Big Ten: Why conference realignments are ruining college sports

UPDATE: Oregon and Washington will join the Big Ten starting in the 2024-25 academic year.

College conference realignment has seemingly struck again as the Big Ten continues to lean heavily into the big part of its name by reportedly looking to add Washington and Oregon.

This would bring four West Coast teams to the Midwest-based conference, bumping it up to 18 teams. It also would leave the once-proud Pac-12 with just a handful of schools left after Colorado and Arizona depart for the Big 12.

Rumors are still swirling that Arizona State and Utah could also make moves in the near future.

Here’s the thing: This stinks. For years, conferences have told fans that student-athletes trying to form unions or get paid will be what crushes college athletics. Instead, it’s conferences trying to secure the biggest bag for TV contracts and media rights.

I’m not naive. I understand money talks and football is king. But these moves aren’t beneficial to student athletes or fans. Here are my biggest complaints when it comes to conference realignment.

So much for the welfare of these college athletes.

There's no defensible argument for how this latest round of realignment actually BENEFITS college athletes. None. Zero. Because it doesn't.

Just going to make life so much more miserable and difficult for anything but football.

— Brendan Marks (@BrendanRMarks) August 4, 2023

There is no world in which this truly benefits the student athletes, especially when you consider the “non-revenue” or Olympic sports. Congratulations, top-25 USC women’s lacrosse, you now get to travel 2,600 miles from Los Angeles to College Park. That No. 2 seed Washington men’s soccer team? Enjoy your 2,800 mile trip to Rutgers for a Thursday night game.

Even if they smartly couple road trips to hit a couple Midwest or East Coast schools, these students are now taking classes in hotels and missing out on the college experience they signed up for. The quick turns for men’s and women’s basketball will give players whiplash as they go from Ann Arbor to Eugene.

And what about those left behind? Stanford is consistently rated as one of the best, if not the best, athletics departments in the country. It has elite golf, gymnastics, rowing, soccer, volleyball and more. Its women’s basketball team is one of the best in the nation. What happens to all those athletes? What happens to Oregon State and Washington State?

(Jennifer Buchanan-USA TODAY Sports)

WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE APPLE CUP??

Recent realignment has ripped apart a handful of rivalries (or re-ignited ones thought to be dead if you’re Texas A&M), which is nothing but terrible for fans. College football — and college athletics as a whole — thrives on rivalries and tradition, and so much of that is lost when you force fans to care about a game between Northwestern and Washington or Oklahoma and Ole Miss.

Sure, these games could be scheduled as a non-conference game. But if you’re Washington — and could have to play maybe Oregon, USC, Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State — why would you add another Power Five team, like Washington State, that loathes you just for fun?

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File

The “Big Ten” could have 18 teams. The SEC is at 16 with Texas and Oklahoma. The ACC and Big 12 have 14 apiece, with the former bumping up to 15 during non-football season with Notre Dame.

Even before all this latest expansion, the ballooning of conferences has led to ridiculous gaps in competition for teams. N.C. State and Duke — separated by just 24 miles — played football against each other in 2013. They didn’t play again until 2020.

The money grab expanding conferences to ensure better media rights deals won’t actually get you the matchups you want to see or ones that you think sound cool (ignoring the irrational travel needs, of course). There will likely be divisions that are split regionally — gasp, almost like a conference based on regions! — and it will seem like some schools might as well not even be in the same conference.

It will also decrease the number of exciting non-conference basketball games because, again, why would a Big Ten or SEC team voluntarily add an ACC or Big 12 team to the schedule when you have a gauntlet of conference play staring at you down the pipe?

This piece expresses the views of its author(s), separate from those of this publication.

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