Ah, it’s been awhile since I’ve waded into the conference realignment mularkey.
Why is that? Well, partly because I didn’t feel a particular need to quote Joe Biden.
I also haven’t had much to add to the discussion. Many of us know the basics by this point, I think.
But more critically, my hesitation is also about the potential for sounding downright stupid.
That’s not a “me” problem, specifically, but I’m not immune. I’ve dropped some stinkers in the realignment prediction business while studiously trying to avoid doing exactly that. The minefield that is this game within a game is perilous.
Granted, some of the worst offenders in that regard don’t really mind being galactically wrong. For them it’s not about being right or wrong. They’d prefer to make noise and get attention and the aftermath can be whatever it will be. Like a loud politician overpromising and under-delivering, the show is the show, and it is king above such trivial concerns as truth or decency.
But my point is that NO ONE is immune to stepping in it.
And I’d usually prefer not to.
What compels me to jump back in is a fair bit of conviction about where this thing is actually headed, and it’s not an outline or theory that seems to be getting a whole lot of traction right now.
So, let’s talk about it some.
Where things stand
We’re creeping up on the two-year anniversary of when Oklahoma’s and Texas’ plans to leave the Big 12 for the SEC were made public. Since that point the league has been remarkably competent and unified.
(I’m sure that’s just a coincidence with two alphas no longer throwing their weight around stupidly. Yep, has to be it.)
Anywho, the league “leftovers” correctly assessed once OU and UT made clear their desire to leave that decisive action was needed, so they did two things I’d been screaming about for years:
- They explored an alliance or merger with the Pac-12.
- Failing that, they expanded with the four best teams available.
The Pac-12 scoffed at that first point, despite it making a whole lot of sense for both sides, and they also did something even dumber: they didn’t poach their pick of the Big 12’s best remaining brands.
That would make for a fascinating documentary, the insider knowledge on what went into THAT call. I mean, I’m pretty sure I can figure out the main reason (Hi, USC and UCLA!), but there were probably also some fun conversations with television partners, some academic snobbery, the whole nine yards.
But for whatever reasons, the Pac-12 said no to a merger, no to poaching, and the remaining eight Big 12 schools had little choice but to fortify the ranks. They picked up four universities – UCF, BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston – and got that expansion train rolling.
Those four schools represented something of a “get the best football programs available” approach, though there was some strategy there.
Keeping eyeballs in the State of Texas was paramount, so Houston became a buy pretty much on that basis alone.
In a similar way, UCF was less of a sure thing as a program that would compete in the near term and unlike Houston it didn’t even fit in geographically, but the Knights were more of a buy-in of their future potential (huge alumni base, fertile recruiting ground).
Cincinnati and BYU look, smell, and feel like Power-5 teams already. Cincinnati bridges the geographical gap with West Virginia, and BYU has a nice national fan base and a national title to their name … so they were each natural choices.
The “Angry 8” also moved on from Bob Bowlsby, who certainly wasn’t proactive enough about any of this stuff (but also was probably hamstrung by his constituents).
I’m being extremely charitable here, mostly because I know that most people aren’t 100% awful. But let the record show that this is the man who wouldn’t support an expanded playoff publicly or work to make it reality until it was too late, despite acknowledging it was the best thing for his conference’s health.
You’re not doing the best thing for your conference, and yet you get paid millions of dollars for … doing what’s best for your conference?
Change was needed.
Enter Brett Yormark, a business executive with a background in sports and entertainment, to shore things up. Yormark has been open about grabbing a TV deal (which he accomplished in short order) and expanding again, with a specific eye on expanding west (something that hasn’t happened yet).
What league is west of the Big 12?
Hmmm, I wonder…
The same league, the Pac-12, which has lost its two biggest brands in USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, perhaps?
Incidentally, that unfolded last summer, basically a year after Oklahoma and Texas joined the SEC.
So to sum up tidily, since we’re already getting a little long-winded here:
- The SEC gutted the Big 12 of its two biggest brands.
- The Big 12 responded by adding the four best available brands in the G5.
- The Big Ten gutted the Pac-12 of its two biggest brands.
- Now what?
And that, point 4, is where you’ll find a lot of disagreement.
Big 12 supporters believe their league, now stabilized quite a bit – because none of its teams are currently threatening to leave and because they’ve secured a TV deal – is primed to pry teams away from the Pac-12.
The shoe is on the other hand, now!
(or insert your other preferred nonsensical mixed metaphor)
The Pac-12 fans are convinced their league is in a stronger position, mostly due to historical precedent as I understand it, but also due to a particular view of the TV ratings, which if you look at them a certain way, might indicate as much.*
* If you look at them another way, they seem to favor Big 12 teams. And if you look at them from still another angle, they favor Donald Trump. Wait, that might be Nate Silver. Regardless, they’re a bit of a Rorschach test … you’re going to see what you want to see.
The reason the picture is so clouded is that the Pac-12 has been, for nearly a year now, unable to secure a long-term television deal to secure revenue and a sense of stability for its members (and potential members).
So basically, it’s put the realignment merry-go-round on pause.
And that makes sense. Why would you want to bail on a league without knowing for sure what they can offer you? Likewise, why would you join a league if the same were true?
So cooler heads are prevailing and we’ve basically taken a timeout.
But I don’t think this is going to stop fully, and here’s why.
The Big Ten and SEC aren’t done
The Big Ten and the SEC hold most of the cards in expansion, and they have the ability to essentially do whatever they want. So if they see a brand that is gettable and will add to their bottom line, they’ll pull the trigger.
They’ve shown this time and time again. What’s more, they’re basically in an arms race with one another now. There’s a keeping up with the Joneses aspect at play now, which incentivizes further growth.
They won’t stop.
Now, the tricky part of that statement is the “add to their bottom line” section. A program has to be worth enough to a TV partner to cause said partner to pay the league more for their content.
Enough that the existing shares in the league don’t go down.
The math is pretty straightforward.
Total payout / X (# of teams currently in league)
= or <
New payout / Y (new # of teams in league)
How many programs satisfy that requirement? Probably not many, which is why when people bandy about “super conference” doomsday scenarios, they aren’t looking at the biggest single factor in all of this: Money is king.
The current members of the superpower leagues aren’t going to take less money than they already get.
And the media partners aren’t going to pay more than they have to.
So, a situation where each league grabs 32 teams or some such nonsense just doesn’t pass the smell test. When someone is yammering on TV or social media about “super conferences,” they’re really just doing some kind of internal fantasy draft that has no basis in reality.
But…
Neither league will hesitate to add more universities they think will help them.
So the merry-go-round will continue a bit longer. The second-tier leagues – the Big 12, Pac-12, and ACC – are all on the firing line, and I feel comfortable in saying that some/all of them will take additional hits.
Predicting an exact number is a fool’s errand. Maybe it’s 1-2 teams. Maybe it’s 4-5. But rest assured it will happen, and when it does, those second-tier leagues will all jockey amongst themselves for the best potential lineups they can achieve in response.
This, the jockeying among those three leagues for survival and even improvement, is where in my view things are truly going to get interesting.
Who poaches from whom is going to primarily be about who will be operating from a relative position of strength.
Which leagues are valued highest by their TV partners? Those will be the league(s) that can successfully leverage their position against the other leagues in regards to adding members. This is key not only in regards to existing members, but also potential additions from the G5.
Which leagues will those schools see as being the most attractive to join?
As things currently sit, no one knows if any of these leagues will be able to get a leg up on one another. If the Pac-12 lands a competitive TV deal, they will stabilize themselves and ward off poaching. If they don’t, their teams will scatter to the winds. We just don’t know yet what’s going to happen with that yet (which is why you see so many commenters on the web predicting wildly different outcomes).
Can the Big 12 poach the Pac-12? Possibly. They’ve shown a particular interest in acquiring some combination of the “Four Corners” schools: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Arizona State.
Why those four? Well, geography helps (those schools are closest to the current Big 12 membership). But more strategically, those are four who stand to lose the most if the league’s two most valuable remaining brands, Oregon and Washington, either leave the Pac-12 or demand an unequal share of the TV revenue.
The logic is sound. If you’re an Arizona, why would you settle for a diminished league and/or lowered payout, or worse yet, not end up in a P5 “lifeboat” at all when the musical chairs end … when you could find more stability and money in the Big 12?
But again, that’s no sure thing. Uprooting those ties and nuking those relationships for a few million dollars is not a thing any school president is eager to do (assuming the difference in TV contracts even nets them that much … it might not).
Hence our current waiting game.
Oregon and Washington hold a lot of cards at present (though not as many as the SEC and Big Ten), because they aren’t tied down to their current league and are essentially “free agents” at this stage of the game.
Would the Big 10 want them?
Could they make more money in the Big 12 or ACC?
Would they go it alone?
We don’t know the answers.
But what we do know, what is probably the second biggest factor in this realignment circus, and something that no one talks about nearly enough, is where schools line up ideologically.
Many of these schools want to be with other schools that prioritize the same things they do.
And that’s the factor few people are truly considering right now.
Creating a fit
I talked at the outset about the Pac-12 passing on adding Big 12 teams when it was able to two summers back, and that inaction wasn’t due to some sense of kindness or nobility. It was a collective (or at least vocal minority)-minded snobbery.
The schools in the Pac-12 with the greatest influence fancy themselves a different caliber than the schools in the Big 12.
This is an important thing to consider when determining landing spots for everyone. We can craft certain, obvious takeaways from this knowledge, such as the likes of Stanford and Cal never in a million years considering a migration to the Big 12. But I also think it’s a critical piece of the puzzle when attempting to determine the less obvious outcomes here.
What does your organization value most?
And moreover, does your organization have sway over other institutions and can form a collective?
From that, it would be easy to say that the Pac-12 schools are all too similar to one another to leave the others for a league they might perceive as a bad fit.
But…
(And let’s just go with an actual realistic possibility here.)
What if Oregon and Washington leave?
You’re now left with a group of teams unable to command a legitimate TV deal with slightly different priorities at play.
Cal and Stanford would look to land with a good academic fit. If the Big Ten weren’t interested (and they probably aren’t, because of their desire to maintain existing payouts), I think they’d try to join forces with the ACC.
The Four Corners? Yes, some of them might try to stick with the California schools. But others of them are probably more likely to want to join a more athletic-minded league like the SEC or Big 12 (again, the SEC would be less interested than the Big 12 would).
Would certain schools in the ACC want to raise their athletic prestige in the wake of an FSU, Clemson, Miami etc. defection (something we can also reasonably posit might happen within the next 5-10 years)?
Certainly some would consider it. Louisville is an odd fit in the ACC, as an example.
Would someone like Kansas prefer the cozy confines of Tobacco Road to its current conglomeration of Ag schools and football-obsessed fan bases?
Ease of mobility is no sure thing, and you’re never going to get full alliance from a particular school’s fans and admin on best possible homes, so any of this idle speculation can easily be disputed just by an informal poll of a couple dozen people.
And yet, ask yourself: how does your school view itself?
Gun to its head, would it pick football or basketball? Academics or sports? City life or farm life?
If the money is essentially equal, these cultural considerations are going to be a factor.
Look at current Pac-12 expansion rumors. They’re not keen on adding universities that don’t fit a certain academic profile, geography be damned. Fresno State and Boise State are strong football brands who can’t get a sniff of Pac-12 interest. Meanwhile, the current rumor suggests Rice and Tulane could be headed west.
Rice and Tulane.
Hey, it’s all about how you define yourself.
If the Tobacco Road schools ultimately want to stick together and bring in some top notch basketball or perhaps some West Coast elite academic institutions (or both?), they’re probably going to have the leverage to achieve that.
If the Texas football schools want to bring in more strong athletic departments with crazy, engaged fan bases, they’ll certainly be able to position themselves as an attractive landing spot for those schools.
And if the academic powers want to align themselves with other academic-minded institutions, they’ll likely have the ability to cobble that together as well.
So back to our original example…
Washington and Oregon leave, because they have grander aspirations and the Big 10 decides (after dithering) that they want those two brands in the fold … they help their westward expansion, and they probably also don’t dilute the money. Win: win.
That effectively detonates the Pac-12, because the money after they leave just isn’t going to be good enough.
Cal and Stanford make a call to the ACC, which they gladly receive since they’re sweating bullets about upcoming defections (which probably also come to pass), and depending on the damage the ACC takes in terms of losses (perhaps Clemson, perhaps Florida State, perhaps others?), maybe they even take another school or two out West (it lessons the travel difficulties for everyone, and that becomes more critical with the money from the TV folks semi-flatlining.
Arizona and Arizona State seem like a natural fit for the Big 12, and whether Utah fans like it or not, so do they. Big state school that likes sports = Big 12 fit.
Colorado, former Big 12 founding member, probably goes with athletic success over Northern California academics too, but honestly, couldn’t we all see them go either way in that scenario?
None of this should seem too outlandish. Whether it happens in two weeks or two decades, it all sounds fairly possible.
But I do think it’s at least a reasonable possibility that the ACC loses team(s) to the Big 12 and/or vice versa, too.
As I said, money matters. But so does fit. And if the ACC is asking teams to play in California, is it really a big ask to instead go to Utah or West Texas? For teams like Pittsburgh and Louisville, joining regional opponents like WVU and Cincinnati might not seem like a bad thing … especially if the money is slightly better.
Then again, if a school is enamored of its own academics or regional rivalries in reverse, they might bolt the other direction (Welcome to the ACC, WVU and Kansas!).
The point here, that a lot of people continue to miss, is that these conferences are going to have to establish more of an identity for themselves rather than “we have a bunch of teams from all over.”
That does not, a long-term success, make.
Yormark is actively trying to position the Big 12 as the nation’s top league for basketball. He believes (probably correctly) that the league’s basketball product is undervalued. So he’s taking active steps to continue to build that brand and earn more revenue.
He’s also establishing games in new markets such as Mexico, creating camps for outreach in New York, building a shared TV event for NFL draft evaluation, and so on.
In other words, Big 12 schools are leaning into their sports.
It’s part of their DNA.
At the other end of the spectrum, Cal and Stanford have no desire to join a league that they consider beneath them. They have made clear that they want to prioritize research relationships first. They’re actively recruiting schools like Tulane and Rice for their conference.
They’re leaning into their academics.
These choices will determine where these leagues end up decades into the future.
If the Pac-12 survives, does it become a modern-day Ivy League, with a bunch of schools incapable of having high-level athletic success?
Or do those schools try to establish a collaboration with like-minded schools out East?
Can Duke and Wake Forest continue to field competitive football teams without the TV money FSU and Clemson provide?
Do they even want to try?
The current makeup of the Pac-12 and ACC have shown varying levels of commitment here.
The schools in these leagues are not the same as one another.
Certain schools within each league probably consider themselves better or at least more powerful than their brethren.
And self-definition in general absolutely varies from school to school. You’ve got all manner of schools cobbled together here.
Duke does not look at itself the same way that NC State does.
It’s just the way it is.
Can the Big 12 suffer further defections? Absolutely. Certain members may find their soulmates (philosophically speaking) elsewhere.
But the majority of the 12 schools (if not all of them) are aligned and committed. Any defection at this point would be minor in relation to what’s already occurred. And the league has something to sell to potential replacements (or additions):
A vision.
Yes, the SEC and Big Ten are the big boys at the table. And that’s not changing for a long, long time. They’ve made certain of that.
But third is up for grabs. And the Big 12, by virtue of its current institutional alignment and single-minded commitment to athletic success, is positioned to take that slot and run with it.
Honestly, I like their chances, because of this idea of alignment.
THAT’s what people are missing. And THAT’s what’s going to determine who finishes third.
Let the best conference win.
For the first time in a long time, I have a feeling it’s going to be the Big 12.