The schools, conferences, and their representatives say these moves are being done for the benefit of the student-athletes. ‘There’s no regional sensibility anymore’ Members of the sixth-highest earning conference earn around $7 million per year, and of the 10 total conferences in the Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the schools in the lowest-earning conferences reportedly make around $500,000 annually from TV deals. The incentives are clear: Member schools in these five conferences earn over $30 million per year in their current contracts, according to financial records obtained by USA Today. The last wave of conference realignment settled around 2013, ending with a top tier known as the “Power 5” conferences: Pac-12, Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and the SEC. As the amount of sports on TV have proliferated along with cable TV, and as ESPN and FOX joined the old big three networks ABC, NBC and CBS in airing games, college football has turned into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. While teams have been switching conferences for a long time, this is something new in scale.Īfter the NCAA lost the ability to sell broadcast rights in 1984, college conferences became the primary vehicle for generating television revenue. The Big 12 is a relatively young conference, dating back to the mid-1990s, but Texas and Oklahoma had been in their prior conferences together with many of the same schools since the 1910s. Last year, Texas and Oklahoma announced plans to leave the Big 12, where they are the premier programs, for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in 2025. Last week, UCLA and USC dropped the bombshell announcement of their intentions to leave the Pac-12, which they had been members of since 19, respectively. Let us know what you think of the changes in the comments.Welcome to the strange new world of college sports, where TV money means regional and traditional conference structures just don’t seem to matter anymore. So what are your thoughts Beaver fans? The Beavers wouldn’t have appeared in any Pac-12 championships in the past decade under either set of rules, but with the program possibly on the rise its something interesting to ponder. The conference plans to review its scheduling after next season, so divisional scheduling will probably be on the chopping block after next season. While this change will affect next year’s Pac-12 Championship it won’t change the 2022 football schedule, which will still follow the old division alignments. Only recently, in 2020, the matchup would have been between two South division teams, 13th ranked USC and 25th ranked Colorado. Usually this has been to the North divisions detriment, in four of those seasons the championship would have been between two North division teams. As the Pac-12 explained in their announcement, in 5 of the last 11 seasons the championship game matchup would have been different had the conference been operating under the new rule. Since its expansion to 12 teams, the Pac-12’s divisions have often been lopsided. Previously, the championship would be played between the winners of the Pac-12’s North and South divisions. The conference announced that starting in 2022 the Pac-12 Championship would be played by the two teams with the best winning percentages in the conference. Immediately after this announcement, the Pac-12 announced they would be making changes. Previously, conferences had two have the winners of two divisions play in a championship game, but with today’s changes conferences are free to choose championship game participants in other ways. Earlier today the NCAA announced they were relaxing restrictions on who could play in conference championship games.
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