Pac-12, ACC and Big Ten form partnership without contract

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

Less than a month after the SEC 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 conference 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,“Pac-12 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 shock waves 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.

“I wouldn’t say this is a reaction to Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC, but to be totally candid, you have to evaluate 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 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 also is 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. 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. “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 long-term 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.