Conference Realignment Returns Amid Tumultuous Time in College Athletics
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Conference Realignment Returns Amid Tumultuous Time in College Athletics
Executive Summary
As the NCAA grapples with rapid changes to the very core of its amateurism model, the most powerful conferences made up of the NCAA’s most influential members stand on the precipice of seismic realignment.
The Houston Chronicle reported last week that the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas made overtures to the Southeastern Conference, hoping to join college football’s preeminent league.
Oklahoma and Texas could reap significant financial benefits from switching to the SEC. Among those benefits, the league’s broadcast rights alone generate roughly $15 million more per school than the Big 12’s media payouts.
With the SEC reportedly reciprocating the interest of the Big 12 Conference’s top revenue-generating programs — Oklahoma and Texas ranked eighth and first, respectively, in the most recent USA Today database of college athletics revenue — the other three so-called Power Five conferences considered responses to the SEC’s potential move.
The possible chain reaction to Oklahoma and Texas leaving the Big 12 for the SEC could mirror the significant conference alignment from a decade ago, when a number of major conference schools shifted their league memberships.
College sports analysts suggested the latest realignment could spell further trouble for the NCAA, which is already reeling from its headline-grabbing defeat in Alston vs. the NCAA in the Supreme Court and a slow, disjointed response to the creation of name, image and likeness laws for student-athletes in more than half of the 50 states.
As revenue among the Power Five leagues multiplies by the year — the leagues reported more than $2.9 billion in revenue in the fiscal year 2020, even amid the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to USA Today — the group consisting of 65 schools continues to push for more autonomy and power in college athletics.
With the increasingly louder drum beat for the Power Five to break away from the NCAA and form its own college athletics coalition, schools reportedly considered in the past for power conference membership (without obtaining it) face a pivotal few months of musical chairs in resurgent efforts to board the train before it potentially leaves the station.
Now is the summer of Power Five conference discontent.
As the NCAA grapples with a resounding Supreme Court defeat in Alston vs. the NCAA and the passing of numerous state laws granting name, image and likeness (NIL) benefits for student-athletes, which the organization fought against for years before ultimately bungling a chance at a coordinated response, its membership’s most powerful players rumble for change.
Power Five conference commissioners have repeatedly bemoaned the NCAA’s slow and disjointed decision-making and messaging. In addition to the NIL debacle and the Supreme Court loss, other recent incidents — such as the national backlash to the inadequate workout equipment provided at the Division I women’s basketball championships — further damaged the NCAA’s reputation. (That particular story cut to the very core of the NCAA, which, if nothing else, is considered adept at coordinating championship events.) Commissioner frustrations stem from a variety of other issues, too, including still-simmering dissatisfaction with the organization’s early handling of COVID-19 to long-held discontent with its enforcement and infractions process.
Now, amid all that, conference realignment is afoot, hastening the familiar drum beat for even more Power Five autonomy among the NCAA’s membership and renewing calls from some corners of college sports for the 65 power conference programs to altogether split from the NCAA.
First, the nitty gritty, as initially reported by the Houston Chronicle. The University of Texas, the kingpin of college athletics cash that generated a whopping $223 million in revenue over 2018-19, wants to leave the Big 12 Conference for the powerhouse Southeastern Conference, uniting the richest college football program with the most influential college football league.
That move alone would cause a tidal wave of fallout across college sports, with the SEC adding a wealthy, tradition-rich, highly popular program in the nation’s second-largest state to its ranks as its exposure, revenue and stature in college football continue to skyrocket. Texas also plays kingmaker in the Big 12, which has been repeatedly beholden to the Austin university’s desires because of its lucrative Longhorn Network and revenue-generating power.
The news, however, doesn’t stop there. The University of Oklahoma, the eighth-largest revenue generator in college sports in 2018-19 and a four-time participant in the coveted College Football Playoff, wants to join Texas in the SEC.
The Big 12 would lose not only its richest member but its most successful football program over the past decade. While the simplest answer to why Oklahoma and Texas might leave the Big 12 for the SEC is just “money,” the reasons can be laid out in more nuanced terms.
For instance, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported earlier this year that the Big 12, trying to head off concerns about its increasingly worrisome positioning among media rights revenue, sought to renegotiate and update its broadcast deals with ESPN and Fox Sports. Both networks declined, as clear a problematic illustration as any of the Big 12’s light foothold among the Power Five leagues.
The SEC has no such challenges, with its own ESPN-affiliated conference network and a new broadcast deal with Disney beginning in 2024 that the New York Times reported will pay $300 million to the league per year. That agreement, worth $3 billion, is “nearly a sixfold increase from the $55 million annually CBS currently pays” to air SEC college football games.
Adding two of the nation’s biggest college football brands only enhances the SEC’s stature, and for Oklahoma and Texas, the chance to play high-profile games against the likes of Alabama, Florida, Georgia and LSU every year certainly plays a part in the interest.
The ramifications in college athletics and their power dynamics run deep.
The SEC, already considered the best league for the most popular college sport (football), would further solidify its footing atop the mountain. Adding two major college football draws would significantly enhance the conference’s already-booming revenue opportunities.
The Big 12, still a producer of top-flight college football, would be left scrambling for new members not only in an attempt to recover a significant loss of revenue and clout but to also avoid further poaching from other leagues. The league is particularly vulnerable to the ACC and Pac-12, both of which could use more firepower in the fight to keep up with the Big Ten and SEC.
Feeling pressure to keep pace with its primary football rival, the Big Ten may explore opportunities to enhance its membership profile.
But no possible consequence of this round of potential conference realignment would be greater than the ultimate demise of the NCAA as we know it.
“This move does nothing to help (the NCAA’s) negotiating position,” a USA Today story evaluating the winners and losers of realignment said. The two schools switching leagues “again smacks of financial considerations being foremost on the thinking of schools and conferences as they make decisions about their athletics programs.”
Pat Forde, a columnist at Sports Illustrated, wrote that “if you’re looking for the lever that could flip college athletics irrevocably in the direction of a new model and new shape, this would qualify. Everything could be on the table, from the long-theorized four Super Leagues to a power-conference breakaway from the NCAA. This could massively alter the entire enterprise, at a time when upheaval already is underway and the NCAA has never had less authority.”
Unlike the other issues at hand, there is little the NCAA can do with conference realignment. The individual leagues make their own membership rules. What’s more, with the NCAA already punting on most control over college football outside of enforcement, the leagues increasingly need the organization less for their most important money-maker.
The bottom line, the NCAA already faced its most critical juncture yet in the wake of NIL changes. Power Five leagues adding even more power and influence to their ranks only intensifies the pressure on the NCAA to get its act together — or else.
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