College Football: the pros and cons of super conferences

The cons of conference realignment

Missing out on certain rivalries

With teams leaving behind their previous conferences, we could miss out on some regional rivalries.

While some could still happen for one reason or another, it will be impossible for all of them to be preserved and played on a regular basis.

An example is the Bedlam rivalry, or Oklahoma vs Oklahoma State for those of you unfamiliar with the names of rivalry games. Is this the biggest rivalry for Oklahoma? No, that would be the Red River Rivalry between them and Texas, which will remain intact. Nonetheless, Bedlam is still a great rivalry that could very well be ending, and the teams would have to schedule each other in the non-conference to continue it.

Travel

Although many believe that Division I football players are professionals now because of NIL, they are still students and have classes to attend.

Many of their classes are online now, especially after the pandemic, but there is still a lot of time that they have to spend on schoolwork. However, constant trips across the country for a conference road game will cut into their time.

This isn’t the end of the world by any means, especially since football really only plays on weekends, but it’s still something.

TV deals

With super conferences, each conference’s TV package will be as valuable as ever. Does this mean that some streaming services – namely Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video – could potentially look to purchase portions of each conference’s package? It’s certainly a possibility.

If that is the case, then fans would have to have subscriptions to multiple different services and providers, just to watch games. Not only is that less than ideal financially, but it is also just a hassle to not have nearly every single game all on one platform.

We are already seeing this in the NFL, where beginning this season, Thursday Night Football will be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.

It’s also happening in Major League Baseball, where broadcasting has been an issue for years due to blackout restrictions. On top of having the games on ESPN and Fox like they normally do (as well as obviously local channels for local teams), fans also need to purchase the MLB package to view more games. Plus, the league now has some games being streamed on Amazon Prime Video on Apple TV. When the games are on those services, the local provider often does not have rights to broadcast the game, so fans are stuck needing subscriptions to numerous platforms, just to watch their favorite team play.

If this happens in college football, the fans will suffer the consequences.

Some schools getting left behind

With super conferences, there will surely be a lot of “smaller” schools left behind.

Currently, FBS has 10 conferences: the Power Five conferences and the Group of Five conferences.

Two things could certainly happen, the first of which is many mid to low tier Group of Five schools being left behind, as the more successful programs transition into a power conference, such as the AAC’s Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston are doing as they are scheduled to join the Big 12 next year.

Did many of these Group of Five schools have any sort of a chance to compete with the national powers to begin with? No, but now they could get left in the dust entirely.

Another thing that could happen would be for some current Power Five schools that aren’t so good at football, also being left behind. Is there a chance that conferences eventually start cutting ties with their member schools that are less successful in football? Could programs that are members of the ACC, Big 12, and Pac-12 struggle to be picked up by a super conference in the future because of a lack of success on the gridiron?

One thing is for sure, some schools will be left behind in this process. The only question is how many, and who? For those that do get left behind, is there a whole other level of Division I football created, similar to how there’s already and FBS and FCS?