Conference Realignment

Sadly this is the beginning of the end of college sports as we know it.

It may take a while but eventually they (TV/money guys) will whittle things down to just 40-48 teams getting the real money. Everyone else will be left out in the cold.

Who loves ya, Baby!

As it stands now, in 2024 the Big10 will have 18 schools and the Big12 will have 16 schools. Once all the conference shuffling is straightened out hopefully they move away from number-based naming.

As far as traveling for conference champs I doubt that’s going to cause much of an issue…the athletes are already flying to some sampling of Wisconsin, Terre Haute, Minneapolis, South Bend etc for the big meets during the regular season. I can’t imagine Washington flying to Michigan for a conference meet would be any more taxing than a flight to Arizona or SoCal. Maybe a little more wear if it’s at Maryland/Penn State or vice-versa (hosted at UW/UO) but I can’t imagine it would be detrimental. You never know with the time zone change though.

I’m very interested in seeing how the balance of power shifts with the mashup of XC teams now competing. Going to be some ultra competitive conference meets with big nationals qualifying points system implications.

What these schools appear to be missing is the travel, that;s going to suck.

Will still have plenty of football to watch so I'm ok with whatever,

Every week of the football season there will be a couple NCAA games of interest every Saturday, that's all that really matters.

I don’t think the conferences wondered whether they would be competing across distance, sprints, and jumps when considering these changes.

The Pac-12 as a conference was pretty whack for football. Do you think anyone cares about a matchup beyond the top 2-3 teams? ASU-WSU? Barf. OSU-Colorado? Yawn.

Why do you think it’s necessary for the TV/money guys to prop up 130 FBS teams or even the current 69 P5 teams? That’s 2-4x the amount of normal sports leagues.

they should whittle it down to 24-28 teams. Let those be the “elite” division of the NCAA, and let the rest figure out a way to support themselves without the national TV or sponsorship deals.

Add/drop teams every year based on performance like the way pro soccer does.

Because I work in an athletic department and understand the need for funding.

I also understand the balance between the academic end of a university and the athletic end.

Without the necessary funds many athletic departments will be forced to make major changes by the academic end.

The pro soccer concept is nice but will never happen in college football.

Who loves ya, Baby!

I get that funding is a need, but Michigan State shouldn’t be getting the same funding as Georgia. Sorry, they just are not on the same level in terms of athletics.

I think they should be forced to make major changes. That sounds like a good thing.

I think you're right. But I also think it may not be the worst thing. 1-A football now is swarming with schools bleeding their athletic budgets dry (U. Conn. U.Mass, Georgia State, Temple, etc., ad infinitum) pretending they've got football programs comparable to Notre Dame's, Georgia's, Michigan's, etc. If football is whittled down to 50ish schools getting real money maybe the non fiftyish schools will need to recognize they aren't Alabama, won't ever be Alabama, will not rake in tons of football money, and will scale their football programs back to a more affordable level. Maybe they'll pay football coaches salaries comparable to what their faculties or other coaches are paid. Maybe they'll form conferences where the teams takes busses rather than planes to away games. If this sort of thing happens a lot of college football will resemble what the sport was like forty plus years ago except that there will be part of it that looks like the NFL would look minus a salary cap.

True college sports is found at the DIII level where most study first and compete second.

DI is compete first, study if you have the time or inclination.

DII, I don't know why it even exists.

Why should Georgia get more funding than Michigan St.? Because they are better at football?

NCAA sports was supposed to be about fair & balanced competition for all. That's not what we have if we are concentrating all of the money in some narrow range of schools. TV/media networks have taken over control of college sports.

If you give all the money to just a few schools then it simply means only those schools have the opportunity to compete and not just in football, in all sports. The result will be schools dropping sports which limit opportunities for student athletes and hamstrings development in minor sports... football will be fine... it's the rest that will suffer.

If you think that's a good thing then more power to you. I don't.

Who loves ya, Baby!

D2 made sense when it was created in the 70s. It was created for schools that had more ambitious athletic programs than mostly smaller schools did. When it was created it included a lot of schools that have since moved to D1 but who at the time did not want to have athletic programs as large as the old University Division schools had. Delaware, U Mass, the Michigan directional schools, James Madison, etc., were all in D2 originally. I too sometimes wonder why it still exists but it has 303 members so it must work for a good many schools.