Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC are the same. But one of them has a major image problem
In the multi-act play titled “The Future of College Football,” ESPN and Fox alternate in the starring role of God, with the Big 12 serving as a court jester.
Only there is nothing funny about any of this.
Since UCLA and USC announced they will join the Big Ten in 2024, college athletics has once again been reduced to a game of suits trying to position themselves as best they can for their individual futures and their schools.
The latest rumors as of 2:13 p.m. Thursday: The Big 12 is recruiting Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah, Washington and Oregon to join its league. One Big 12 source confirmed this pitch; they have no clue if it will work.
Another: The Pac-12 is trying to stay together and is negotiating with the ACC to form a partnership with ESPN. Sounds plausible.
And: The SEC is trying to add North Carolina, Virginia, Clemson and Florida State. This is according to the founder of a website that follows the world of swimming, SwimSwamNews.
If North Carolina and Virginia, two schools that fancy themselves as part of the “public Ivy League” universities in America, join the SEC it re-re-re-re-confirms that academics in major college sports are nothing more than a nuisance.
North Carolina is the school that OK’d, for years, academic fraud; the best part, they got away with it.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame sits in the tourist trap that is South Bend, Indiana, laughing at everyone while they let all phone calls go straight to voice mail.
Take any of this news with a bag of salt; as one major college coach told me, “Every single time this happens none of the reports of what is going to happen next are ever right.”
He’s right.
No one knows. Even those moving the chess pieces don’t know.
According to people at least familiar with what are still just discussions, it all changes by the minute.
On behalf of all devoted fans and loyal followers of college football, and college sports in general, we are over this.
Major college athletics realignment is nothing more than Coors beer merging with Miller Brewing, Marriott Hotels with Starwood Resorts or American Airlines pairing with US Airways.
In the middle of these merger and acquisitions is the Big 12 conference, a league that is stuck with a “fly over” states image problem like no other.
As the Big Ten and SEC create more space from the rest of college athletics by adding the biggest names in college sports, the goal now is simply to be third.
In the college sports dynamic, third is gold.
There is but one reason why the Big 12 can’t finish third, even if it is.
The perception of the league, even with Oklahoma, is that it’s not that of the ACC. Or even the Pac-12.
This is strictly a middle earth problem. The same one that politicians and the late Rush Limbaugh routinely exploited every year. Rush called it “the fly over states.”
It’s the idea that middle America is lesser than those regions closer to major population centers near the Atlantic or the Pacific.
That somehow we don’t count.
Even without Texas and Oklahoma, there is value in the Big 12.
The question is, how much?
And, is it enough?
All of this is about is whether this league can remain a Power 5 conference, and specifically if the College Football Playoff retains the Big 12 in its paradigm.
If that happens, the Big 12 is fine.
It has money; not Big Ten or SEC money, but it has cash and boosters willing to blow it on college sports.
Other than the packaging and the marketing there is not that much difference between the Big 12, the Pac-12 or the ACC.
There never was.
The difference is perception.
The difference is the name. Or the names.
All of these leagues are comprised by a few at the top, while the second tier of teams alternate making a run at the top 10 or top five.
ESPN and Fox and the rest cannot fill all of their time slots with nothing but Big Ten or SEC games. Networks always want more live content.
Live content is still the most valuable feature to an advertiser, even if it’s Kansas at Iowa State football on a Thursday night from Ames, which is not that much different than Kentucky at Missouri in football on SEC Saturday.
They’re both junk.
(FYI: SEC-bound Texas lost to Iowa State and Kansas in consecutive weeks last season).
There is value in what the Big 12 offers, the Fly Over states. What’s to be determined is how much.
No one exactly knows how, or when, all of this will shake out.
Don’t be surprised if it’s today. Don’t be surprised if it’s next year.
Just know that it’s coming, and that the goal for the Pac-12 is the same as the Big 12 and ACC: Third place, and a place in the College Football Playoff.
