Not your father’s conferences
With money driving it, college realignment likely to pick up steam
Conference realignment in college sports has been going on since 1984, when the Supreme Court invalidated the NCAA’s national TV contract for football.
The conference-juggling has gone through ebbs and flows through the years since, from small schools bumping up to bigger leagues to power programs switching to other major conferences.
The latest move, USC and UCLA bolting the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, might be part of a tectonic shift. It’s not just because of the marquee schools involved, but it’s also because it happened at a time when the NCAA is looking to take a more decentralized approach to governing college athletics, handing more power to schools and conferences.
‘‘You might think this is more seismic because it’s involving wealthier schools — and arguably it is — but also it’s seismic because the underpinnings of the system, the foundations of the system, are being challenged at a time when the financial structure is exploding,’’ Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist said Friday. ‘‘It may have larger ramifications, but it is a process that’s been ongoing.’’
The decisions by USC and UCLA to join the Big Ten in 2024 come roughly a year after Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference.
While surprising, even to Pac-12 officials, the announcement Thursday gives the Los Angeles schools stability and exposure in a shifting college-sports landscape.
‘‘It’s huge for our student-athletes, just from a national exposure perspective,’’ UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond said. ‘‘They’re going to compete at the highest level in a major elite conference in different time zones. UCLA is always national, but now we have the ability for student-athletes to showcase their talent across the country. That’s exciting.’’
For all the other benefits, the bottom line to the defections is the bottom line.
The SEC has become a college football behemoth that distributed $54.6 million to each of its member schools in the 2021 fiscal year. The Big Ten has tried to keep up and had a per-school distribution of $46.1 million last year.
The Pac-12 had the lowest distribution number among Power Five conferences, paying its member institutions $19.8 million in 2021.
At the core, it’s all about TV. The SEC has a $3 billion deal with ESPN that’s set to start in 2024, and the Big Ten is in the midst of negotiating a massive media-rights deal. The Pac-12 has floundered when it comes to TV because its network has struggled to gain footing while many of its games are played late at night.
Because costs to run college athletic programs have climbed in recent years, moving to an even bigger conference provides more financial stability. For the Big Ten, adding UCLA and USC gives it a foothold in the second-largest media market in the country.
‘‘Money talks,’’ said Tom McMillen, the president and CEO of Lead1, which represents Football Bowl Subdivision athletic directors and programs.
The defections will create two mega-conferences that will hold the majority of power and money, leaving the rest of leagues scrambling to keep up. The tiering might stratify even more if the SEC and the Big Ten continue to expand, which might be the next step.
Not to mention that more schools in the Pac-12 and Big 12, along with those in the Atlantic Coast Conference, might look to bolt for more stability.
Conferences losing members likely will face two options: combining with another league to form a mega-conference of their own or expanding their current membership. The Pac-12 said it plans to take the expansion route, issuing a statement Friday that said it is exploring all expansion options.
‘‘You have exploding costs on one end and your revenue sources are being decimated, which is a tremendous pressure,’’ Zimbalist said. ‘‘On the other hand, what do you do? Well, something pretty radical, I think, is going to have to happen.’’
Uncertainty is the only thing that’s certain at this point.