ACC, Big 10, Pac-12 aim to create stability

Facing a rapidly shifting landscape in college sports, the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten and Pac-12 have agreed to work together with the goal of creating stability during a volatile time.

Less than a month after the Southeastern Conference made an expansion power play by inviting Texas and Oklahoma to the league, three of the SEC’s Power Five peers countered with the creation of an alliance of 41 schools that span from Miami to Seattle.

During a 45-minute video conference Tuesday, the commissioners of the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 pledged broad collaboration on myriad issues and committed to league members playing more football and basketball games against each other in football and basketball.

They also suggested they wouldn’t be poaching each others schools.

“The history of college athletics, one expansion of a conference has usually led to another to another and to another,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said. “And to the three of us, we felt the stabilization of the current environment, across Division I and FBS — in Power Five in particular — this was a chance for a new direction, a new initiative that I don’t think has ever been done before.”

After weeks of discussions, the alliance is still mostly conceptual and collegial.

“There’s no contract. There’s no signed document,” Pac12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff said. “There’s an agreement among three gentlemen and a commitment from 41 presidents and chancellors and 41 athletic directors to do what we say we’re going to do.”

The SEC sent shockwaves through college athletics when it was revealed that Texas and Oklahoma would be leaving the Big 12 to join the nation’s most powerful football conference no later than 2025.