Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 are expected to formally announce an alliance between the three leagues in the next seven to 10 days, according to various sources involved in the talks, but the substance of this agreement remains in flux.
A confluence of seismic changes within the university’s sports landscape, including name, image and likeness (NIL), expansion of the playoffs, a Supreme Court ruling that opens the door to antitrust litigation against the NCAA and its members, and the incorporation of Texas and Texas by the SEC. Oklahoma: It has created the desire between the three leagues to find common philosophical ground to chart a way forward.
“Is it about philosophy, governance, programming?” asked an athletic director. “It could be all of these things.”
Athletic first reported the news of the planned announcement.
After Texas and Oklahoma announced their intentions to move to the SEC last month, the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 began exploring options to counter. This resulted in an “alliance committee” that includes several sporting directors from each league, along with the three commissioners, to determine if an alliance would be an optimal way forward. Members of these subcommittees are expected to make a phone call in the coming days to determine the specific language of a formal announcement, according to several administrators who know the conversations directly.
According to an AD, the scope of the alliance remains uncertain. Although the initial talks included all sports, recent discussions have focused exclusively on men’s and women’s soccer and basketball. Creating a conference-free programming partnership could also create lucrative television opportunities, but there may not be agreement among all schools on how best to run it, even within the conferences themselves. The ACC currently plays eight league games, while the Big Ten and Pac-12 play nine. Several ACC schools also have annual rivalries against SEC schools. As one ACC athletic director put it, “no one has broken future scheduling contracts yet.”
The alliance also serves as an opportunity for Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, who has been working for less than two years, and ACC’s Jim Phillips and Pac-12’s George Kliavkoff, both hired this spring, to siphon off a bit of political weight away from the well-established SEC.
The most immediate concern could be the expansion of the college football playoff. A working group led by Jack Swarbrick, CEO of Notre Dame, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, and Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson designed the proposed expansion of 12 teams, but several sources said members of the Pac-12 and Big Ten had expressed concern about the scope of the expansion, preferring a six- or eight-team model. Two of ACC’s most influential coaches, North Carolina’s Mack Brown and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, also criticized the twelve-team approach. When news broke of the SEC’s flirtations with Texas and Oklahoma, the reaction intensified and Kliavkoff expressed his view that the leagues could benefit more by waiting for the playoff TV rights to hit the market in 2025. .