A marketing genius, benefactor, philanthropist and multi-billionaire himself, Shoe Dog is apparently using all his resources to find a home for Oregon, a program that Knight has made one of college sports’ most recognizable brands as a de facto offshoot of his Nike. empire. Knight has been reduced to cold telemarketing. And this is a sad state of affairs. The migration of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten in 2024 has made it so. Last week, we were again reminded of the cruelty of this system. The Pac-12 may or may not survive, but after losing its two flagship programs, it is forever changed. All this with a reminder that the ACC is trying to keep its top teams, while the Big 12 may be in its fourth round of realignment since 2010. What we are seeing in real time is the consolidation of the best brands at the top of the sport. Everything else be damned. When Knight is reduced to speed dial to save his Ducks, it takes the potential shutout to another level. You may have noticed: The SEC and Big Ten are one Notre Dame (or something) away from making their own playoffs. Maybe they don’t even need the Fighting Irish, who are once again deciding whether to join a conference after 130 years of independence. What you can see is access and relevance disappearing for all but the elite — and those lucky enough to attend their conferences. Some ACC schools are freaking out. They figure to be $50 million a year behind the SEC and Big Ten in annual royalty fees. An industry source said it could take $500 million for a school to leave the ACC, given the league’s franchise that keeps schools in the conference until 2036. You can buy a lot of superstar coaches, $1 million coordinators , facilities and helicopters this kind of money. Some of the pressure has shifted to boosters. Will they make a difference? Can the current rate of spending be maintained? A source at a high-resource football program says donors are being taken advantage of. Someday soon, the SEC and Big Ten could decide to respond by funding 95 scholarships instead of the current 85. There may be some outside the top two conferences who can keep up, but at what cost? Add to all that the leadership and thinking of the Power Five’s four newest commissioners – all hired since 2020 – is more diverse than ever. Last week, CBS Sports ran a three-part series on the future of college football. One of the takeaways? The 130 FBS schools will leave the NCAA, perhaps sooner rather than later. Now, that number seems smaller, more dangerous. Maybe 50-80 make the cut. You can see why Knight is sweating and swinging. This was always bound to happen. People freaked out when the SEC added Arkansas and South Carolina in 1991. So did the Big Ten by adding Penn State in 1990. The Southwest Conference collapsed on itself due to multiple NCAA violations. The Big 12 emerged in 1996 and then nearly disbanded. Only six original members remain (Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech). Big East football ended in 2013 as the conference realigned. Now, the SEC and Big Ten have most of the power and leverage since there has never been such a concentration of brands at the top of the game as there has been in those conferences. What remains is a mad rush by the other major conferences to grab the biggest remaining chips. No other conference can bring to the table what the SEC and Big Ten will do through 2024-25. The battle now is to see if one or more of the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 can muster enough notable schedules to keep the SEC and Big Ten from making a credible playoff run on their own. This brings us back to Knight’s cold call. It comes in a world that could leave Oregon and Washington without a chance to compete for national championships. A world that no longer thinks anything of flying volleyball players across four time zones to play a match. A world that has had two Power Five conferences ripped from their souls in consecutive summers. Oregon and Washington are the two best football programs “in play” since the Pac-12 has been reduced to 10 teams. However, there is a reason they have not been considered in the realignment. Industry sources say neither brings the required value to the Big Ten ($80 million-$100 million per year). The Pac-12 schools most heavily mentioned for the Big 12 are the so-called “Four Corners” schools: Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah. TV rights consultants in the Big 12 have said the two most important issues for expansion are branding and geography. Geography pushed Oregon and Washington to the sidelines. (This is not to say that Arizona and Arizona lookalikes are necessarily “brands”.) If the Big 12 expands, it wouldn’t necessarily be for money but rather for survival and relevance. One high-profile industry source called the difference between an expanded Big 12 or Pac-12 “a flip coin.” Think of the reason for the expansion more like this: Can a credible playoff run be made without allowing Oregon and Washington to compete for a spot? ESPN kind of answered that question when it thought nothing of it last summer to dump the Big 12 on the scrap heap as Texas and Oklahoma moved to the SEC. The network was telling us without telling us that the world wouldn’t end if Oklahoma State, Iowa State and TCU, among others, didn’t have a chance to finish in the top four of the College Football Playoff. The question was further answered when the Pac-12 was sidelined last week. Ratings matter. They matter more when a 9-3 Oklahoma from the SEC might have a better chance of making the playoffs than a 12-1 Oklahoma State from the Big 12. One industry source called Oregon and Washington “tweeners” in realignment. It’s certainly not USC and UCLA in terms of branding and marketability, but it’s not Arizona and Arizona State either. That’s what the realignment revealed: The real things that make college football relevant to the only people who matter — TV executives, programmers, advertisers — are laid out in increasing and concrete detail. Without Oregon and Washington, the Pac-12 could collapse. With them, it may not matter.
Conference update notes
The next major point of focus is the Big Ten announcing its new billion-dollar TV deal. That could come at a gala, perhaps a dunk in the league’s media days later this month. The Big Ten can expand. It doesn’t matter, really, because Notre Dame has time and leverage on its side. If he decides the money is too big to turn down and/or playoff access becomes too difficult to sustain success, he may join the Big Ten. Any conclusion in this round of alignments that leaves the Big 12’s new set is a win for the league. He’s happy with the current 12 teams moving forward in 2025. The worst-case scenario for the Pac-12 is some kind of hybrid merger with the Mountain West. That would leave two football powerhouses in Oregon and Washington that together have won one national championship, played for two titles since 2010 and appeared in five combined Rose Bowls since 2001. Those two schools are also the only participants in the Pac- 12 in the CAP. A merger between the Big 12 and the Pac-12 remains a possibility, but … a source told CBS Sports that the process to finalize membership — at least on the Big 12 side — could be completed in weeks and not in months. Of the four new Big 12 schools (BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, UCF), three are from America. That’s part of the narrative surrounding the Pac-12’s path forward as the league went on the market earlier this week for its television rights. Why would you want to go to a conference whose members are a quarter of the Group of Five? Why risk “instant” stability for Pac-12 history and tradition? Why really? The Pac-12 will be marketed to ESPN and Fox with 10 teams that have not pledged any allegiance to each other. The Big 12 is already hovering, ready to pick up members from the West Coast. But rights holders are already asking: What are we offering? Which schools will there be? Clemson, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina and Virginia from the ACC have been mentioned as potential realignment dance partners, but at least they’re in a conference with a TV deal. This reveals a further reality: it really is a struggle now. Superconferences are here and they’re not going anywhere. Enter Notre Dame and maybe Stamford (as ND’s affiliate), Clemson and Florida State or Miami. Suddenly, a two-conference playoff is a reality. Everything else could be a nasty Group of Six or Seven. At that point, the obvious play is to form a new subdivision that will organize its own playoffs. The money — not huge money — would be there.
