Commentary by Stewart Mandel of The Athletic.
The commentary, in part:
Obviously, there have been just a few tiny developments on the realignment front over the last four years, and we’re going to further explore the consequences of the impending SEC and Big Ten moves and the present and future of the conference landscape. But we’re also going to dig deeper into the historical archives — because realignment, with all the accompanying backstabbing and maneuvering, is nearly as old as the sport itself.
And man do we have some stories.
Did you know that 60 years before the Pac-12’s current fight for survival, the conference’s precursor, the Pacific Coast Conference, did in fact implode? This is not the first time UCLA has left Oregon State and Washington State to fend for themselves.
Most history buffs know that Georgia Tech once belonged to the SEC. But how many know the Atlanta school at one point gained consideration by the Big Ten?
But lately, amid the past 12 months of endless Big 12/Pac-12 speculation, I’ve come to a new realization: Deep down, realignment is just another scoreboard.
For example, do Big 12 fans really care whether Arizona State or Colorado joins their conference? Texas and Oklahoma, they are not. Or is it more that these fans just want to be able to claim victory over someone, in this case the Pac-12, after a decade-plus of losing schools to others?
The Big Ten may never win national championships at the same rate as the SEC, but their fans can take pride in having the richer TV deal.
For years, Utah lorded its Power 5 membership over archrival BYU like a 10-year winning streak on the field. Now, Cougars fans are enjoying the schadenfreude of getting called up to a conference that is threatening to end Utah’s league’s existence.
Texas A&M getting an invite into the sport’s premier conference before Texas invoked such vitriol that the schools refused to play each other for 13 years. Texas landing its own SEC invite a decade later caused such indignity that A&M tried to derail it.
And then there’s the Group of 5 schools, for whom the wheels of realignment can serve as the ultimate form of validation. Here’s a golden ticket for you, TCU, and you, Cincinnati, and now, possibly, you, San Diego State and SMU. It’s graduation day. All your hard work paid off.
Or, it can be a cruel reminder of your lot in life. When the Big 12 in 2021 took three schools from the AAC, it set off a cascade of lower-FBS shuffling in which Conference USA lost half its members overnight. And there was a randomness to it. Middle Tennessee, a regular bowl participant for 17 years, became the poor guy still sitting in the green room at the end of draft night while Charlotte, a program not yet a decade into its existence, got to go up on stage and shake Roger Goodell’s hand.
Which brings us to the most pronounced theme of realignment: Its cold, hard ruthlessness.
It’s former WAC commissioner Karl Benson getting a call while moving his daughter into her college dorm room that Fresno State and Nevada were leaving for the Mountain West. It’s Sankey and the Big 12’s Bob Bowlsby working together to create a 12-team College Football Playoff with Sankey knowing he was about to pick off Texas and Oklahoma. It’s George Kliavkoff and Kevin Warren joining a handshake Alliance only for Warren to poach two Pac-12 schools 10 months later.
Excruciating moments for those figures on the front lines of the sport.
Endless fascination and entertainment for the rest of us.
https://theathletic.com/4662794/2023/07/...alignment/
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Mandel: Why conference realignment is the subject college football fans can't quit
