College Football’s Rich Keep Getting Richer, at a Steep Cost to Everyone Else

The Big Ten followed the SEC’s lead in striking to add USC and UCLA, widening the chasm between the superpowers and the rest of the NCAA.

What one college athletics super poacher began last July, the other accelerated this week. And the entire enterprise now is hurtling toward a complete demolition and rebuild in the coming years.

More than ever, we are entering the long-anticipated, much-theorized era of two megapower conferences, the Southeastern and the Big Ten. They’ve long been the richest, but their successive summer blockbuster moves to acquire the best of the rest of the Power 5 leagues have widened the chasm between them and everyone else.

The stunning (but ultimately unsurprising) news broke Wednesday that USC and UCLA, the media-rights linchpins of the Pac-12, are in advanced negotiations to leave that league for the Big Ten. This was the response to the SEC’s massive acquisition of 2021, when it accepted Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12. Conference rivals turned colluding escapees. There almost certainly will be more aftershocks to come.

The Los Angeles foes will continue their rivalry in a new conference.

Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

The thing gained by both the Los Angeles schools and the Big Ten is the only thing that matters in modern college sports: added revenue. That’s what drives every decision, regardless of the damage done to things like tradition, geographic sense, the “student-athlete” experience and any semblance of collegiality. It’s a straight mercenary endeavor, which underscores all the more that anyone angry at the players for getting a cut of the profits needs to sit down and shut up.

In a monetary vacuum, both sets of moves make sense. Texas and Oklahoma will leave behind a smaller revenue pool for a bigger one, and the SEC will welcome two longtime cash cows to enhance its bottom line. For USC and UCLA, moving out of a conference of fading relevance to join one that is on the cusp of a record new media-rights deal smooths the path back to powerhouse status, and the Big Ten answers the SEC’s aggression with arguably an even bigger move.

It makes sense, but it also sucks. College athletics has continued its descent into soulless professionalism. Beyond adding big bucks, what’s lost is substantial. A brief list:

• The Alliance is trashed. Remember that announcement last summer? When the Big Ten, Pac-12 and Atlantic Coast Conference all put their arms around one another and swore they’re in this thing together? Basically joining forces to combat SEC hegemony? Yeah, what solidarity.
Now, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren has stuck a shiv in the ribs of Alliance compadre George Kliavkoff of the Pac-12, breaking the agreement between the three leagues not to raid one another for members. And Warren has absolutely destabilized Jim Phillips’s ACC in the process, undoubtedly escalating the wanderlust of schools in that league. The most marketable remaining schools in both those leagues—Oregon and Washington in the Pac-12; Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina in the ACC—figure to be exploring their own exit strategies. Keep an especially sharp eye on the Pacific Northwest in the coming days/weeks/months.

The next time anyone in any league talks about sticking together and loyalty, it’s perfectly acceptable to laugh in their faces.

• West Coast tradition is gone. California, UCLA’s brethren in the UC university system, first played the Bruins in football in 1933. USC first played Stanford in 1905. Now those relationships have been tossed in the dumpster.

• Regional sensibility continues to take a beating. The idea of UCLA and USC being in the same conference with Rutgers and Maryland is, of course, ludicrous. But it isn’t overly efficient for them to be in the same league with teams from the Midwest, either. The L.A. to West Lafayette commute ain’t easy. (Also: California football fans who hated the idea of 9 a.m. local kickoffs had better accept them. They’re inevitable now.)

• The premise of enhancing the all-around college experience for athletes is more counterfeit than a dollar bill with Chip Kelly’s face on it. Assuming that this Big Ten expansion will encompass all sports, the travel demands on the players just grew exponentially bigger. Anyone who has traveled from the Eastern time zone to the Pacific and back knows what that does to the body clock and how much time it consumes. Example: When Penn State travels all day on a Monday to play UCLA in basketball on a Tuesday and then flies home overnight, 60% of the academic week is trashed. Coursework will be harder to maintain. In-season fatigue will increase. Mental health consequently will suffer. All the buzzword off-field stuff administrators pretend to care about will be further jeopardized. Don’t believe them when they say otherwise.

• In addition to the direct hit to the Pac-12 and the threat to the ACC, the Big 12 could be thrown back into chaos. Sources told Sports Illustrated last year that the eight remaining members of the Big 12 after the Texas and Oklahoma defections were offered, as a package, to the Pac-12. A similar overture is believed to have been made to the ACC. Neither conference wanted to make that deal—but the landscape has shifted. Both the Pac-12 and ACC could be more willing to add members now. Brett Yormark was just announced this week as the new commissioner of the Big 12, and he could be parachuting into a tornado. Or maybe Yormark parachutes in as a poacher, with the Big 12 looking to pick off some remaining members of the Pac-12.

• As we trend toward survival of the richest and fittest, how secure should the less marketable and successful schools feel within the Big Ten and SEC? If everything is negotiable and every agreement is breakable, is the Big Ten really committed to keeping Purdue and Minnesota for the long term? What about Vanderbilt and the Mississippi schools in the SEC? Watch your backs, Boilermakers and Gophers and Commodores and Rebels and Bulldogs.

• If the Pac-12 further splinters or outright collapses, the almighty Rose Bowl and its sacred sunset could become a Big Ten property.

• Don’t discount the added stress on independent Notre Dame, which has long rebuffed overtures from the Big Ten. The Fighting Irish hitched their wagon to the ACC in every sport but football and absolutely want to maintain their independence, but that latitude could dwindle in a world increasingly dominated by the SEC and Big Ten.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told me in April he saw the breakup of the FBS level of college sports as “inevitable.” He said “so many” schools were looking to leave their leagues and prophesied that we are heading toward two superpower conferences. Now we’re almost there.

The end result could be two 16-team leagues that leave everyone else behind, but I wouldn’t expect either the Big Ten or SEC to stop there. The next step might well be going to 20. Then those two leagues could start their own playoff. Or each have separate playoffs that match their champions. Or each have playoff winners that they unilaterally declare the national champion without facing the other conference on the field. (That would be a throwback to the bad old days, when voters in wire service polls crowned the national champions of college football.)

This much is sure: Everything in college athletics is for sale, and cashing checks is the only thing that matters. That’s what drove Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in the summer blockbuster of 2021, destabilizing the landscape. And now that’s what has driven USC and UCLA to the cusp of Big Ten membership in the jaw-dropping sequel.

It’s good for a few people. It’s bad for everyone else. And the dominoes are destined to keep falling. We’re nowhere near done.

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