeing that the SEC is the strongest football conference by far, and as a result, receives the most money and better athletes all around. Back then this issue was in its infancy when people began to see the favoritism towards the “bigger name” conferences like the SEC and the BIG 10 (Hernandez, 2023). All NIL has done is make it an even larger issue, because now SEC schools predominantly have greater pull for recruiting the best athletes and the better schools to their conference, and that makes a very big talent gap between the other conferences and teams (Hernandez, 2023). This issue will be expanded as we continue, but just remember that money, specifically NIL aspects, is a big reason these conferences are shifting so much.
The SEC in the years following gave off the impression they were done with growing their conference, but they weren’t done with their napoleon-like expansion just yet. The early 2000s were dominated by two conferences: the SEC and the Big 12 (which I will talk about later), and that’s where the SEC focused their sights. They couldn’t go after the juggernauts of the Big 12, like Texas and Oklahoma. On the other hand, the SEC did have enough stature and pull to go after teams like Texas A&M and Missouri, and that’s exactly what they did. Talks began between both teams and the SEC in 2010, and a year later, Texas A&M and Missouri joined the ranks of the SEC (Mandel, 2023). The nation’s most powerful football conference was now complete for the time being.
During the BIG 10 and SEC’s historic rise, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) was starting to form. Following the fracture of the Southern Conference, Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, NC State, South Carolina and Wake Forest left and came together to create the ACC (Katz, 2023). The ACC hit the ground running recruiting other teams, so that they could expand their newly formed conference. During December of 1953, just a couple months after the conference’s founding, Virginia got invited to join. The ACC planned to invite Virginia Tech, but strangely, they weren’t invited into the conference for another five decades (Mandel, 2023). With how long it took the ACC to get back to Virginia Tech, some would think that expansion was over for the ACC. But the ACC was not done yet.
The ACC went toe to toe with the SEC to recruit a powerhouse school at the time, Florida State (Mandel, 2023). The pendulum between the conferences kept swinging until it landed on the ACC, and Florida State officially joined on September 14,1990 (Katz, 2023). The standoff presented here was the first major event in college athletic history where the conferences involved actively developed distaste for each other. The distaste and drama for the ACC seemed to only be getting started. That could not have been more true. In 2003, the Big East (presently a non-Power 5 school) accused the ACC of trying to pull multi-national champion, Miami, away from the conference (Mandel, 2023). For a time, it only seemed like a rumor, but later in 2003, the ACC added Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College (who came the next year). Syracuse, Pitt and Louisville all came in 2011 (Mandel, 2023). The ACC is now dominating the east coast and solidifying itself as a Power 5 conference. Elsewhere in the country, America would have to bid farewell to one of the most historic conferences in the history of the sport.
The Southwest Conference, one of the longest tenured conferences in history, died due to conference realignment (Katz, 2023). The scandals that plagued the SC were self-inflicted wounds that the teams needed to see, for them to start exploring other options (Mandel, 2023). Texas was one of the main states involved with the SC. Boasting the teams Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor, and after the scandals, those four schools were invited and later joined the Big 8 Conference in 1994 (Mandel, 2023). The Big 8’s addition of these four teams led to them changing to the name we’re all too familiar with today, the Big 12 (Editors, 2023).
The Big 12 became one of the most competitive conferences in the nation, having powerhouses Texas and Nebraska. The conference would remain together and compete without having to worry about realignment until 2010. That year, there was a news story stating the “Pac 10” was trying to pull Big 12 teams to join their conference (Mandel, 2023). Not only did the Pac 10 get Colorado, but the other conferences smelled blood in the water, and the SEC nabbed Texas A&M and Missouri (Editors, 2023). Adding to the madness, the BIG 10 won over Nebraska (Katz, 2023). The Big 12 made a fire drill effort to keep the conference from collapse by recruiting TCU and West Virginia (Mandel, 2023). Sure, the Big 12 lost four teams to the realignment craze, but they saved themselves from destruction, losing an average of two teams. From this point the Big 12 rested easy for a good decade. Then, crisis struck again for the Big 12 once news dropped in 2021 that Texas and Oklahoma were exploring the options to join the SEC (Mandel, 2023). We now know Texas and Oklahoma are officially joining the SEC in 2024. To clarify(especially since everyone knows Texas and Oklahoma brought the most money into the conference), the Big 12 sought teams to bring in. A few years after news of Texas’ and Oklahoma’s possible departure, the Big 12 added BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston (Editors, 2023). The move was probably the smartest thing the Big 12 could do; they knew the past mistake of letting four teams go and only bringing in two. So, they let two go and brought four in to cover losses of both realignment periods. We will soon find out that the Big 12 is far from finished. The Big 12 did a good job of recovery, but the last conference in this long journey wasn’t so smart or fortunate.
The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was a mirror image of the ACC, and some consider it was a deeper conference, in terms of talent, compared to its east coast counterpart. Like the Southwest Conference, the PCC fell victim to itself when corruption got the best of it (Mandel, 2023). More specifically, the PCC let scandals amongst schools’ “NIL collectives” of the time run rampant, which brought about the end of the conference in 1959 (Mandel, 2023). The schools were left adrift, alone, and not knowing what lay ahead of them. Almost a decade later, five of the original PCC schools came together to create the Pac-8 (Editors, 2023). Eight years after its formation, the Pac-8 became the Pac-10 when they added Arizona and Arizona State (Mandel, 2023). The mood around the Pac-10 finally calmed down for a bit, with about 34 years of peace. But in 2010, the Pac-10 jumped at the opportunity to poach schools from the wounded Big 12 (like many other conferences did). From the schools that were “up for sale” the Pac-10 acquired Colorado and Utah (not from the Big 12) to complete the conference of today’s Pac-12 (Katz, 2023). Most would think the story ends for the Pac-12 there, but this could not be more wrong. How the conferences looked then will be completely different from how they look now, and going forward.
When the news broke that the Pac-12 would be essentially dissolving in 2024, the sports fans of America were heartbroken and wanted to know why. There were multiple reasons for this: the distaste for the league, NIL, but most importantly, poor management (Geary, 2023). The present Pac-12 commissioner, George Kliavkoff, had many opportunities to save his conference from imploding. 2021, in my opinion, he made his first mistake when, after learning Texas and Oklahoma were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC, he failed to recruit other teams from the Big 12 to come to the Pac-12 (Insider, 2023). His most notable mistake however, was his inability to renew a TV rights deal for the conference (Geary, 2023). Now this may not seem significant, but if a conference doesn’t have a TV rights deal, then their games will not be broadcasted. The absence of a rights deal will lead a conference to start hemorrhaging money, and that is exactly what happened to the Pac-12 (Insider, 2023).
The Pac-12’s bleeding didn’t just come from lack of TV rights, it also came from lack of performance and depth within the conference. Prior to Washington making it to the College Football Playoff this year, the Pac-12 has only had 2 teams make it to the CFP, and none of those teams won a national championship (Geary, 2023). Although this was the most successful year for the Pac-12’s performance and TV viewership in a long time, with 10 of the 12 teams leaving the conference, this “miracle year” wasn’t enough to save it from destruction. Oregon State and Washington State are the only two schools that remain. Both intend to try and keep what’s left of the conference alive by playing as the lone Pac-12 game, along with other non-conference teams around the nation (Geary, 2023). If you ask most sports fans, they would tell you this conference is dead, and the two teams left are functioning as independents (similar to Notre Dame), while still holding on to the past. That left sports fans to wonder, “Where are the other schools that left for greener pastures?”.
The first to jump ship from the Pac-12 after it started to sink were historic rivals USC and UCLA. In the summer of 2022, a news story dropped that USC and UCLA would be joining the ranks of the BIG 10 at the beginning of the 2024 college football season (Geary, 2023). The Pac-12 frantically tried to convince the schools to stay, but the domino effect had already started. A little over a year later, the Pac-12 got word that Oregon and Washington would also be joining the BIG 10, also before the start of the 2024 season(Geary, 2023). With their new additions, the BIG 10 sits comfortably, as what most fans now consider the second best college football conference in the nation. But the BIG 10 isn’t the only conference ripping away teams from the dumpster fire.
The 2023 college football regular season has come to a close, and Texas and Oklahoma are off to the SEC in 2024. The Big 12 had already added four teams this past season to cover the loss, but Big 12 Commissioner, Brett Yormark, was still hungry for more. Since the rest of the Pac-12 was up for grabs and in disarray, the Big 12 set their sights on four new members. Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado are now slated to be the newest additions to the Big 12 in 2024, which leaves the Pac 12 still “rotting” with four teams left (Geary, 2023). Now for the Big 12 this was a really interesting move. Not all of the schools that join are known for being good at football. It’s common knowledge that Arizona is a basketball giant, Arizona State is a golfing powerhouse, Utah’s years of consistently good football are very recent, and Colorado has a ways to go, hiring Deion Sandersto revitalize their football program. The goal of the Big 12 to bring these schools in was not just for the sports, but also the revenue that they would generate for the conference (Insider, 2023). The problem with the Pac-12 was that the teams weren’t generating enough revenue for their school or the conference consistently, which was mainly due to the conference’s poor leadership as previously stated (Insider, 2023). The past season was, in many college football fans’ eyes, the Pac-12’s “golden year” that could’ve not happened at a more unfortunate time (Geary, 2023). The Big 12 is now in prime position to capitalize off the Pac-12’s success and make more revenue than they were with Texas and Oklahoma in the conference. Both the Big 12 and BIG 10 profited heavily off of the sinking ship of the Pac-12, but there’s still one more “player” in this game that hammered the final nail into the Pac-12’s coffin.
Of the four teams left in the Pac-12, Oregon State, Washington State, Cal, and Stanford, only two would be “saved” by another conference. Cal and Stanford will be the last Pac-12 teams to leave after the ACC invited them to join in 2024 (Insider, 2023). The move by the ACC preserves it as a Power 5 conference and possibly prevents it from going through what the Pac-12 did (Geary, 2023). An issue that has been a part of college football for a while is regionality, and it’s been amplified because of this recent age of realignment (Klatt, 2023). For example, the ACC is the Atlantic Coast Conference, so it’s a little awkward that teams from the west coast are going to be a part of this conference. This also requires athletes to travel large distances often to completely different time zones to compete. These are just a couple minor issues that will take a few years to get used to, but I believe that this realignment will benefit college football overall. With that said, the recent wave of realignment for the ACC and other conferences couldn’t have happened without what some see as the greatest, and others see as the worst, innovation in college athletics.
Perhaps the biggest story in the history of college athletics broke in 2021, when the U.S. government voted to approve that collegiate athletes could officially make money from their name, image, and likeness, otherwise known as NIL (Parks, 2023). It has completely reshaped the landscape of college sports, especially college football. In the words of Fox commentator, Joel Klatt, as stated before the start of the 2023 season, “NIL has I believe created a golden age of college football and I believe that we are at the dawn of that golden age. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher.” (Klatt, 2023). Joel Klatt played football at Colorado, before NIL (Klatt, 2023), so his view that we’re in the “golden age” of college football is spot on. NIL has influenced the college football landscape so much that players who would’ve left college early to go to the NFL are now staying in college, which is making the sport better than ever (Klatt, 2023). Athletes getting paid for their play on the field has other positives as well; creating a better atmosphere for fans, gaining more depth in the sport, and most notably (and my personal favorite thing), the return of the NCAA Football video game (Parks, 2022). All this is a byproduct of NIL, thus making college football one of the most profitable businesses in the nation (Parks, 2022). NIL has brought benefits not only to college football, but college sports in general. However, with something as far reaching as NIL, some negatives do exist.
The college football landscape has changed dramatically since NIL has entered the playing field. NIL has provided those involved in college athletics more autonomy than they ever have (Klatt, 2023). Players, even coming straight out of high school, can be recruited by certain schools that use NIL dollars to their advantage (Hernandez, 2023). This essentially creates a “bidding war” on players, which can lead to tampering and more corruption (Klatt, 2023). In addition, college players are transferring more than ever, and NIL has a part to play in it (Klatt, 2023). As of 2021, collegiate athletes can transfer to another school and get immediate eligibility to play the next season (Skarecky, 2023). This gives players all the more reason to transfer. If a player isn’t getting utilized, the team is about to severely decline, or another team has better NIL “opportunities” then the player will often enter the transfer portal. But of all these reasons, the NIL portion of the transfer portal is what brings us to the last problem.
The last problem posed by NIL, previously mentioned, is the competitive balance of college football. Competitive balance is what makes college football great and realistically makes up its identity (Eckard, 1998, 354). This is slowly getting disrupted by NIL. The Power 5, which is now the “Power 4” because of the Pac-12’s destruction, is now being “run” by 2 conferences: The SEC and The BIG 10 (Klatt, 2023). Since the SEC and BIG 10 have the most NIL opportunities, they have brought in the best teams, which causes an imbalance with the other conferences (Hernandez, 2023). We went from the Power 5 to the “Power 4” to essentially, the “Power 2”. The competitive balance in college football clearly needs to change in the near future, otherwise the dearly loved sport will become unrecognizable. But this only changes if NIL changes too.
NIL overall is a good thing, but it needs to be amended if it’s going to stay that way. It gives players the opportunity to make money in college, and that is important, especially since they are putting their bodies and futures on the line. On the flip side, NIL shouldn’t be used as a corruptive ploy by athletic departments to get athletes to their school (Unnecessary Roughness, 2022). There have been many solutions proposed to fix this, but there’s only one that seems plausible. Joel Klatt’s idea is to have a committee, completely separate from the NCAA, to govern NIL and make sure colleges abide by the regulations (Klatt, 2023). With this idea in action, I believe NIL could be fixed and prevent the beloved sport from destroying itself.
College football realignment has been going on since its creation, and it is my personal belief that the past and present waves will benefit the sport in the long run. The only way to make sure the sport doesn’t fall victim to itself is to not allow money as the primary driver of the sport. Money will always be a part of college football (especially with NIL in the picture), but if we let it alone dictate how the sport is played and the quality of the game, then it will become a shell of its former self. In 1 Timothy 6:10 of the Bible, it says, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” (King James Version). If the lesson of this verse remains in the minds of those who love this sport, then college football will have a bright future.
Works Cited
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