The End for Now?: a Realignment Timeline
With the current era of realignment apparently over in major college football -- for now -- here's a look back with a comprehensive timeline.
By
Jerry Hinnen
•
8 min read
Summer, 2005: Boston College finalizes its move to the ACC and the Big East adds Louisville, South Florida and Cincinnati from Conference USA. These moves brought the first -- and until 2010, only -- spasm of BCS-level realignment to a close in the wake of the ACC contentiously grabbing Miami, Virginina Tech and the Eagles to go from 9 teams to 12. Though it's hard to remember now, major college football was actually a highly stable place, conference affiliation-wise, for a period of nearly 15 years; between the Big 12's formation in 1996 and the expansion of 2010, the above ACC/Big East disruption represented the only changes in membership for any BCS league. Entering 2010, the Big Ten hadn't expanded since adding Penn State in 1990, the SEC hadn't since adding Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992, and the Pac-10 hadn't made an addition since adopting Arizona and Arizona State from the WAC all the way back in 1978.
Sept. 1, 2007: Appalachian State beats Michigan on the Big Ten Network. The Mountaineers' seismic upset had an immediate, obvious impact on the 2007 season, but its airing on the nascent BTN -- only two days old -- was also a key pebble in what would become the avalanche of realignment. That instant-classic played a large role in jumpstarting interest in the BTN, which soon overcame its distribution issues and became an enormous money-maker for the Big Ten -- setting the stage for other leagues to expand in an effort to emulate the BTN model and for the Big Ten itself to stretch itself in the search for further network subscribers.
| More College Football |
| Related links |
|
| More college football coverage |
Dec. 15, 2009: Big Ten announces plans for "evaluation of options for conference structure and expansion." Here's the official stater's pistol on the BCS's realignment era: the Big Ten's presidents agreeing that "the timing is right" to have Jim Delany "provide recommendations" on potential expansion candidates. Though the announcement asks for those recommendations over "the next 12 to 18 months," it will take less than 7 for either the Big Ten or its Rose Bowl partners to announce new members.
Naturally, Delany had said just the previous May that expansion was a "back-burner issue" the Big Ten wasn't actively pursuing.
Feb. 9, 2010: Larry Scott announces Pac-10 will consider expansion. Citing the league's upcoming TV contract negotiations, Scott all-but-guarantees that Pac-10 will add teams within the following year. "If the Pac-10 is going to think about expanding, now is our window," he says.
June 10, 2010: Colorado officially leaves for Pac-10. Amid widespread reports that the Big 12 is coming apart at the seams over revenue distribution and other issues, the Buffaloes became the first team to officially jump ship, accepting Scott's invite and becoming the first new Pac-10 team in 32 years. Tubeworms living at the lightless bottom of the sea recognize that they won't be the last.
June 11, 2010: Nebraska joins the Big Ten. In what's universally viewed as the Big 12's death knell, the Huskers fulfill their flirtations with Delany and Co. by officially accepting their invitation to bolt. The addition gives the Big Ten 12 teams and reduces the Big 12 to 10, spawning a million variations on the same "bad at math" joke and, six months later, giving the world two even bigger punchlines in the "Legends" and "Leaders" division names.
June 14, 2010: Texas turns down Pac-10, Big 12 survives. Scott announces that the Longhorns have elected to remain in the Big 12, scuppering the Pac-10/11's plans to add five more Big 12 schools -- Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech -- and form the first 16-team BCS superconference. As the potential Big 12 orphans (Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri) cross their fingers and most of their toes, commissioner Dan Beebe announces a new television deal with Fox Sports that will give the Longhorns greater revenue and allow them to start their own TV network. The new TV deal is enough for Texas A&M to end its flirtation with the SEC.
"Texas A&M is a proud member of the Big 12 Conference," A&M president R. Bowen Loftin says. "We are committed to the Big 12 and its success today and into the future." The future, of course, lasts barely more than a year.
June 16, 2010: Utah's addition forms the Pac-12. Scott wastes no time recovering from missing out on the Pac-16, adding the Utes and paving the way for the Pac-12's North and South divisions and its first championship game in 2011.
Nov. 29, 2010: TCU joins the Big East. The Horned Frogs respond to BYU's and Utah's departure from the Mountain West by hopping to the Big East, giving TCU a shot an automatic BCS bid and the upwardly-mobile Big East a quality ninth team on their inevitable way to 10.
April 2011: Big East presidents turn down $1.4 billion TV contract. Emboldened by the addition of the Frogs, commissioner John Marinatto negotiates a nine-year deal with ESPN for just under a billion-and-a-half dollars. But after seeing the new Pac-12 sign its own deal for $250 million a season, the Big East presidents eventually vote 16-0 against the ESPN contract.
"I think that was the stupidest decision ever made in college athletics," a league source tells CBSSports.com 13 months later, at which point the league is seven more months away from the "Group of Five" playoff agreement officially confirming its second-tier status -- a descent that almost inarguably starts with the instability caused by the lack of the ESPN deal.
July 2011: Longhorn Network official says network plans to show high school games featuring Texas commitments. "I know people are going to want to see Johnathan Gray, I can't wait to see Johnathan Gray," ESPN VP of programming Dave Brown says on Austin radio of the Longhorns' five-star running back commitment. "I know there's a kid Connor Brewer from Chaparral High School in Arizona. We may try to get on one or two of their games as well so people can see an incoming quarterback that'll be part of the scene in Austin."
And with that declaration of intention to turn the LHN (which would quietly debut a month later) into a powerful recruiting tool -- even if those broadcasts never came close to passing NCAA muster or seeing the airwaves -- the already fractious relationship between Texas A&M and Texas splinters for good, by most accounts ... and the wheels are put in motion for the Big 12 to stare death in the face or a second time in two years.
August 31, 2011: Texas A&M tells Big 12 it's leaving. Officially, the Aggies don't have a landing spot designated; they're just that set on leaving the big 12. Between bites of bacteria, though, the tubeworms say they have no doubt the Aggies will join the SEC.
Sept. 16, 2011: Pitt and Syracuse flee in the night for the ACC. In the first sign that maybe skipping out on that TV deal wasn't such a hot idea for the Big East, the Panthers and Orange make the ACC the first BCS league to go to 14 teams. Not only that, they do so without so much as a note left behind; Marinatto reportedly learns that Pitt and Syracuse have left his conference by reading the CBSSports.com report they're gone.
Sept. 21, 2011: The Pac-12 says no to the Big 12 this time. Meanwhile, how serious are the flirtations between and among Texas, Oklahoma, and Larry Scott's league in the wake of A&M's defection? The regents at both schools officially authorize their respective presidents to make the move, likely on the assumption the Pac-12 is ready to say yes -- after all, they'd been the ones asking the year before. "The plan was to go," one Sooner source would say later.
But that isn't Scott's or his schools' plan, in the end. "It is in the best interests of our member institutions, student-athletes and fans to remain a 12-team conference," Scott says. And the Big 12 survives again. (Beebe's employment as commissioner doesn't this time around, though that's not without certain fringe benefits.)
Sept. 25, 2011: A&M to the SEC becomes official. Fearing the worst for the Big 12's future, potentially stranded Baylor threatens legal action to prevent A&M from going to the SEC -- a move which thrusts Clinton-era Washington power-broker Kenneth Starr back into the national limelight but otherwise does nothing but delay what by late September has become the beyond-inevitable. Free of any threat of a lawsuit, the SEC finally welcomes A&M into the fold.
Oct. 6, 2011: Big 12 votes in TCU, approves grant of rights. Like the struggling married couple who hold a flashy ceremony to show everyone how serious they are about their renewed vows, the Big 12 wastes no time in moving forward from September's near-disaster. Its Board of Directors approves a six-year grant of rights that effectively ties 9 of 10 teams together -- Missouri abstains for totally myserious reasons -- and votes in TCU to replace Texas A&M. The Frogs make it official five days later, becoming the third team to leave the Big East in the span of a month.
Oct. 27, 2011: Missouri to the SEC becomes unofficially official. The Tigers' leap to the SEC has been a foregone conclusion for weeks -- the school's Board of Curators has already granted chancellor Brady Deaton the authority to make the switch -- but any last remaining doubts are extinguished when the SEC's own website accidentally publishes an entire package of content devoted to welcoming Missouri into the league. "the Southeastern Conference has continued to demonstrate its commitment to maintaining its stature as one of the nation's premier conferences by welcoming the University of Missouri as the league's 14th member, Commissioner Mike Slive announced Monday," a statement that appeared on the site on a Thursday read.
The wait to make the Tigers an official-official member of the SEC wouldn't be long; Slivewould make the actual announcement Nov. 6.
Oct. 28, 2011: West Virginia joins the Big 12, too. If TCU makes three Big East departures, do we hear a fourth? After an intense round of both public and behind-the-scenes jostling between Louisville and West Virginia to fill the vacant slot in the Big 12 left by Missouri, the Mountaineers officially get the nod and become the league's 10th team. WVU and the Big East celebrate the resolution of the drama by immediately suing the crap out of each other.
Dec. 7, 2011: Big East invites Boise State, four others. Geography, schmeschmography; when you have all of five football-playing members and one of the teams willing to join your suddenly ragtag outfit has been to two BCS games in the past five years, you burn the atlas. And thus the Big East welcomed Boise State, along with fellow Mountain West transplant San Diego State, Houston, UCF, and SMU to replenish the league back to 10 members.
By the following March, the Big East had added Memphis and its own former exile Temple to swell to 12 members and prepare for a 2013 divisional split and first-ever championship game, just as soon as the Broncos get their ducks in a row and leave the MW. Everything's swell!
Sept. 12, 2012: Notre Dame joins the ACC in everything but football, but kind of joins in football, too. After nearly a year of relative quiet on the realignment front, one filled only by the usual constant buzz of rumor and innuendo, a sudden bombshell: the ACC makes Notre Dame the league's 15th member in all sports other than football. But the Irish aren't exactly all that independent any longer, either, agreeing to a scheduling arrangement that will see them play five ACC games per season.
November 19, 2012: The Big Ten adds Maryland, Rutgers. The Big Ten adds Maryland, Rutgers! Of course, even if no one really saw Notre Dame-to-the-ACC coming, surely those wild rumors about the Big Ten adding Maryland and possibly Rutgers are completely hoaxtastic, right? No way the league would ever bend over backwards to add programs with no history with the current league membership, precious little on-field success, and no potential "local" rivals other than Penn State just to add a few more bucks to the BTN's bottom line, right?
Actually, it turns out they would, and would again a day later, joining the ACC and SEC at 14 members. But even if most Big Ten fans were less than thrilled about the additions, there did prove to be some positive fallout; "Legends" and "Leaders" will officially be no more, oh, any day now.
November 28, 2012: Louisville joins ACC, hops on last train leaving the station. Maryland's move opens up a slot in the ACC, one the increasingly desperate denizens of the Big East -- hi, Louisville, UConn, Cincinnati -- would trade their left booster check to fill. The Cardinals wind up getting the golden ticket.
December 31, 2012: Boise State tells the Big East they'll pass on that invitation after all, actually. Traveling cross-country to play Rutgers and Louisville was one thing, apparently, and doing so to visit Temple and East Carolina something else. After months and months of rumors the Broncos have cold feet, they officially announce that they'll remain in the Mountain West for the 2013 season and beyond. As expected, San Diego State quickly follows suit, and the glory that was the Big East West and the Big East East proves all too fleeting.
April 22, 2013: ACC's members agree to grant of rights. That brings us to this week, when the ACC's 15 members each agree to a grant of rights, leaving the SEC the only conference without such an agreement -- leaving it vulnerable in case any school ever wants to, you know, leave the SEC.
Assuming the grant of right contracts are enforceable (not a perfectly safe assumption, but one that's held up so far wih the Big 12 and elsewhere), that should put an end to the rumors of Florida State or other ACC schools bolting for the Big 12 -- and unless the Big Ten gets a sudden hankering to add UConn and Cincinnati to go to 16, or the ACC decides it has to have USF and East Carolina to get to 16 itself (plus Notre Dame!), it should likewise bring an end to the current era of realignment.
Is that a wrap for this timeline? Possibly not, but it's likely enough that now's as good a time as any to pause, take a breath, and look at just how far college football has come since the Big Ten's announcement in Decembr 2009 -- for better, or for worse.
