The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 alliance of college football

The commissioners of the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC made it official on Tuesday, announcing an alliance between the three leagues. But they offered little else in terms of concrete plans for the future.

Kevin Warren, George Kliavkoff and Jim Phillips spoke extensively about the confidence, stability and protection of the future of college athletics, but Tuesday’s announcement did not offer a clear path forward in terms of programming, realignment or expansion of college football playoffs.

Instead, the group announced the alliance as a handshake deal with the unanimous support of its members, which arose from mutual recognition by academics, sponsoring a wide variety of Olympic sports and the general search for social justice, gender equity and diversity and inclusion.

In other words, it’s a start. Where things go from here is anyone’s guess.

“There is an air of cooperation,” an AD later said. “We don’t know what opportunities they can get out of it.”

What are the goals of the alliance?

The buzzword that defined the entirety of this ad was “stability,” and while the ad included a strong dose of high rhetoric, from nebulous programming plans to general goals of tracing the fate of the col model. Legally, the real goal of this group is to stabilize a listed ship.

While Phillips spoke of his desire to avoid a new round of conference lineup, Kliavkoff said the Pac-12 is still looking to expand and will announce the decision to add teams over the weekend.

The biggest issue is the stability of the college model. The lack of national guidelines on name, image, and resemblance, the Alston case, the NCAA constitutional convention, realignment, new television offerings, all form part of a greater sense of tumult within the college landscape. and the hope is that this alliance will be able to tap the brakes on how quickly change occurs.

“Construction for the future had to start somewhere,” Warren said. “The file [Power 5] it was in a state of flux. There was strong turbulence. There are three new commissioners. The NCAA has taken a step back and said it must evaluate everything from a constitutional convention. You have an expansion of the PCP that none of us formed, of the group that participated in it. You have name, image and likeness, the Alston case, issues of gender equity and issues of social justice that we need to address. We will look back in ten, twenty, even 50 years, they will study what happened in 2020 and 2021, from the assassination of George Floyd to COVID and the issues we are talking about right now. Someone had to take the first step and, personally, for me as a senior, I didn’t want to sit down and let those decisions be made by others. “

Is this really just a handy strategy deal?

It is no coincidence that trust became a key point of conversation between these three commissioners. The lack of trust that followed Texas and Oklahoma’s decision to join the SEC was the springboard for creating that alliance, and is the underlying reason why other leagues are not currently involved. Kliavkoff even joked that the information surrounding the expansion of the 12-team playoffs hasn’t changed since the idea first emerged, but “who knows has changed” – a not-so-subtle dig into the commissioner of SEC Greg Sankey, who helped design the format while negotiating with Oklahoma and Texas.

But the most important reason for the gentleman agreement is that no one wants this to be formal. For one thing, the Alston case is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, and three lectures that will coincide on the future of the NCAA in any official office would be a big red flag with full antitrust. In addition, there are 41 schools involved here, and uniting any formal language would likely create some dissent. If there is no specific language beyond a general agreement to continue speaking, support is unanimous. Once there is a specific language on the page and signatures are attached, the potential for recovery ratchets increases greatly.

What about conference scheduling between canopies?

This is clearly the ultimate goal. As Phillips said, “We are scheduled to go down, as it will raise the national profile of all of our teams playing from coast to coast, with college fans across the country as beneficiaries.” But as for a chronology … no one was going there yet. The truth is that we will have to wait years for this to happen. First, the three commissioners were clear that they would not tear up existing programming agreements. Due to the way non-conference programming is done, many schools are locked in games for at least the next five years.

“It’s not about getting out of contracts and flying anything,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “It’s about honoring these existing contracts, but also about building relationships between these three conferences of similar ideas, as we look forward from a programming standpoint to see if there’s an opportunity to build unique games that come together.

“We’re really in the early stages of that.”

Second, there are still questions about conference programming related to Pac-12 and Big Ten, which play nine conference games. The ACC currently plays eight. Warren and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said the number of conference games they play should be addressed along the way.

The third factor here is television. While the commissioners said finances were not the sole goal of their alliance, canopy games without conference equipment between the teams at the three conferences can only improve their existing and future television offerings, and also allow them to venture into other areas to settle with other revenue streams. . Raising your national profile is great, but doing so by increasing revenue is even better, especially when the SEC is preparing to move away from the money race.

Are the conferences aligned in the playoff expansion?

They are aligned to be “methodical” in the discussions as they continue until September, when the PCP board will meet again to discuss the proposed expanded format of 12 teams. Phillips said the ACC still has no position on whether to approve the plan, while the Big Ten and Pac-12 remain in favor of expansion. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to pass a vote next month.

The three commissioners spoke at length about the types of debates that are yet to take place and the questions that need to be answered, especially since none of them were in the room when the plan was formulated.

The most significant comment about the playoffs was in a Zoom call the three commissioners had with ESPN after the press conference. “I think people are really focused on being thoughtful and very methodical on this issue,” Warren said. “So I know where the Big Ten is coming from, we’re still gathering information. We’ll be ready when we get into that meeting on September 28. But I don’t think where we are with the turbulence in college athletics. You know, everything we move forward will be a rubber stamp, I think everyone will look at their decision-making process with critical eyes. “

“There are still some unanswered questions there,” Phillips said. “And that’s why I don’t think anyone can definitely say, ‘Hey, we’re ready to vote yes or no.'”

What does this mean for realigning and expanding conferences?

Kliavkoff said the Pac-12 will have a decision on whether to pursue expansion over the weekend, but it seems pretty clear that none of those conferences will be stealthy among league members. At least not right now. While much has been made of the “knights’ agreement ”between the three, Phillips noted in his statements about wanting the expansion process to continue differently across the landscape this time around.

“The history of college athletics, an expansion of a conference, has usually led from one to another to another,” Phillips said. “For us, we felt the stabilization of the current environment in Division I, FBS and Power 5 in particular, this was an opportunity for a new direction, a new initiative that I think had never been done before. , and I considered this to be the most appropriate step at this time. I think you need to have a group that really understands that expansion does not mean that you end up changing membership in several conferences in a significant, short period of time. ” .

And what about the rest of the Big 12?

On the one hand, Phillips said this about the Big 12: “We want and need the Big 12 to work well. The Big 12 matters in college athletics. The Big 12 matters in Power 5 athletics and our FBS group. I can only tell you that we will be watching what happens here. “

So why not include the Big 12 as part of this new alliance?

“By the time we met, there was a lot of instability,” Phillips said. “Will the big 12 be together? Will they join another conference? Will they lose members? What’s the final game? And I think the three of us felt we had stability in our leagues. And that’s what I think would benefit the company the most. [from]. “

So what does all this mean? Beyond the banalities and comments that Big 12 curator Bob Bowlsby will uncover about things, the future of Big 12 remains precarious. No one in the alliance will leave to join the Big 12. This fails to try to convince other groups of five schools to join when their long-term future seems, at best, murky.