The latest radical realignment in college football should have schools like Boston College spooked

College football’s active fault lines make the San Andreas Fault look like a mere salt shaker. The entire sport was reshaped in a flurry of moves last week, and the once-iconic Pac-12 conference was swallowed up by the seismic shift of conference allegiances.
The topography of the sport from coast to coast is unrecognizable; the Power Five conferences unsentimentally consolidated into the Power Four in a snap. It’s Survival of the Richest with a finite amount of space at the media money trough.
Only the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten really reside on stable, unshakable ground, although the Big 12 was the biggest winner of the Pac-12′s implosion. Trying to go Apple streaming for a TV deal left the Pac-12 bleeding out.
At its essence, college football is fueled by three elements: passion, pageantry, and tradition. You can chuck tradition and replace it with financial security. That’s why Colorado sparked this latest round of radical realignment, defecting to the Big 12. It’s why Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah followed suit. It’s why Oregon and Washington signed the Pac-12′s death notice by absconding to the Big Ten for less than a full-member cut of that conference’s lucrative new seven-year, $7 billion TV contract. Welcome to the Big Ten with 18 members.
College football drives college sports. More than anything we’ve seen on the field, the off-field financial jockeying has become a brutal, no-holds-barred, loyalty-free bloodsport. Forget Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Division (FCS), college football is now sub-dived into the Desirables and the Undesirables. We have a college football caste system.
The sport has become a game of musical chairs. When the music and the money stop, some schools will be left without a leg to stand on.
Effectively, we’re looking at European soccer-style relegation to less relevant status. The burned-out husk of the Pac-12 is still smoldering, but it doesn’t feel like the chaos ladder is over.
The name of the game now is mergers and acquisitions.
Beware Boston College.
It has to be chilling for the folks at the Heights to see Stanford and California, two of the most prestigious academic institutions in the country, left for dead, along with Washington State and Oregon State, in the ruins formerly known as the Pac-12. In existence in some form since 1915, this will be its final football season in a familiar form and format.
Like BC, the Bay Area elites are academically-stringent schools in a major media market.
If estimable Stanford, which won the Pac-12 as recently as 2015 and went to 10 straight bowl games between 2009 and 2018, can be tossed aside like a candy wrapper then the same fate could befall BC if the Atlantic Coast Conference fractured. The same goes for Duke or Wake Forest in a cruel new world ruled only by football marketability and viability.
Power Four footing is tenuous.
BC has one conference title to its name in 123 seasons. In fairness, Boston College didn’t play in a conference until the now-defunct Big East started in football in 1991. The Eagles helped hasten the demise of that league in 2003 by defecting to the ACC starting with the 2005 season in search of brighter lights and bigger paydays. They captured a share of the Big East title in 2004 as a parting gift.
That’s it.
Offensive Line U and the college football incubator for Art Donovan, Fred Smerlas, Doug Flutie, Matt Ryan, and Luke Kuechly has advanced to the ACC Championship game twice, in 2007 and 2008. That’s one more than erstwhile national power Miami can claim. But BC is not one of the six schools to ever win the title game.
Now, the folks in Chestnut Hill can point to the ACC’s holy grail grant of rights that runs through 2036. It’s college football’s version of a chastity belt. The ACC owns member schools’ media rights and their media money through 2036, barring a negotiated buyout or settlement.
However, it hasn’t stopped disgruntled blue bloods like Florida State from threatening to depart.
Last week, Florida State president Rick McCullough said at a board of trustees meeting that FSU would consider leaving the conference without “radical change to the revenue distribution” from TV money. FSU is not content with the ACC’s plan to award more money based on achievement.
The Seminoles and other teams have studied the ACC’s grant of rights and aren’t convinced there isn’t some way to escape that straitjacket. As the Associated Press reported, at least seven ACC schools — Clemson, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia, and Virginia Tech — have had discussions about breaking the grant-of-rights deal.
You notice who wasn’t included in that cabal?
If eight of the ACC’s 15 members vote to dissolve the grant of rights it disappears faster than Kiké Hernandez as the Sox’ face of the franchise. Those schools could court other conferences or form their own conference, leaving the rest of the ACC as warmed-over leftovers.
Florida State and Clemson simply can’t afford a $30 million deficit to their in-state rivals in the SEC, which is the most powerful football brand outside of the NFL. Necessity is the mother of invention. Greed is the father of duplicity.
There has been scuttlebutt about the ACC throwing a long-distance lifeline to Stanford and Cal to form a new ACC (the American Coast Conference). But the value added for existing ACC members is debatable, unless they can convince ESPN to re-open their TV deal before 2036 for bringing in Stanford and Cal from the cold. That seems unlikely.
Are these changes good for college football? Financially, yes. Competitively, no. But it doesn’t matter when the whole sport is singing the Wu-Tang Clan classic C.R.E.A.M — Cash Rules Everything Around Me.
The only way the tide will be reversed is if fans lose interest because their teams become mired in the middle of the pack of mega-conferences. The expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams is the oxygen allowing super-sized conferences to breathe, but in a 16-team or 18-team conference there can still only be one conference champion.
That’s going to grate on fan bases that view success as a birthright.
All pretense of balancing academics and athletics — along with geography — has been forfeited. The Pac-12 was the biggest domino to fall, but it won’t be the final one.