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.
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.
Yeah, when in doubt, say you’re doing it for the kids. Even when it’s more about spite.
There is hope within all three leagues that their commissioners will align to delay the implementation of an expanded College Football Playoff. Athletic directors in all three leagues have expressed concerns over the composition of the four-member working group that proposed the 12-team format and treated it as an inevitability without hearing from any representatives of the three leagues.
Hey, if the Pac-12 is principled enough to walk away from a 12-team CFP format, more power to ’em. It still doesn’t change that had Oklahoma and Texas approached one of them first, they’d have done the exact same thing Sankey did.
Get The Picture 
Not gonna lie, I read the Header as “The Alliance of Herbstreit” … probably about the same though.
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Same.
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Hope this works:
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Yeah! Let’s delay the increased chances of our teams actually playing for something and continue with the status quo of 2-3 SEC teams making the 4-team playoff (if you go ahead and count OU,) because we’re upset!
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Why use this as a way to delay playoff expansion? I’ve been vocal that I hate expansion, but playoff expansion and the implosion of the Big 12 are good for the Pac 12. They are pretty much guaranteed a spot as one of the 6 highest rated conference champions.
I’m starting to think this is all about Kevin Warren and the Big 10’s hurt fee-fees that they don’t control the agenda any longer. He couldn’t get last season canceled and now has lost the brand war to $ankey. He didn’t get a voice in the expansion plan and now wants it.
Bunch of babies throwing a big temper tantrum because they couldn’t get what the $EC got – Oklahoma and Texas.
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The issue with expanding the CFP now is that ESPN holds exclusive bargaining rights until 2026.
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I understand that. The ACC shouldn’t have a problem with working with ESPN/Disney because they are already fully in bed with them. This almost seems like FOX is using its relationship with the Pac 12 and the Big 10 as a way to get an opportunity to bid on an expanded playoff. All roads about this point back to the Big 10 as the instigator of this.
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I don’t know whether the B1G or the ACC or the PAC instigated it, but if you follow the money trail you could make a pretty good case that the ACC could be the instigator. Their member school payout is pretty mediocre compared to the B1G or SEC and they are locked in for 15 more years. They know that when the SEC’s new media deal comes online in a few years with OU and UT they are going to get left far, far behind in the money.
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That definitely makes sense … use the “alliance” as a way to bring Mickey back to the table on their media rights deal. When Mickey does, the ACC suddenly tells the FOX conferences they’re ready to move forward on playoff expansion.
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Exactly… I think much more money to be had by waiting and putting it on open market.
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Paraphrasing a line from the first Star Wars movie, “you can smell the stench from this all the way here”.
Just reinforces my opinion that only one SEC team is going to the play-offs. Clemson is important, but it doesn’t matter one way or the other, if they don’t win the SEC.
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I smell a 4 team playoff made up of the SEC, PAC, ACC, and Big10 conference champions.
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Almost makes me want to root for ND to finish in the top four every year to keep a team from a conference out…
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ND would probably align with the ACC.
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I hate seeing the SEC expand and accelerate the NFL-ification of college football. But it’s almost worth it to see the Big10, PAC12 and ACC look like idiots. Almost.
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Hey, whatever delays or outright prevents the ludicrousness of a 12-team playoff, I’m all for it. Maybe we can let them all hash it out and come to the correct conclusion that there are not 12 teams deserving of a national title every year and to reel it back to 8 teams. 8 teams with 5 automatic seeds for the 4 “power conferences” and the highest ranked G5 conference and then 3 wild card seeds.
Yes, the SEC will still get in two teams every single season, and likely three, and that should be more than enough for everyone. Twelve is a step too far. 8 does far less damage to the regular season.
I think this “alliance” is correct in that four person committee took things too far by deciding on twelve. Now that the Big-12 is dead, there’s no need for 12 teams in the playoff to serve five masters. 8 is more than big enough to serve four masters.
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Notre Dame is going to get one of the wild card spots in an 8-team playoff almost every year. There’s no way the committee is going to put in more than 1 team from a conference into an 8-team format with ND in because of “inclusion.” I notice Jack Swarbrick has been very quiet about all of this.
My only point about this is that these 3 Clampetts are slowing down the 12-team format is to spite $ankey and the $EC. They were all happy with the 12-team format before the expansion occurred.
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The playoff is worth a lot more to ESPN if ND has a clear path. No way to expand without making room for them.
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I know. The 12-team playoff made perfect sense for ND. They no longer need to navigate their independent season undefeated to get in. They will likely host a play-in games in most years.
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Damn, Corch! You almost make sense there!😉
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Won’t someone think of the remnants of the Big 12? Wouldn’t the ‘alignment’ hasten the shift from the P5 to the P4?
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Desperation is a stinky cologne.
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So, the thinking here is to become a conglomerate that ensures that the members all get shares of money when they have teams in the playoff? And then, balk at the playoff that would have made them the most money? And then enforce the four team model that would only benefit SEC, BigTen, ACC?
Seems like one of those solutions in search of a problem.
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It’s going to be funny when the 4 strongest “brands” in the ACC ask to join the SEC.
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I could see two (Clemson and FSU). I don’t see Miami. And I don’t think that UVa or UNC wanting out of the ACC due to other considerations like academics, basketball, and spring sports like lacrosse (though I suppose for men’s and women’s lacrosse, soccer, etc. they could remain in the ACC).
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I could see Miami wanting to follow the Money to the ACC. The question would be who joins them to keep the numbers even and if the SEC/Mickey Mouse views their legacy as turning on enough TV sets.
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Note who is NOT part of this three conference group—the Big 12.
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We don’t know what we’re gonna do, but we’re gonna meet in our clubhouse. Oh, and you know our players are smarter than those glorified high schools in the SEC (disregard the fact that we panted after the same players).
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I’ve always thought Miami and Oregon were an untapped rivalry to add to the CFB landscape.
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The SEC is going to have two teams in the four team field most years. If that’s OK with the Pac 12, then cool. I personally don’t want to see the playoff expand, so if these morons want to cut off their noses to spite their faces then more power to them.
I can’t help but think that not only would the Pac 12 have taken Texas and OU if they’d come knocking on their door instead of ours (just as the Big 10 would have and the ACC would have) but the SEC wouldn’t be sitting around whining and crying about it. We’d be out there making moves to improve our league in response. It sure is nice that everyone is hugging the Big 12, but the other leagues should instead be picking the bones clean and if that means that Baylor is suddenly not in a power conference again then it couldn’t have happened to a nice bunch of guys.
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*nicer
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Why is the SEC going to have half of each year’s bids every year? Don’t tell me that it is because the SEC will have 2 of the best 4 teams every year. The collegefooballplayoff llc or whatever it is named created “the committee ” plan after the SEC got both BCS bids in 2011. That BCS match up was what got the other Power 5 conferences to sign on to a setup that controlled how many SEC teams could take slots away from other conferences.
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And after the howling when Bama got in from 2017 season after not even winning their own division, I don’t see the SEC getting in two teams ever again unless there is no straight-faced argument to be made by the committee that they aren’t two of the best four teams regardless of the SECCG outcome if it is close (e.g. two SEC teams are ranked #1 and #2, went 12-0, and the SECCG is an extremely close game, ND sucks, and PAC champion has like 3 regular season losses).
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“…the academic profile of their institutions matter”
From Jim Delany’s open letter to this BS it continues to annoy me that these presidents and league commissioners talk down to the SEC in ways that suggest that they could beat these schools on the field if they would compromise their academics.
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Prior to OU/TX news, I suspect that each conf thought that they would get more than they would really get in the playoff. This is a list of what they thought separately….
1-2 G5
1 ND
2-3 Pac 12
2-3 ACC
2 Big 12
3-5 Big 10
4-5 SEC
That’s a range of 15 teams on the low side. So they started with dumb thinking. In reality it was going to be more like
1 G5
1 ND
1-2 Pac 12
1-2 ACC
1-2 Big 12
3-4 Big Ten
4-5 SEC
With OU and TX that moves b12 to G5 status. So it will end up being (without legislation to throttle our access)
1 G5
1 ND
5-7 SEC
3-4 Big Ten
1-2 Pac 12
1-2 ACC
You would routinely have a final 4 with 3 sec teams in it. So they are going to ban together and throttle sec access to 4 teams. Or some other bullshit.
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Fox is going to slow the playoffs down to get a chance to bid on the deal. The other leagues don’t want ESPN to have so much control. Acc would probably exit this “alliance” if ESPN would let them renegotiate their TV deal. If Kansas and WVU end up in the acc, that kills the Big 12. Texas and OU can jump sooner to the sec. in exchange for taking the bullet of adding worthless Tv teams like KU and WVU and saving ESPN a massive amount of cash by folding long horn network sooner….the acc might get a new TV deal.
In other words, we don’t know who is playing checkers and who is play chess yet.
My assumption is the Big Ten and Pac 12 are playing checkers. ESPN, Fox are playing chess. And the acc is the wild card.
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So instead of football, make about oil and the ACC/B1G/PAC12 want to be OPEC and control oil prices by controlling the flow of oil. If you can cut off the oil supply from the rest of the world, you have power and wealth.
In the case of college football, high school players are the oil and the largest oil fields are found in the south with the exception of California and 2 or 3 other states. The B1G wants to be an oil baron but they they have very little oil in their country and what they do have is drying up as the south continues to grow and produce more. The PAC12 has California but they’re changing demographically and producing less. The rest of the conference feeds off of them and Texas, which has now totally transferred production to the SEC. The ACC is in the South, shares the southern oil supply, but has historically been more focused on industries outside of oil, like basketball. They have less wealth and remain at risk of being invaded by their richer southern SEC neighbors in the future. Some are only held back by treaties with ESPN.
Doesn’t matter what they announce, as long as the oil fields are controlled by SEC nothing of substance will change.
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Solid
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I would have gone with “A Confederacy of Dunces” for the header, but this works, too.
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