–> Conference realignment has dominated the headlines for the past week or so. I thought there was no time better than the present to offer up some of my opinions on the whole situation.
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, everyone has seen that Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State are Big 12 bound, while Oregon and Washington are heading to the Big Ten, seemingly putting an end to the PAC 12 conference as we know it. Rightfully so, many people are now concerned about the future of college athletics. One thing I continue seeing on my timeline is people saying, “This ruins everything that’s good about college sports.” I then ask myself why?
Rivalries:
Along with many other people, my biggest frustration with realignment is the disregard for the history of the sport and specifically rivalries. Most notably, Oregon State and Washington State have been in the same conference as their intra-state rivals (Oregon and Washington) for over 100 years. While changing conferences certainly makes it harder to play your rival, it shouldn’t make it impossible. Matchups like Iowa/Iowa State, Georgia/Georgia Tech, Louisville/Kentucky, Florida/Florida State and Clemson/South Carolina always happen annually between programs that are not in the same conference. Therefore there is no reason why the Civil War and Apple Cup cannot continue, but it is now up to schools and not the conference. So while everyone complains about how rivalries like Oklahoma/Oklahoma State or Nebraska/Colorado have or will end due to realignment, there is still no reason why the Huskies and Ducks cannot play their rivals in the non-conference instead of an FCS team. So ultimately, while realignment seems like it’s putting a damper on some historic rivalries, some have existed outside of conference play for as long as the sport has existed.
T.V. Contracts/Money:
Money will always impact any major decisions regarding an entertainment product, especially one like college football. At this point I believe Washington State, Oregon State, Cal and Stanford fans should be mad at the new PAC 12 comissioner George Kliavkoff more than anyone. It’s pretty obvious that realignment has always been driven by money from T.V. contracts. With that being said Big 12 comissioner Brett Yormak did a tremendous job to keep his conference in-tact after the departure of Texas and Oklahoma. Signing a new TV contract after adding UCF, BYU, Cincinnati and Houston, made the Big 12 desireable for schools like Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado. This will not likely keep the Big 12 on the power conference level. I bring this up because Kliavkoff seemed disorganized and unbothered by rebuilding the PAC 12 after USC and UCLA left. Adding schools like San Diego State, SMU, Boise State or Fresno State could’ve easily been what the conference needed to get a better T.V. deal to intice its member instiutions to stay in the conference.
I am simply baffled at how poorly Kliavkoff and the PAC 12 handled the last 12 months. Instead of pointing your hate at the schools, Oregon and Washington really had no choice, Kliavkoff gave them no choice. From an outsiders perspective it seems like there has to be more to the story, because it all fell apart so quickly.
Patience:
Conference realignment has existed for as long as college sports. League like the SWC, Big East or WAC were formerly FBS conference, but have since been defunct. Most of those decisions were also driven by money. Don’t get me wrong, this most recent group of changes are much more drastic than anything we have seen in the past, but acting like the sport is heading down the drain makes very little sense to me. I ultimate thought it was pretty naive to thing something like this was always going to happen, knowing how powerful live T.V. can still be, especially when sports has now become one of the only major events broadcasted live in America.
One other thing that has bothered me, is people acting like they know what college football will look like in five years. With Wazzu, Oregon State, Cal and Stanford currently in a conference of four, there is certainly moves to be had for all four of those institutions, while Florida State looks like they could be the first domino to fall in the ACC. So 10 years from now if all this realignment results in the end of the NCAA and a new organization running college football, I personally do not think it would be the end of the world.
Ultimately, all I ask you as a fan is to think, in the middle of October when you’re tailgating outside of Huntington Bank Stadium for another Gophers home game, is anyone of this stuff really going to matter? More than every society has become a serious victim of mob culture and I think people are starting to not even know what they’re complaining about. I would like college sports to go back to what they were as much as the next guy, but the genie is clearly out of the bottle and we are never going back. Nobody likes change, but its inneviatable, so just enjoy the ride.