Conference changes have played a big role in college football over the history of the collegiate era. These conference realignments started in 1979, with East Tennessee , a D2 school, leaving the Ohio Valley and entering the Southern Conference, along with Hawaii ending its independence and entering the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). With 23 teams in Power Five Conferences (Big 10, Big 12, Pacific-12, Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference) switching places in the next few years, a new age of college football is coming into view.
All of the Power Five conferences have movement going on, but none more than the Pacific-12 (PAC-12) Conference. Prior to the 2022 season, the conference had twelve teams lined up to play for them in 2024. As of this moment, they have two. Four teams are leaving for the Big 10 and another four are leaving for the Big 12, it will be interesting to see what the PAC-12 committee does to fill those open spots.
The Big 12 is the only Power 5 school that has teams leaving and joining within the next few years. The conference will play with 14 teams in the 2023 season after the addition of BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF from the AAC (American Athletic Conference). But in 2024, Oklahoma and Texas will leave for the SEC andColorado will rejoin the conference,bringing with it Corner Schools Arizona, Arizona State and Utah from the Pac-12 to bring the league to 16 teams. These 16 teams will make the Big 12 the second biggest conference in the Power 5, trailing only the Big 10.
In the midwest, the Big 10 has been a center for movement over the last decade, especially with Nebraska joining from the Big 12 accompanied by Rutgers and Maryland from the Big East and ACC respectively. In 2023, one of the biggest realignment moves in recent history, the Big 10 will introduce four new teams, including UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington. These additions will create the biggest conference in all of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), with a staggering 18 teams in a conference named the Big 10.
These changes will cause another problem for athletic directors across the FBS, scheduling. With all of these changes, athletic directors, like Nebraska’s Trev Alberts, are scrambling to get games scheduled for future years. Most of the time, teams scheduled are finalized at least 4 years in advance. When a team switches conferences, they could force a team to change their schedule and could throw off a lot of conference games, which a team is required to have a certain amount of.
The main reason that teams leave and join other conferences is for money. When a school joins a conference, they give away their TV media rights. When that deal expires, the school is free to leave those conferences in order to sign a new deal for more money. The former PAC-12 team USC and UCLA were previously in the PAC-12, and had a TV deal worth around $20 million a year., but their new TV deal, in the Big 10, is now worth over $100 million. That is a 400% increase in revenue for USC and UCLA in every sport that is televised.
There have been over 300 conference changes in Division 1, and over 100 of those have come within the last decade. This number will most likely slow in its incline in the next few years, as many major conferences are signing new TV media deals that will close the gates for conference realignment.
