College Football Daily Cavalcade: The ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 alliance is officially a thing. So now what?
College Football Daily Cavalcade: ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 Alliance. What Is It?
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Sorry if this take sucks, it’s not my fault …
Like the alliance of the ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12, there’s not much to it.
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Basically, three major college conferences just agreed to be besties
And now it’s here.
The college sports world officially – well, sort of – has the alliance of the ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 to combine forces for good against the evil that is the SEC.
Actually, it’s “a collaborative approach surrounding the future evolution of college athletics and scheduling.”
Or something like that.
A whole lot of words are being written and said to keep this all as murky and vague as possible, but here’s what’s actually happening.
1. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are conferences loaded with great academic institutions, and of course everyone cares about social issues, and the future of college athletics, and the pandemic, and the educational goals, and the …
2. Whatever. It’s totally about an SEC that’s living rent-free in the heads of these three conferences. The alliance types are saying it’s not, but this is all about making the SEC pay for its expansion insolence. And that means …
3. This is all just a big fancy way of these three conferences atomic-dunking on the SEC as it came very, very close to figuring out how to get half of its league into a bigger College Football Playoff.
The expansion idea was all but a done deal, but the alliance just put the kibosh on that after the SEC expanded before the bigger CFP went through, not after.
That doesn’t mean the playoff won’t expand, but there’s no way, no how, no chance that the alliance will allow a system to be in place that lets the SEC get more than a few teams in.
– ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 Alliance: Media Market Advantage
4. No one signed anything. They’re doing this non-binding alliance on a virtual fist-bump with the expectation of good will among the conferences. But as we all learned from – totally obscure movie reference alert – 24 Hour Party People, if you don’t have something officially signed, you risk losing the Happy Mondays. Case in point …
5. There’s nothing there to prevent the conferences from pitching woo to the schools of the other alliance members. Don’t think for a second that the Big Ten isn’t interested in making a whopper of an offer to North Carolina the second it figures out how to do it.
6. They haven’t exactly figured out a schedule to play each other. It’ll come, but all the power conferences have non-conference deals locked in for the next bazillion seasons, so figure they all get around to playing each other in football by 2037ish or so.
7. Revenue sharing? Uhhhhhhh, we’ll get back to you on that.
8. And the Big 12? Bless your heart. Yeah, one of these alliance conferences might go and grab a Kansas or something, but the Remaining 8 hasn’t been invited to the pizza party. And finally …
9. Of course this a football thing, but this will be a big deal for the other sports, too. Again, all that matters overall is how these three conferences keep the SEC from taking over the world. In reality, this will be a blast for basketball along with many of the non-revenue sports.
And in the end, alliance, schmaliance … the SEC still has Texas and Oklahoma.
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