Summer Chats: Conference Realignment Thoughts

 I haven't addressed wide-scale NCAA conference realignment on The Maverick Rambler, with the exception of how the UT Arlington Athletics Department fits within that framework. I will break that today.

Conference realignment has always been a thing, even if it wasn't called that. Look at the constant shuffling of the Southland Conference from its founding until UTA left in the 2012. The Mavericks had 18 different SLC rivals, but never had more than 11 members at any one time. The pace has accelerated the last two decades, starting with the Atlantic Coast Conference's raid of the Big East. Ever since then there has been a constant rollercoaster of universities trying to better themselves.

Rivalries have been postponed and/or destroyed while teams with no geographic compatibility have replaced the more natural and/or heated ones. Teams are chasing the dollar to increase their competitiveness while negating the fan base. Baylor stopped playing TCU and SMU to replace with Kansas and Iowa State. Until of course TCU was admitted back, along with West Virginia. Guess which game tends to draw more fans, regardless of sport? Now obviously Kansas is a draw in basketball, but now so much in anything else. West Virginia had no natural rivals until Cincinatti was admitted this year. Iowa State's biggest games were out of conference.

But it didn't hit clown world until a year ago.

Two California schools announced plans to join a mid-west conference. Now, the very geographically compact rivalry of USC (Los Angeles, California) and Rutgers (Piscataway, New Jersey) will grace prime-time TV. The Big 12 now stretches from Utah to West Virginia. The SEC is likely the most compact spanning from Missouri to Florida, though there are rumors that will expand as well. The Pac-12, or whatever will be now, lost a third member and more rumors persist about one-to-three more Universities leaving that sinking ship. The ACC is rumored to be in crisis mode as there are schools scrapping amongst themselves to elevate their standing. 

All this back-stabbing and self-interest has made college athletics an unstable environment. Once the profit motive is set, there's no going back. But what if there was a system that actually was stable?

I'll preface with this will never happen. However, if the NCAA operated like the University Interscholastic League, the governing body of Texas High School Athletics, then there'd be stability. The UIL categorizes schools by size into their respective divisions, then separates those schools geographically. For a district championship, El Paso high schools play other city schools, the Gulf Coast plays other area schools, etc. Texarkana HS would never be grouped Del Rio High. Locally, South Oak Cliff will always play Carter, pending their size similarities. There are hundreds of these types of examples.

Imagine that scenario nationally. No more goofy geographic pairings. The backstabbing would cease. Attendance would increase as fans could see road games and locals would be more interested in the visiting teams.

The historical stability of conference is 12 teams, but 10-12 would work. Imagine a scenario where UTA plays UNT for meaningful games, though to the UNT's credit, they do play in all sports at the moment in non-conference. However, that's per agreements between the coaches and schools. As a student during a time when UNT "big-timed" UTA, I'm acutely aware that the series is one-coaching hire away from ceasing in any sport.

After that, any rivalry not accommodated by geography could be scheduled in the non-conference slate.

Outside of money, the other impediment is ego and power. Can you imagine UT-Austin pairing with Sam Houston as a conference rival? Losing to them in a conference race would be more than the teasips could handle. 

It's all fantasy anyway, but this sure would make college athletics focus less on where to call home and more on athletic competition.