Comes. Maybe in a few years. Maybe in a decade or two. But he’s not stopping now. With USC and UCLA moving to the Big Ten, a year after Texas and Oklahoma accepted SEC invitations, the college Super League is on the way. College football as we knew it is on its last legs. It will eventually be replaced by an NFL Jr. style sport. and television executives who have long dreamed of it will finally get their wish for a simpler product in the package. People at the right schools will make a lot of money and fans at the wrong schools will be left behind. College administrators spent an extra year telling the public they were concerned the name, image and likeness would destroy the purity of college football and alienate fans. Many did so while chasing any extra dollar they could find, even if it meant ending age-old rivalries and conference affiliations. Worried about the uncertainty in college athletics? Who do you think caused all this? Look in the mirror. Don’t let it be lost that this is coming from “non-profit” organizations. It was never going to be ZERO and a handful of million dollar player deals that turned off the fans. Rather, it was slowly stripping away everything that gave the sport its allure and moving toward a national corporate model, changes fueled primarily by money, especially television dollars. It’s like any other business now. ESPN and Fox will never say they had a hand in these moves, but you’d have to be ignorant not to see the part they play. In 2011, then-Boston College athletic director Gene DeFilippo said ESPN told the ACC what to do in alignment, before later retracting it and apologizing, saying it was a misunderstanding. Last year, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby claimed that ESPN (the conference’s own media partner) was working to destabilize the Big 12 by pushing teams toward the SEC and AAC and issued a cease and desist. (ESPN denied the claim.) ESPN will soon own all SEC media rights. Fox owns 61 percent of the Big Ten Network and has reportedly locked up half of the Big Ten’s next media rights deal and is participating in the league’s talks with other potential media rights partners. The Big Ten and SEC were already projected to perhaps double the other Power 5 conferences in television revenue by the end of the decade. That’s why all this is happening. Even if ESPN and Fox don’t directly say “Add this team,” they’re making it clear who they’ll pay more money and who they won’t. These conversations happen all the time. It’s basic business. “I think it’s quiet behind the scenes,” an FBS athletic director told The Athletic. “They really don’t like to know they’re deciding who’s going to be in which league, but don’t think there aren’t conversations about, ‘If we get this property, how much value are they going to bring?’ We don’t choose random schools. … They just don’t want their perspective to decide, but the money comes from them. They need to tell the league or somebody (the schools’ TV value).” That’s why we lost the Backyard Brawl between Pitt and West Virginia. That’s why we lost the border war between Kansas and Missouri. That’s why we lost Nebraska-Oklahoma. That’s why we lost Duke-Maryland. This is why we will lose many more rivalries. (And, yes, now that’s why we’re taking back Texas-Texas A&M.) We’ll get Big Ten games from noon ET Saturday through Sunday morning. ESPN will have the SEC in all but the 10 p.m. kickoff window. Even without the money, the other conferences will be squeezed out of prime TV windows on the bigger channels. It may feel like we’re headed for an ESPN conference and a Fox conference, although Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren has been an advocate of having multiple media partners. It takes competition to drive the price up, after all. Maybe it’s CBS, NBC, ESPN, and/or Apple. But Fox still wields power. Ultimately, it’s two broadcasters going all-in on the most valuable thing left on television – live football – and leaving all kinds of change in its wake. This is all short-term, but let’s take a step back for a broader look. What are the long-term effects? Some generations grew up with the Southwest Conference. My generation grew up with Big East football. Neither exists anymore. Change in college football has been constant. So it’s not hard now to imagine younger generations growing up with only two major conferences. This move isn’t just about this generation of fans, even though the direct TV money will be huge. It also concerns the next generation. How do you explain this move to Washington State fans? Or Oregon State fans? Or Iowa State fans? Or Kansas State fans? Can not. You hope they’re still watching and waiting for the next generation to grow up. When college football reaches the inevitable end of this road with 30 to 40 teams left in the top tier, the powers that be won’t want you passing on your Washington State fanaticism to your kids. They’ll want your kids to stick with USC or Texas or Alabama like the Golden State Warriors or Kansas City Chiefs have fans all over the world. It’s about chips now, because chips can be sold to anyone. This is the ultimate endgame of realignment, and why it’s not really realignment. After it gets big, it will shrink. Whether the superconferences shed members or the biggest brands fizzle out on their own, eventually they will drop the dead weight that hurts the value of television, even if they’re in the Big Ten or the SEC today. It may not even be a decision made by anyone currently in a position of power, but when you start down the road of corporate restructuring, you always get to that stage and the real glamor of the sport will be gone. It has already happened in baseball with the shrinking of the minor leagues. What is college football at that point? If the SEC and Big Ten have their own playoffs, will Texas Tech or Oregon State fans care? Will NFL fans watch more college football if it’s organized into a cleaner, more accessible version of the NBA G-League? I do not know. It’s not hard to see a lot of die-hard fans bailing if their team is relegated from the top flight. Maybe not all at once, but slowly over time. Or maybe there is enough of a casual college football fan for an NFL Jr. to survive and thrive. This is the bet that is now being made through television. Ultimately, the SEC and Big Ten have the largest amounts of passionate fans. That’s what this boils down to. No amount of maneuvering by the Commissioner could change that. Eventually, schools with their own large fan bases outside of these leagues were to join the others. Maybe there was no way to stop this. Maybe the biggest schools would always merge in the end and a century-plus of regional college football would always die and be replaced by a national sport. It has become a TV product first and foremost. This has been evident for over 20 years now, from late announcements to last minute kickoff announcements to endless TV timeouts. The sport is running. The question now is whether fans will still care, whether this big-money game will keep enough of them. I grew up in Big Ten country. I started my roots in Michigan as a kid and then attended Michigan State. As far as I can tell from my circles in the Big Ten and what I’ve seen elsewhere, after the initial shock, the general reaction of these fans to the USC/UCLA news has been mostly apathy. Surely some are excited. Some people hate it too. Most felt powerless to do anything about it, a grim acceptance that the sport they grew up with changes no matter how they feel. And they are fans of the winners in this game of musical chairs. This sport has always been unique. That’s why we fell in love with it. The huge pool of teams that follows. The local talent. The small towns. States that do not have professional sports teams. The intensity of rivalries. The upheavals of generations. Connections to a school as alumni. Clutter and silliness was everyone’s charm. The biggest stadiums in this country host college games, not professional games. Few NFL fans care about the history of the league before the Super Bowl. College football fans can tell you a story about a game from 1917. It’s clear now that much of the allure that draws us to college football is ongoing. All in the name of finding and the last dollar. So throw one for the 2007 season. For Boise State-Oklahoma. For separate national titles. For Appalachian State-Michigan. For the Rose Bowl. I will still watch. So will millions of others. The sport is not going to die. It just won’t be what so many of us fell in love with in the first place, and many fans will be left behind. (Photo: Richard Mackson/USA Today)
