Texas & Oklahoma Conference Realignment
The college football world was recently turned upside-down by the stunning, yet entirely unsurprising, news that the Texas and Oklahoma have reached out to the SEC about joining the conference.
Ultimately, such moves were not only likely, but inevitable given the current uneven construct within the Power 5 (P5) CFB landscape, catalyzed by the proposed postseason changes, following a decade-long period of dormancy in terms of P5 conference realignment.
Unfortunately, what is about to ensue is an unseemly mad scramble throughout the conferences, regrettably upending rivalries and traditions, accelerated by the legitimate fears of power consolidating within the already mighty SEC. Sure there will be some winners, from competitive and commercial standpoints, but there too will be major losers, us amongst them.
Why? College football has a process problem. In addition to the asymmetric number of members across the P5, there exists several unnatural positions within the current composition from both traditional and geographical standpoints, both byproducts of piecemeal conference realignment, adversely absent of a concerted vision.
The singular way to resolve this process problem, the intermittent migrations of teams each independently looking out for their own interests, is a comprehensive top-down approach, negotiated by a confluence of cohesive considerations.
Not the clandestine backchanneling of two teams, subsequently resulting in the dismantling of their departing conference, and the mad scramble of its other occupants (aka casualties).
To contextualize, consider the bygone glory days of college basketball, whose abrupt discontinuance of can be accurately identified as the breakup of the Big East Conference. In my opinion, college basketball has never been the same.
College football is similarly playing with fire, and it’s glaringly evident how enabling the lack of capable central leadership has been, perhaps most profoundly illustrated by the utterly vacuous leadership by the NCAA throughout COVID.
Amidst the most unique, yet navigable, crisis of our lifetime, the NCAA was absent, leaving all the conferences rudderless, and college football, which it apparently governs, with a fragmented solution marred by missteps.
Ultimately, this comprehensive approach would be better stewarded following the eventual divorce from NCAA jurisdiction, by the appointment of a college football commissioner-like figure(s).
But, until such a point, I offered a top-down comprehensive college football realignment structure.
Who to Blame?
If one were to conclude that current changes to conference alignments, and the yet unannounced consequential ones to follow, will long-run prove devastating to the sport, it would be natural to hold responsible those negotiating their enactments for the ensuing devastation.
That if they’re the perceived manifestations of power grabs, to condemn the power grabbers. In the case of Texas/Oklahoma, let’s name, and then come to the defense of, the grabber — Greg Sankey.
What is Greg Sankey supposed to do?
As the commissioner of the SEC, Greg Sankey’s job is to do what’s best for the SEC. The problem, which should become the focal point of outrage, is the lack of a viable alternative to the inertia of conference consolidation/playoff expansion.
This void is what is underwriting these unchecked changes. In such an absence of an alternative proposition, Greg Sankey ought to and will continue to singularly do what he believes to be in the best interest of his conference.
The intention of HK3 is to fill this void. College football is woefully lacking any semblance of vision or leadership. HK3 represents a comprehensive vision to finalize conference realignment along historic and geographic bases, to instill a more efficient and symmetrical regular season scheduling protocol, and to revise the postseason in a way which preempts the need for expansion.
I offer it as the alternative that college football greatly needs.
For Greg Sankey, HK3 conflates what’s best for the SEC with what’s best for college football as a whole. I reserve all criticism for Sankey until he balks at such a win-win proposition.
Until then, I greatly respect him as the most powerful man in college sports.
So let’s elevate HK3 instead.
Money
Regarding money — by far the greatest consideration. It is obviously tempting to shift conferences for more money. However, such an imbalance only exists in the first place because the Big 12 fractured in 2011/12, surrendering four of its founding institutions to the SEC, Big Ten and Pac-12. As a result, the conference could not legally field a conference championship game (keeping it from the 2014 playoff) until a 2016 legislation allowed conferences with fewer than 12 teams to stage a conference championship game, ending a seven-year Big 12 gap.
The bottom line is that there is an alternative to disjointed chaos. If we comprehensively rethink the conferences, adhering to tradition and geography, while introducing newfound symmetry, we can restore the rivalries which define college football while reducing the financial imbalances which encourage its fracture.
It starts with repopulating the Big 12 with the losses it sustained a decade ago, in order to resurrect the conference to the power conference it used to be, as opposed to the one that Texas/Oklahoma might soon flea.
And as a result, all the requisite money, albeit unquantifiable, would be in place for all the power programs, who currently (and justifiably so) believe that maximum revenue exists in mega conferences, in the restored conferences of college football’s glory days.
