Conference realignment not all good

Speeding Through L

ife

A lot of things have been circulating in the news about the NCAA, Big Ten Conference and Pac-12 Conference realignment.

For those of you who don’t know, the Big Ten Conference which has traditionally included schools from the Midwest and northeast part of the country has added Los Angeles schools USC and UCLA starting with the 2024-25 football season. Last week, the conference voted to include Oregon and Washington in its plans for the 2024 football season.

On the surface, this sounds like a ton of fun. The additions will spark more intense matchups and will create excitement for football fans.

I wasn’t a college athlete so I’m not sure how this will impact football players in the classroom. On one hand, they will be traveling farther across the country. On the other hand, those games are largely on Saturdays so I’d imagine the impact isn’t as major as it is for other sports.

That’s what I want to dive into now. What does this realignment mean for the other sports?

Pac-12 schools are not known for their football prowess. They have a couple of good programs that usually succumb to the likes of Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma and other schools come championship time. However, the Pac-12, and Stanford, in particular were known for being an Olympic pipeline for women’s sports.

Those sports, along with men’s sports will likely need to travel long distances if they hope to remain in a competitive conference. If the Pac-12 decides to combine with the Mountain West Conference, a conference whose most notable member is probably Boise State, schools like Stanford might see a dip in recruiting as they try to convince athletes to come and compete against inferior competition.

However, if the Pac-12 were to jump to the ACC, which is comprised of east coast teams, sports would have a very tough time with travel schedules and universities like Stanford would pay a substantial amount in travel fees to transport those kids across the country.

I think this is the perfect storm where things might get worse before they get better. It will be interesting to see the conference alignment play out over the next few years. Some universities will see a decrease in their athletic success and the non-football and basketball sports might see yet another shake-up in the future. But in the meantime, I’ll be sure to enjoy the college football season and the new teams involved.