More change is on the way

ACC expansion is step in college football's next evolution

Even as we speak, presidents and athletic directors from the Atlantic Coast Conference are seeking to find a graceful way to move ahead with the pirating of three teams -- Miami, Syracuse and Boston College -- from the Big East to form the requisite 12-team superconference and make tons of money from football.

It has been a very public and unseemly process from the start, more than a month ago. ACC bigwigs voted to consider expansion and then visited Miami, BC and Syracuse as if they were transplanted insurance managers looking for new homes. The Big East, whose football -- and financial -- future hangs in the balance, has fought to keep the Big Three, and five member schools even filed a lawsuit against Miami, Boston College and the ACC. The threat of litigation has slowed the process and caused embarassment for people -- like Duke president Nan Keohane -- whose esteemed universities look like street vendors.

The expansion, which seemed like a done deal in late May, is now on hold for at least a few more days. There is little doubt that the ACC would benefit tremendously, in the long run, from expansion. There is little doubt that three defections would kill the Big East as a major football conference. The Big East is now clinging to life by its fingernails and the ACC is looking for some way to plunge forward like little kids jumping into a cold lake. It stings at first, but then it feels good for a long time afterward. Whether the ACC has the guts to jump remains to be seen.

There is a larger picture here. Recent developments are a continuation of the latest evolutionary movement in college football that began in the early 1990s. The Southeastern Conference expanded to 12 teams in 1992 and the Big 12 Conference was formed in 1996, killing the old Southwest Conference (which, it must be said, had much greater cachet and much more history than the Big East in football, but was liquidated nonetheless). By expanding, each of these conferences was able to add a money-making, postseason championship game. There were other moves: Notre Dame signed a deal with NBC; Penn State joined the Big Ten; and, yes, Miami signed on with the Big East, making that conference a player in the football mix (even with Rutgers and Temple as members).

Other than the seemingly annual restructuring of Conference USA, the Western Athletic Conference and the Big West Conference (among others), the power-conference structure largely has been static for the past seven years.

Smart people don't expect that to last. In November I talked with a respected former coach who predicted that the next wave of change was close at hand. Here is what he foresaw: a shakeout that would leave only five conferences and roughly 60 teams. These five conferences would monopolize all BCS bowl berths and television contracts. For the time being, they would remain part of the NCAA, but eventually that, too, would change.

In the long run, college football would do what it has to do: break off completely from the NCAA and form its own league. Would the schools then pay their football players salaries? Would they continue to participate in the NCAA basketball tournament? Would the new organization relax recruiting rules? All of these questions would hang in the air.

The former coach couldn't predict how long the transformation would take. Maybe five years. Maybe 20. But his point is dead on. College football is much too different from the rest of college sports to exist much longer under the current model. Too much money is being lost by too many schools, and too much money could be made if the schools did business differently.

It's possible that the Big East and dogged commissioner Mike Tranghese somehow will survive the current coup by the ACC. It's possible that some ACC presidents are currently experiencing a crisis of conscience over the places that football is taking them. But it will be temporary. College football is changing again, in big ways. Soon enough it will be either a minor league for the NFL or a non-scholarship arm of institutes of higher learning. It can't stay where it is for long.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to SI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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