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what's going on in the landscape of college athletics,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said.
As for the Big 12, its future is murky at best as the eight remaining members plot their next moves and try to work out a divorce from the Longhorns and Sooners. The realignment of Texas and Oklahoma could eventually lead the Power Five to shrink to four.
“We want and need the Big 12 to do well,” Phillips said. “The Big 12 matters in college athletics.”
But it will not be part of the alliance. The alliance is also being formed as the NCAA shakes off a Supreme Court loss and considers handing off more responsibility to conferences and schools to run college sports. The NCAA Board of Governors has called a special constitutional convention in November, the first step toward what could be sweeping reform and a decentralized governance model.
“We did the alliance to protect the collegiate model,” said Kliavkoff, who is only in his second month on the job of leading the Pac-12 after serving as president of sports and entertainment for MGM Resorts International in Las Vegas.
There is also a proposal to expand the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams currently in the pipeline. The proposal was crafted by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, and unveiled publicly in June.
Kliavkoff and Warren both said their conferences support playoff expansion, while Phillips said the ACC had not landed on a final position.
The commissioners and university presidents are scheduled to meet in late September in Chicago to discuss what comes next for the expansion proposal.
“This is not a voting bloc,” Kliavkoff said of the alliance in a brief interview with AP. “We've not committed to voting together on anything. We've committed to discuss all of these issues, and to try to come up with solutions that are in the best interest of longterm college athletics.
“I'd be surprised if we come to different conclusions with respect to how we think about CFP expansion, but it's not a voting bloc," he said.
The scheduling piece could lead to numerous nonconference football games per season and multiple team events in basketball involving ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 teams, potentially creating new and valuable television inventory.
But that could take time to come together, especially in football.
Nonconference football schedules are typically made years in advance and many schools already have mostly full slates in the coming seasons. The commissioners said they did not expect their schools to break contracts to accommodate new agreements within the alliance nor would they prohibit members from scheduling schools from other leagues.
The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 tried to make a bold statement by unveiling the alliance, but with no concrete plans in place it will start as a merely a promise to act with mutual interests in mind.
“Hopefully, this will bring some much needed stability in college athletics,” Warren said. "I also think what it will do is allow people to understand where everyone else stands. Some of the events over the last couple of months have shaken the foundations of college athletics.”