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Confused by all the conference changes coming major college sports within the next year? It’s been difficult to follow all the moving pieces in past weeks and months.
We knew last summer that more lucrative TV deals would soon lure UCLA and Southern California to the Big Ten for the 2024 season. Likewise, Texas and Oklahoma announced plans to move the SEC. But little did we know how many other programs also would soon be moving.
What’s transpired in the Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten in the recent weeks has grabbed most of the college realignment headlines, but big changes are coming to both the Power Five and the Group of Five by this time next year. A few we’ll see in just a few days. This season, the Big 12 will welcome three teams from the American Athletic Conference: Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston.
How the Power Five conferences looked in 1980
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In the past four decades, teams moved, conferences grew and a few collapsed. That doesn’t sound much different than today’s situation – other than rapid pace at which these changes are unfolding.
So why start with 1980?
- The 7-2 ruling in 1984 by the Supreme Court that said the NCAA centralized system of controlling college football’s television coverage violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. Ultimately, that decision allowed conferences to make their own deals with TV networks. Brent Schrotenboer does an excellent job explaining the ruling here.
- The 80s are the most recent decade when all the monikers of the Power Five conferences actually represented either the region or actual number of schools in their conferences. Admittedly the term “Power Five” wouldn’t come into wide usage for another a couple decades, but even then those conferences’ schools produced the most championship teams in football and men’s basketball.
How schools have moved within the Power Five since 1980
All of these moves have made a mess of the Pac-12. Suggestions that Stanford and California might join the ACC – allowing them to remain in a Power Five conference – have fallen flat.
Some have speculated that the four remaining Pac-12 schools might find a home in a western conference such as the Mountain West – a Group of Five conference. That also would keep the schools in a Football Bowl Subdivision conference.
How the Group of Five conferences will look in 2024
Most of the Group of Five conferences will have their new looks when the 2023 fall sports season opens in the next few days. A handful of schools changed conferences before the start of the 2022 school year.
A total of 10 schools have joined Conference USA and the American Athletic Conference while a dozen others left between 2022 and 2023. All the Sun Belt’s changes occurred ahead of the 2022 school year. Kennesaw State will join Conference USA in 2024.
What’s next for major college sports programs?
Perhaps the Power Five will morph into the Very Powerful Two in the coming years. The Big Ten and SEC begin multi-billion contracts with ESPN, CBS, NBC and Fox that will fill their athletic department coffers and give their programs broad exposure to potential recruits. Among the current or upcoming media contracts:
Nebraska’s addition to the Big Ten in 2011 was one the first to warp the traditional boundaries among the Power Five. The Cornhuskers’ Athletic Director Trev Alberts told the Lincoln Journal Star recently that he could see three dozen programs joining forces in the future to get a tighter grip on the big TV dollars.
“I believe that the next go-around — that’s my basic conclusion — will be far more disruptive than anything we’re currently engaged in,” Alberts said. “We need to prepare ourselves mentally for that.”
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