It’s 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday in the fall. The college football day has mostly ended and the most important games are out of the way, but you crave more football before bedtime.
You switch the channel to ESPN 2, where Stanford is playing Oregon in a game that may decide the Pac-12 North and you enjoy another two and a half hours of football.
After this season, this practice – one common for many fans – will come to an end.
August 4, 2023, will go down in history as the day that the Pac-12 and modern-day college football died. The conference had been dealt a major blow before this day, when USC and UCLA announced that they were leaving to join the Big Ten, and Colorado announced it would also be leaving for the Big 12. These departures were a huge blow to the Pac-12, but not life-threatening.
However, when Arizona, Arizona State and Utah announced that they would be leaving for the Big 12 and Oregon and Washington announced their intentions to leave for the Big 10 earlier this month, the final nail in the coffin of this former Power 5 conference was pounded down.
The only remaining Pac-12 schools following the 2023 season will be Stanford, Oregon State, California and Washington State. Without at least eight schools, the conference has two options.
One is to add more schools – perhaps BYU or Boise State – to remain viable. The other is to cease to exist.
The Pac-12’s disintegration is about more than just this conference. It’s indicative of a troubling trend in college football, one where schools are actively seeking to form super conferences. Conferences like the Big 12 and ACC may be safe for now, but how long will this “safe” period last?
The SEC and Big Ten are already the two most popular conferences – by far – in college football and with more expansion for both leagues likely on the horizon, their popularity is only going to grow.
Are we headed toward a future where only a handful of teams are positioned to compete for postseason play? Well consider this: next football season, 18 of the top 20 teams with the most viewers per week will either be members of the SEC or Big 10, with only two (Clemson and Notre Dame) outside of these leagues.
How will other Power 5 conferences keep up financially? They will likely cut non-revenue sports to save money, resulting in many student-athletes losing their scholarships. While the primary factor in a school’s decision on conference selection is almost always about football (and, by extension, TV money), many other college sports programs will be hurt by the shift toward super conferences.
It feels like the umph has been taken out of college football in the modern era.
The sport has changed more in the past decade than any other sport in the world.
Ten years ago, we were still in the BCS Era and bowl games actually mattered. Who knows what the game will look like over the next 10 years. One thing is for sure – college football will change forever after this season
Try to enjoy the last days of the Power 5 Era.
