As we’ve reached late June, it’s that time again. It’s the annual off-season noise on realignment. Who will move? Who will stay? Discussions of media agreements, payouts and more. Most of it is speculative and comes from sources that don’t truly know anything.
Occasionally, a bit of information comes across that is worth taking a deeper dive into.
Yahoo New’s Ross Dellenger addresses realignment and how it is affected by Protect College Sports Act in his recent article.
In fact, the Protect College Sports Act kills realignment at the major conference level if it becomes law.
In Section 205 of the latest revised copy of the 116-page legislation, conferences earning at least $700 million in revenue are prohibited from merging with one another or acquiring new members. This means the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 would no longer be able to add membership.
While interesting, even if the bill passes, we’ve seen lawsuit after lawsuit challenge any ruling in existence. Probably nothing could stop a desired realignment move if a conference and school truly want to partner up.
That said, the bill’s passage could create complications for further realignment. So there is now a window for teams to move, assured of the current rules.
Is conference realignment about to speed up?
And now, given the bill’s anti-expansion provision, those discussions have accelerated, according to several officials with knowledge of the talks. Are they accelerating to a place of imminent action? No.
It’s not up to the schools that want to leave, though. It’s up to 2 parties, the Big 10 and SEC. Everything has a trickle-down effect from what those two conferences do. If they invite schools from the ACC, or the Big 12 well, the ACC’s exit fee declines to $ 75 million by 2030-2031. The Big 12 starts a new deal in 2030, their exit fees are zero. If they lose schools, they’ll likely backfill from each other or the G6.
The financials are obvious, teams would move to the SEC and Big 10 if they could.
There is one massive holdup to all of this, and I think the odds of realignment in the early 2030s have moved from a near certainty to a 50/50 proposition.
The SEC and Big 10 may not want to add realignment to a growing list of off-the-field issues from the playoffs to NIL, the portal, and potential congressional action that already portrays them as monopolizing college athletics. The landscape of college athletics is far different than just 3 years ago when the last major realignment moves were made.
Remember the SEC and Big 10 don’t need to expand for financial reasons. They are already the highest-paid and highest-rated leagues going. They control the playoffs, and each has a major network backing them.
The Big 10 and SEC’s media deals will pay each of their schools, on average, somewhere in the neighborhood of $75-$80 million per school. To raise the value of those per school by $2 million, new members would have to be worth over $90 million. High-quality brands, Oregon and Washington, did not raise the value of the Big 10 deal. California and Stanford couldn’t raise the paltry ACC deal with their additions.
No school out there, save Notre Dame would significantly affect the media rights deal of the SEC or Big 10, though getting schools in new regions would provide some value to the conference networks, but it’s not significant given the massive size of the deals they already have.
There may be other strategic reasons to expand – sheer numbers, getting into new regions, travel, academic alignments, but I feel certain the SEC and Big 10 will not be rushed into realignment moves because of the threat of a bill.
They simply don’t have to make any moves. If you’re viewing realignment as School A is ready to leave, then you don’t understand the current climate.
It’s are the SEC and Big 10 currently ready to invite somebody?
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