#Tulane conference realignment series
#Tulane conference realignment free

Or, it can be a cruel reminder of your lot in life.

Here’s a golden ticket for you, TCU, and you, Cincinnati, and now, possibly, you, San Diego State and SMU. Texas landing its own SEC invite a decade later caused such indignity that A&M tried to derail it.Īnd then there’s the Group of 5 schools, for whom the wheels of realignment can serve as the ultimate form of validation.

Texas A&M getting an invite into the sport’s premier conference before Texas invoked such vitriol that the schools refused to play each other for 13 years. Now, Cougars fans are enjoying the schadenfreude of getting called up to a conference that is threatening to end Utah’s league’s existence. UCF's breakneck realignment rise, and what might come nextįor years, Utah lorded its Power 5 membership over archrival BYU like a 10-year winning streak on the field. I still believe my most radical suggestion, a college football Premier League, will happen at some point in the future. Some of the hypotheticals proved prophetic - I suggested the Big 12 might add schools like UCF and BYU, and that Arizona, Arizona State and Colorado might be tempted to leave the Pac-12 for the Big 12. My main contribution was a piece laying out five possible scenarios for the next wave of realignment (which included the aforementioned Sankey quote near the top). At the time, there had been no notable shuffling in five years, and there were no signs of anything major on the horizon, so we filled the void with behind-the-scenes retrospectives on Larry Scott’s audacious attempt in 2010 to create a Pac-16, Texas A&M’s stealthy move to the SEC the next year and a clash between United States senators when West Virginia beat out fellow Big East member Louisville for an invite to the Big 12.

#Tulane conference realignment series

We don’t have that, so instead we dream up 32-team superconferences with billion-dollar revenue distributions.įans’ insatiable appetite for any little morsel of realignment chatter was the inspiration for The Athletic’s Realignment Revisited series in 2019. NBA podcast hosts can fill hours talking about hypothetical sign-and-trades or salary cap dumps.

#Tulane conference realignment free

It is our NBA free agency, MLB trade deadline and NFL Draft all rolled into one. If we’re being honest, sometimes more so than the games themselves. In my experience, fan fascination with realignment far outweighs any other evergreen subject in college football. But staring at it for too long can induce headaches - especially if you’re an athletic director. It remains within eyeshot 365 days a year, year after year, teasing and tantalizing fans of every team in the sport. Only this blimp never returns to its base.

It is the one universal topic that hovers over college football like the Goodyear Blimp on a fall Saturday. Everyone knows there is no such thing as back burner in conference realignment.