Four years ago, The Athletic admirably — and, as it turns out, foolishly — attempted to predict the future of college sports when my colleague Stewart Mandel took a stab at what the conference landscape would look like five or 10 years into the future.
The piece, published on July 25, 2019, serves as a nice little time capsule of a bygone era. It began this way:
Ask nearly any active college administrator to predict the next wave of conference realignment and you’ll get a predictably measured answer — as in, there’s not going to be one.
“The answer used to be (expansion) is on the backburner,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. “My answer now is it’s been placed into the kitchen cupboard. It’s not even on the stove.”
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Almost exactly two years later, Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving the Big 12 for Sankey’s SEC. A flurry of moves and countermoves followed. Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and BYU to the Big 12. USC and UCLA to the Big Ten. The conference reshuffle trickled down through every level of Division I.
So, uh, our bad. This stuff is hard to predict. But that doesn’t stop us from trying. After conversations with current and former conference commissioners, athletic directors and various other administrators in and out of college sports, we return with five updated educated guesses for the future structure of college football. Most interviewees provided only background insight to help the cause, but some went on the record with their opinions.
“I think we’re going to have to see continued realignment, and I’d predict that it’s going to be in spurts,” said former Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin, who took the Aggies from the Big 12 to the SEC. “But I also know that the SEC can’t sit still and allow the Big Ten to have a larger chunk of the pie than the SEC gets.”
Here are five potential scenarios, ordered from most realistic to most radical, for what college sports might look like 10 years from now. We don’t know exactly how the puzzle pieces are going to fit, but here are a few ways things could play out by 2033.
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Five scenarios for the future of college conference realignment
1. A Big Three
Prepare to say bye-bye to the phrase “Power 5.” With the Big Ten and SEC making money hand over fist, the top of Division I is already set for clearer stratification by the end of this decade. If nothing significant in the landscape changes and no major new revenue streams pop up, the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 will continue to battle for No. 3 billing. Whoever emerges from that battle could become the landing spot for every attractive school the SEC and Big Ten pass on.
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The Athletic has touched on this topic before, most recently last month during a discussion of potential Big 12 expansion: “There’s a belief among administrators both in and out of the Big 12 that (commissioner Brett) Yormark’s envelope-pushing plans go far broader than simply poaching a couple of Pac-12 schools or leaning into basketball pedigree. He’s trying to position the Big 12 to be the third-strongest power conference moving forward — or perhaps the third and final power conference standing, if instability within the Pac-12 and ACC leads to exits that break open those leagues.”
This scenario could take place whether or not the Big Ten and SEC try to add ACC schools; either they do and the leftovers need a home, or they don’t and there’s an opportunity for a third-strongest league to welcome flagship programs such as Florida State, Clemson, Miami and more.
The idea of four relatively equal, 16-team leagues — once a convenient suggestion to retain almost the entire Power 5 in a realigned future — feels less attainable than it did a decade ago. It’d take a lot of shuffling to achieve that kind of balance now, with Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC and the Power 5’s two Los Angeles schools in the Big Ten.
In 2033, the media rights landscape will also look drastically different. The Big Ten will have already negotiated its next deal; its new contracts with Fox, CBS and NBC are set to expire in 2030. The SEC will be in either the early stages or the thick of its own negotiations; its exclusive contract with ESPN is set to expire in 2034. And the ACC will be close to the end of its current media rights deal, which runs until 2036, as well as the grant of rights agreement that binds its members to the league and each other. Industry experts have speculated in recent months that they expect someone within the ACC to challenge its grant of rights in court and/or negotiate an exit before 2036. Whatever the price tag may be, an early exit would presumably be worth it for anyone who could snag an invite to either the Big Ten or SEC.
Even if there isn’t one clear third-best league, consolidation beyond the Big Ten and SEC might be the best path to stability and inclusion at college football’s highest level. Why not find a way to combine the best of the rest? The leagues that survive may be able to bring in more money from media partners who no longer need to pay for rights to the leagues that fold.
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“The SEC and the Big Ten are going to continue to be the dominant conferences; I don’t see anything, really, disturbing their place on the top of the mountain,” Loftin said. “But I do think that a clever commissioner in one of the other three conferences can make a difference here.”
Former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany pointed out a complication for any path by which five power leagues condense into just three. The size of the resulting conferences may be significant enough to attract scrutiny regarding collusion and antitrust issues. If individual conferences get too big, would they then become the subject of litigation that has so far been aimed at college sports’ national governing body?
“Once a conference maybe moves beyond the 16 (members), I’m not sure it’s not closer to a sports organization that has market power and therefore runs into some of the same challenges that the NCAA or two conferences acting together might run into from the standpoint of the Federal Trade Commission, or (Department of Justice) or anything else,” Delany said. “At 16, we have examples. We had the old WAC. We have the SEC. We have the Big Ten. I think, beyond that, people better do a lot of research about what that means from the standpoint of exercising market power.”
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2. Notre Dame remains independent
Last week The Athletic’s Pete Sampson explored the present and future of Notre Dame’s independence, including the influential role played by the school’s long-running rights deal with NBC (currently on a contract that lasts through 2025). The story cited two sports media consultants who believe that the Irish could land a new deal with NBC that would pay them around $60 million per year once their current contract runs out. New athletic director Pete Bevacqua, who will replace longtime AD Jack Swarbrick early next year, was previously the chairman of NBC Sports. Meanwhile, NBC has joined Fox and CBS on the Big Ten’s new seven-year, $7 billion rights agreement running through 2030; those schools are expected to bring in more than $70 million per year in media rights revenue alone.
“The acquisition of the Big Ten rights for NBC reflected a level of commitment to college football which is really good for us,” Swarbrick told The Athletic. “Everything about that, having more college football inventory, being able to cross-promote against Notre Dame with the Big Ten, some of the scheduling things we’ll do, that was for me an important sign.”
Despite assumptions that increased consolidation would squeeze Notre Dame and eventually force it to join a conference (presumably the Big Ten), it’s also quite possible that the Irish can get what they need to continue on as an independent, a status and identity they have long cherished. If Notre Dame can get in the ballpark of $60 million per year, it can expect to compete at the highest level in the sport about which it cares most. As long as they can schedule who they want when they want to and access the College Football Playoff — while maintaining a home for their non-football sports — the Irish are sitting pretty.
BYU’s move to the Big 12 felt like the beginning of the end of independence. That is, except for the Irish. Their stubbornness coupled with a willing media partner could allow them to chart their own course for another decade.
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With Notre Dame indefinitely unavailable as a realignment prize, how many more impact moves are the Power 5 leagues willing to make? Texas and Oklahoma are off the table. So is USC. Very few individual schools bring enough value to offset the cost of cutting the pie an extra way. Major conferences have to be careful not to add schools just to add, which could lead to dilution. If the Irish are unavailable and other schools aren’t valuable enough to move the needle, good business sense could stymie another massive wave of realignment.
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How close has Notre Dame come to joining the Big Ten? ‘There was no deal to be had’
3. The Big Ten and SEC become the AFC and NFC
The two richest leagues are already about to become 16-team conferences, now that each has picked off two big brands for 2024. As Florida State athletic director Michael Alford put it to his board of trustees earlier this year, there’s great fear among those in the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 about falling too far behind. “We cannot be $30 million behind every year compared to our peers,” Alford said in February.
But what if nothing can be done to stop the stratification, and the Big Ten and SEC shoot past their peers so dramatically that it becomes clear they are the only two leagues worth watching for casual audiences? If they ever find a way to work together, they could build a whole new, NFL-like framework redefining what top-level college football is.
“The strong are going to get stronger; the Big Ten and SEC are just going to pick up new people when TV contracts are due and weaken the ACC, Big 12 and all the other conferences,” former Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds told The Athletic. “So, in the end, it’ll be two conferences.”
Perhaps they’ll become the super-conferences many fans have come to expect. Is that 20 members? Or 24? 30? Do the two leagues divvy up the ACC schools and go west, too? Does the rest of college football fall to the wayside and the Big Ten champion simply faces off against the SEC champion for a national title on an annual basis? It’s possible, though we’re still many steps removed from that reality. The college sports landscape has already consolidated quite a bit and seems headed for even more. Perhaps that even leads to the Power 2 kicking their least valuable and/or weakest members out to make way for stronger replacements, however complicated the process might be.
At the very least, we know that high-value schools not in the Big Ten or the SEC would jump at the chance for a life raft, were it to come. Just as they would if the phone rang today.
“If you’re on a campus and your dollars are shrinking, you’ve got to figure out how to get your dollars back up,” Dodds said. “That means you start shopping your university to go to a different conference.”
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Yes, the new 12-team CFP increases postseason access, bringing meaning to all five power conference races. But what if the Big Ten and the SEC flex their growing influence to alter the way future CFPs are set up? Maybe both participants in the Big Ten title game and both participants in the SEC championship automatically qualify for the CFP, while none of the Pac-12, ACC or Big 12 are assured any automatic qualifiers.
Of course, in this scenario, the Big Ten and the SEC would have to play nice and work together. And they definitely do not always see eye to eye.
4. The appointment of a College Football Czar
Many prominent college football coaches have called for a “czar” who would have the ability to make and change rules unilaterally and run the top level of college football the way the pro leagues operate. It’s a job NCAA leadership is clearly not fulfilling at present.
Despite its growing influence, the College Football Playoff has given zero indication that it would want to govern FBS football in the future. The presidents and chancellors who oversee the CFP have no interest in taking on a project like that at this time. Even the athletic directors and commissioners who have touted the possibility understand the challenges associated with such an undertaking. Anyone who fully leaves the NCAA would still have to duplicate its bureaucratic resources — from certifying eligibility to making and enforcing rules. They would also assume the legal risk associated with leading college sports while it’s being challenged on all sides, which does not come cheap.
But let’s say that the CFP or a similar leadership body decided that the positives of a non-NCAA governance structure outweighed those challenges, and that conference commissioners could be convinced to give up some of their own power to pave way for change. Gone would be the cat fights between commissioners and unnecessary delays to make needed adjustments like expanding the Playoff. The czar’s power could stretch as far and wide as necessary, if the schools and leagues allowed it. Centralized scheduling edicts could ensure everyone played schedules of comparable strength.
And if FBS conferences pooled media rights and worked as one entity a la the NFL, would that lessen or eliminate the need for teams to swap conferences? It’s possible, because the financial future of so many would be tied together. Individual schools’ fears of being left out or falling behind often drive conference-jumping, but a more top-down structure would both tie more schools together and likely lead to schools having more equitable resources across the board. Now, such a structure may not completely halt realignment, but it would get it more under control because conference affiliation would take a backseat to the FBS football apparatus. And you’d have someone looking out for the best interest of the sport as a whole, so the preservation of regional rivalries could be prioritized, too, among other parts of college football that have been harmed by realignment.
If football operates entirely separate from other sports, would that create an opportunity for college sports to return to its regional roots for everything else? Perhaps then and only then could college sports be rebuilt around in-person attendance and old rivalries. Schools could be divided up by what actually makes sense from historical and scheduling standpoints. Fans could actually travel to away games and not break the bank to do so. Athletic departments could rein in a great deal of the nearly nonsensical travel costs coming their way as a result of the most recent realignment moves.
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Of course, this football-breakaway scenario could also lead to the same problems that emerged in the late 1970s, when not all schools wanted their media rights controlled by one entity (the NCAA). That eventually led to NCAA v. Board of Regents, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on behalf of the schools, allowing them greater control over media rights agreements.
5. FBS-1A and FBS-1B, based on employment status
Almost everyone who works in college sports agrees that the biggest future-facing question is that of athlete compensation. Will players become employees, and, if so, how exactly will that come about? It’s safe to presume that one of several legal dominoes will fall allowing athletes to be paid directly by schools and/or leagues within the next decade. And not every school will want to do that. Fewer still will be able to afford to do it.
It’s possible that this ends up being the new bright dividing line within either Division I or the Football Bowl Subdivision. Some schools would compete at the highest level of collegiate competition where athletes are employees who can be hired and fired, and those athletic departments would spend quite a bit in order to do so. The rest would compete in the tier below, under a system that preserves the idea of a true student-athlete. Schools in what I’ll call the FBS-1A category already spend the most they’re allowed to spend on major college football, paying up for the best facilities, the most expensive coaches and all of the other trappings of national competitiveness. If they end up being required to share revenue with athletes because the courts mandate it, they’ll do it because they can afford to do it, and they won’t want to miss out on opportunities to compete for national championships.
The 1B level could look quite different. Maybe it’s structured the way club sports are now, where teams are largely student-run, funded by athletes who pay fees to cover costs and operate under national governing bodies that differ by sport. Or it could operate similarly to how the NCAA does now, with an entity whose main purpose is to put on national championship events. Perhaps the level of resource commitment is left up to each individual school, but athletes would participate knowing they wouldn’t be in line for the compensation 1A athletes are.
This scenario, listed last for a reason, could be the most revolutionary path forward for college sports. It challenges the fundamental idea of college sports that keeps this enterprise different from professional sports, and it would cause each school to wrestle with what it believes about itself and what the goal of athletics is.
As it is now, not every Power 5 school offers the maximum number of scholarships in every D-I sport it sponsors. Boston College, for example, doesn’t offer swimming scholarships. So if you want to swim collegiately but you aren’t being recruited by the nation’s elite teams, you could opt to go to BC for the collegiate athlete experience, with the drawback of being almost assured a last-place team finish at the ACC championships. Schools in the 1B category could devote more resources to some sports more strategically, as long as they remain Title IX-compliant. And everyone would know what to expect and what not to.
“You’re going to see more schools look at the Boston College model, where maybe they don’t have to give scholarships and pay coaches hundreds of thousands of dollars in particular sports — but they still offer them,” an FBS athletic director said. “You’re just not invested.”
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And hey, maybe that approach ends up boosting enrollment for your university, with more athletes paying to play there. That factor could become even more important in the years to come, as higher education faces a looming enrollment cliff. There’s a lot keeping university presidents up at night, as it turns out. The unknown future of the collegiate athletic model and the complicated world of conference realignment are high on the list.
Not even the smartest people in the industry have a crystal ball that can tell them what all of this will look like 10 years from now. They don’t know. We don’t know. That is the one piece of certainty in an otherwise uncertain exercise. So let the chips fall where they may — and we’ll be sure to make as much sense as we can of it all as the future unfolds.
— The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman and David Ubben contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: This story is part of The Athletic’s Realignment Revisited series, digging into the past, present and future of conference realignment in college sports. Follow the series and find more conference realignment stories here.
(Top illustration: John Bradford for The Athletic; Photos: Alex Goodlett, Randy Litzinger, Jeffrey Vest / Getty Images)
