Pac-12, Big Ten and ACC alliance takes shape following Texas and Oklahoma's SEC push

Ever since the SEC flexed its muscles by moving to add Texas and Oklahoma — two of the biggest brands in college football — to its already impressive lineup, pressure has been mounting on the sport’s other major players to respond.

On Tuesday, the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 did just that, announcing that they intend to work together on a variety of issues, from College Football Playoff expansion to NCAA governance, and that they will form a nonconference scheduling alliance as soon as their respective contracts permit them to do so.

“The alliance” — as it is being called — did not involve a formal pact signed by all three parties. The mutual agreement is not based on specific scheduling details or formatting. Tuesday’s news largely amounted to three commissioners drawing a line in the sand. In a time of great instability and mistrust in college sports, they decided to take a leap of faith and hope that it pays off down the line.

“There’s no signed contract,” Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said Tuesday. “There’s an agreement among three gentlemen, and there is a commitment by 41 presidents and chancellors and 41 athletic directors to do what we say we’re going to do.”

Said ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, “We’ve looked each other in the eye.”

Now that everyone knows where the three leagues stand, what’s next?

(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Kevin Warren set a Big Ten record for being disingenuous. Jim Phillips could’ve been flagged 15 yards for unnecessary pretension. And George Kliavkoff, offering a revelation that was refreshingly honest and astonishingly devoid of fine print, said the “historic” alliance among the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 was secured not by contracts but rather an “agreement between three gentlemen.”

The chortles coming from inside SEC headquarters must’ve been hearty. So much feel-good bluster over a nonbinding deal to schedule a few nonconference games in an unspecified number of years from now? Greg Sankey just added Texas and Oklahoma to his inventory, and other commissioners are practicing trust falls.

As counterpunches go, this was less of a light tap and more like a complete whiff. When a counterpunch misses, it’s natural to try a counter-narrative. Like the whopper Warren told Tuesday: “I wouldn’t say this is a reaction to Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC.”

Riiiiiight. And Floridians boarding up windows isn’t a reaction to hurricanes. We just prefer our homes to feel more rustic.

(Photo of Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff: Kelvin Kuo / USA Today)

The last time multiple power conferences announced an alliance, the deal was scrapped within seven months.

You mean you don’t remember that time the Big Ten and Pac-12 brokered a scheduling partnership, in December 2011? How could you forget? This was in the good ol’ days of a 12-team Big Ten, when scheduling with a fellow 12-team conference in the Pac-12 should have been easy — especially since the two had long been partners through the Rose Bowl, and especially since this came on the heels of a different round of realignment.

Instead, the entire thing fell apart by July of 2012, with the Pac-12 expressing reservations because of scheduling issues.

Somewhere Tuesday, the SEC was laughing. Elsewhere, the Big 12 and the Group of 5 programs were shaking their heads and wondering who’s going to mess this up for the others first.

(Image: Screengrab from Tuesday’s Zoom video conference)

Among the primary topics discussed Tuesday by the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 commissioners were governance and College Football Playoff expansion, but their vision for shared nonconference football scheduling presents the most intriguing and complicated model whenever — or if — it takes place. There are several differences among the leagues that need massaging before they start to sync matchups into their schedules.

The Pac-12 and Big Ten each play nine conference games; the ACC plays eight. Their media rights agreements are staggered with the Big Ten’s expiring in 2023, the Pac-12 in 2024 and the ACC in 2036. Several teams in each league have longstanding rivalries with teams in non-alliance conferences. Most football programs have major-conference matchups scheduled well into the future and some are prominent.

“We promise that we’re going to keep all of our existing contracts and games that are in order,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “Some conferences have eight games; we’re a conference that has nine conference games. ... So that’s one of the items that we definitely will be working with through our leaders in our conference.”

How Notre Dame fits in the alliance scheduling puzzle is perhaps the most intriguing piece.

(Photo: David Purdy / Getty Images)

Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 commissioners pledged to work with one another on multiple topics in what they term as a “historic alliance” in their joint announcement Tuesday afternoon.

Among the primary topics include governance and College Football Playoff expansion, but their vision for shared nonconference football scheduling presents the most intriguing and complicated model whenever — or if — it takes place. There are several differences among the leagues that need massaging before they start to sync matchups into their schedules.

The Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 are expected to formally announce their alliance on Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET, multiple people with knowledge of the situation told The Athletic. The three leagues plan to work together on multiple fronts, from College Football Playoff expansion to NCAA governance issues and annual football scheduling.

Schools within the three conferences believe they are like-minded, that they want to continue to prioritize broad-based sports offerings and that the academic profile of their institutions matters — as does graduating athletes.

"You all know the importance to us and the Big Ten around the concept of like-minded institutions," Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour said on Saturday.

"The Big Ten really prides itself on being more than just an athletics conference. ... If you look at that footprint of Pac 12, ACC and the Big Ten, I think the number is 40 percent of the AAU (Association of American Universities) membership lies in those three conferences."

The scheduling piece will likely be the most complicated, considering how many programs are locked into future game contracts — and that the Big Ten and Pac-12 both currently require that members play nine conference games apiece. The appeal of cross-country (and cross-conference) scheduling is particularly enticing for the Pac-12, which would then be able to play games in the Central and Eastern time zones, more major markets and fertile recruiting regions.

One scheduling option could be that the Big Ten would drop from nine conference games to eight and each school would play one game with each of the Pac-12 and the ACC annually, sources say.

(Photo: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)

When athletic director Terry Mohajir arrived at UCF in February, he began an assessment of facilities, as all new ADs do. Some minor upgrades, like new turf for the indoor practice facility, have already been implemented. But Mohajir wanted a grander plan, and his people worked at a “warp-speed” pace to put one together.

Then Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC happened. The stakes got higher. Mohajir went to the UCF board of trustees meeting last Thursday to make a presentation — really, it was a presentation to the greater college football world.

One question sits at the top of the mind of every athletic program right now: Where do we fit in conference realignment? It may not say so publicly, but UCF would very much like an invitation from the Big 12 if the remaining eight teams stay together. Every Group of 5 team would. Many of them have already inquired. A repurposed Big 12 without Texas and Oklahoma would still likely command more television and College Football Playoff money than the Group of 5 conferences. It would also provide elevated status.

Now it’s about selling oneself. Between a new facilities plan and television numbers that are comparable to the rest of the Big 12, UCF thinks it can.

“I really believe we are a consistent Top 25 program,” Mohajir told The Athletic. “And I truly believe that, in due time, we will be a consistent top-10 program.

The Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC are expected to make a formal announcement about their alignment soon, perhaps as early as next week, multiple sources told The Athletic. It's not yet clear how specific the announcement will be because there are so many details to iron out, although administrators in all three leagues have stressed in recent conversations that issues of governance can and should be front and center.

Everything is changing.

Texas and Oklahoma are moving to the SEC. The NIL rule change has increased the value of college basketball to high school prospects that have more options than ever. And the NCAA is considering radical changes, forming its own constitutional convention later this year.

So let’s get weird. The Athletic’s college football staff considered an entirely new football conference alignment, so we decided to do the same thing … for men’s college basketball. There’s no doubt that Texas and Oklahoma moving to the SEC is entirely football-driven, as will be any more realignment. But if everything is changing, let’s consider no longer tying the fates of college hoops entirely to the whims of football.

Six of our writers — Dana O’Neil, Brian Hamilton, Eamonn Brennan, CJ Moore, Matthew Gutierrez and Brendan Marks — participated in a 12-round snake draft, building their ideal conferences from scratch with a men’s basketball-centric focus. This is what happened, and an explanation from each writer for why they went the way they did.

AMES, Iowa — Heavy-duty construction outside the Iowa State football facility has turned the once-solid working environment into almost an unrecognizable colossus.

In some ways, the building serves as a perfect metaphor for the Cyclones under coach Matt Campbell. Nice and quaint has given way to powerful and effective. The program that once seemed satisfied with bowl eligibility now won’t settle for anything less than the best version of itself.

Yet one topic hovers over the facility that neither Campbell nor his players can fix. With traditional Big 12 heavyweights Oklahoma and Texas leaving for the SEC by 2025, the league’s future is uncertain. The current players shrug off the uncertainty. So does Campbell. What happens to Iowa State and the Big 12 has everything to do with the future, not the present and certainly not this fall. That’s what the players can control, so that’s where their focus lies.

(Top photo: Iowa State Athletics)

If you’re wondering what makes the SEC so wonderful and why ESPN is willing to back up the Brink’s truck for that league’s rights, let me introduce you to a term called the “avid fan” that the networks use to measure the value of a particular league. The SEC has more of them than anyone. College football also has more avid fans than college hoops. That’s why football drives everything. But there are a few basketball programs that have enough avid fans that their schools offer something outside of just football. One of those schools is Kansas.

Getting the conferences or even ESPN to try to share basketball viewership data is like asking for CIA secrets — for some reason, they’re not sharing — but as one industry source, who assumed I’d get these numbers, said: “You’re going to find that Kansas and (Kentucky) are off the charts in viewers, and then there is everyone else.”

He added that those are two programs whose numbers are actually competitive with college football. This is relevant because when placing value on the two main revenue sports when it comes to television negotiations, the industry belief is that football accounts for 80 percent and men’s basketball the other 20. Kansas could be an outlier, a program whose basketball ratings are significant enough to at least move the scales.

“I do think this is basically all around football,” Kansas basketball coach Bill Self told The Athletic. “But I do think there’s some things that a school could bring to the table and not necessarily be focused on all football, and that would be, do you have a brand? What is your national brand? And would that be something that could benefit people? I think academic reputation is going to be very, very important that leagues can look at or mergers can look at and say, ‘How do all the schools mix,’ based on similar type of philosophy academically. So I think there’s a lot of things that go into it.

“But I do think having a brand in a sport … is something that could be beneficial.”

(Photo: Nick Tre. Smith / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco made his first public comments on conference realignment Monday, saying the AAC is not plotting with ESPN to take teams from another league.

The comments at AAC’s media day come one week after Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby publicly accused ESPN of working to influence at least one conference to poach remaining Big 12 schools. Sources told The Athletic that the AAC was one of those leagues engaged with some Big 12 schools, but Aresco denied any collusion. ESPN also denied the Big 12's accusation last week.

“Our conference has never strategically aligned or plotted with ESPN to influence conference structures,” he said. “We wouldn’t do that. ESPN has never done that and would not do it. We do consult with our television and business partners on issues related to our conference, of course, but any suggestions or statements that we colluded with ESPN with regard to the structure of any other conference is a completely unfounded and grossly irresponsible accusation.”

Aresco said he has not reached out to anyone with the Big 12 but said he would not comment publicly on any other conversations. He did keep the door open for expansion.

“If there are schools interested in us who could enhance our brand and be a cultural and competitive fit, then why wouldn’t we consider what happens down the road?” he said.

(Photo: Katie Stratman / USA Today)

Florida State president John Thrasher addressed media reports connecting FSU and the SEC, saying: “I want to be clear that persistent reports that Florida State has been in contact with the Southeastern Conference are untrue. We have had no communication with the SEC or any representatives of the SEC.”

(Photo: Kim Klement / USA Today)

Clemson issued a statement to The Athletic on Monday denying speculation that it has reached out to the SEC about possible membership.

According to an athletic department spokesperson: "There is no truth to the report that Clemson University has been in contact with the Southeastern Conference regarding membership."