ATLANTA, GEORGIA – DECEMBER 28: Oklahoma Sooners helmets are seen prior to the Chick-fil-A Peach … [+]
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With the announcement this morning that Texas and Oklahoma will not renew their grant of media rights with the Big 12 Conference when the original commitment expires in 2025, college athletics once again finds itself in the middle of a crisis. If Texas and Oklahoma officially leave for the SEC, the Big 12 would have only eight remaining teams and would lack enough conference opponents to play a full regular slate in most sports. The conference is now faced with the possibility of having to lure other teams to join just to survive.
The timing could not be more fraught.
Just when the Power 5 conferences need experienced conference office leadership, there is little to be found. George Kliavkoff (Pac-12) is brand new to college athletics and the Power 5 dynamics. Kevin Warren (Big Ten) is only a bit more seasoned, with one year—in the middle of the pandemic—under his belt. Jim Phillips, a former athletics director turned ACC conference commissioner, has his own challenges, what with the unique relationship with Notre Dame and the desire to bring the Irish’s football program into the ACC fold. Bob Bowlsby (Big 12) has a significant problem on his hands with keeping his own conference together. That leaves SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who is currently one of the most influential persons in all of college sports, sitting in the front row.
As a reminder, Texas had quite a deal in the Big 12. In addition to retaining more media revenue than its partners—which had been an enticement to get the Longhorns to stay from the days when the conference then known as the Pac-10 was allegedly recruiting them—Texas owns, in its entirety, the Longhorn Network and its revenues.
The idea that college sports will coalesce around “super-conferences” has been around for at least 30 years. Insiders believed the idea could come to fruition back in the last round of realignment, in 2010-12, but conferences locked up each school’s media rights for a long enough time period that discussions were tamped down for a decade. Most agree a likely scenario in a new realignment would be this: four groups of 16 schools, enough to allow for two divisions of eight teams each. Today’s Power 5 is made up of 65 schools, and the closely aligned American Athletic Conference has an additional 12 schools. If 64 teams end up in a super-conference grouping, which 13 schools will be left on the outside looking in for a very long time?
The continuing evolution of sports betting (and the billions of dollars flowing into this space) has incentivized in-season game matchups. Gone are the days coaches build their regular-season schedules simply around becoming bowl eligible, hoping the local fan base will stay engaged in the end-of-season outcome. Today, the real money is in weekly fan engagement-linear, digital/social and wagering, and the hype for the matchups people are watching. Who wouldn’t monitor the in-game updates of a regular-season clash between Alabama and Texas every year?
In 2021, there are outside forces at play that must be acknowledged. A group of 30 Texas legislators drafted a bill prohibiting “senior public universities” from changing athletic conferences without the approval of the Texas State House and Senate. A number of these lawmakers are graduates of some of the universities still remaining in the Big 12: Baylor, Texas Tech and TCU. How will they react to a massive shift in the finances available to spend on additional educational benefits, now permitted after the Supreme Court’s ruling in June in NCAA v. Alston? State legislators care deeply about the local economies and the impact that conference realignment will have on those businesses and livelihoods.
University leaders need to consider their future in FBS football. While the pie is getting bigger and bigger when it comes to revenues, the bulk is likely to flow toward four super-conferences, where the week-in, week-out attention will be focused. Is it worth it to continue to maintain FBS membership? If, as the Knight Commission proposes, college football should break away completely from the NCAA, can these same leaders advocate for a losing strategy of guarantee games and the hopes of jumping from ESPN+ to ESPN2?
There has to be another answer for these highly academic and highly competitive schools in this cutthroat game of musical chairs. The zero-sum game of Division I FBS-or-bust leaves out hundreds of very good institutions. Now is the time for new thinking to emerge about what constitutes excellence in an academic institution.
