Change.
It’s inevitable.
That’s what we always hear growing up.
You can’t stop it.
It’s just part of life.
And we brush it off.
We tend to not think about it until something big happens.
Something that usually affects us directly.
Then we wonder, “Why is this happening?”
“Why now?”
“Why me?”
The sports world is such a teacher of life.
And of change.
I’ve been a broadcaster for over 20 years.
In that time period, I’ve seen coaches retire, get let go, get investigated, say they are staying just to see them leave shortly after.
I was at a stadium for a football conference championship game where I interviewed the head coach of the winning team and then went back to the press box to work on some pieces.
Within an hour, the athletic department of that school came to get us all in the media for an immediate press conference about searching for a new head coach because that coach we had just spoken with was leaving for another school.
I’ve seen three head coaches in one conference all sign extensions with their schools, and then follow by all leaving for other places shortly after.
Schools, in their entirety, have changed conferences.
I watched a conference dissolve, and I have seen one be born.
Student-athletes went from not being able to take a $1 bill without their being a potential NCAA violation to being able to benefit off of their name, image, and likeness (NIL), to a recent decision that could erase amateurism as we know it, with student-athletes being paid directly by the school they play for.
My prediction six years ago was to serve as a caution sign, a warning of the road the NCAA was on.
I had stated, amidst the NCAA punishing some schools and not others, having different rules for different institutions, that the NCAA was going to lose its leadership seat if it chose to continue operating in a fair-for-some-not-for-others way.
My words, six years ago, were that if the NCAA continued to leave some alone while going after others, that, within a five- to 10-year window, they would end up looking totally different than what we know them as, or potentially fail to exist at all.
In the last six years, former NCAA President Mark Emmert stated he had no control over college football and, thus, could not tell a conference or school whether or not they could play, something he shared during COVID-19 in 2020.
NIL came into existence within this time period thanks to the state of California, and though many states did not have legislation put in place to handle it, the NCAA pushed it through, leaving NIL without any clear parameters.
The NCAA also decided to open the transfer portal to all sports.
This portal came with a new opportunity: student-athletes who used a first-time transfer did not have to spend a year in residency. What that means is those student-athletes who are transferring for the first time in their collegiate career no longer have to sit out a season at their new institution.
Old rules in some conferences were more strict, with student-athletes transferring from one school to another within the same conference having to sit out two seasons in a row while retaining whatever eligibility they had remaining.
Before the transfer portal, a coaching staff could also put together a list of schools they didn’t want the departing student-athlete to go to. That list could include any school for any reason.
I think we can all agree that that was unfair. A coach who didn’t necessarily want or appreciate you could keep you from the schools that really did want you and appreciate you. I have experienced that through a friend.
So now the pendulum has swung all the way to a place it has never been before.
You can now transfer for the first time in your collegiate career to any school in any conference that wants you there and you don’t have to spend a year in residency.
For any transfer after your first one, you would have to spend a year watching your team compete before you could play.
However, recently, the NCAA did away with any restrictions that came from transfers that happened after the first one, essentially opening the door to a student-athlete going to four schools in four years, and competing right away at each school.
With the doors of transferring for individuals wide open, the transferring of full institutions has shaken up collegiate athletics simultaneously.
Oklahoma and Texas decided to leave the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference (SEC), a move that will officially take place this summer. Their chess move shook the entire board of collegiate athletics, trickling through NCAA Division 1 to Division 2, with schools reclassifying from Division 2 to Division 1 and schools in NCAA Division 1-AA, or the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), moving on up to NCAA Division 1-A, or thr Fooutball Bowl Subdivision (FBS).
The Big 12 responded to losing Oklahoma and Texas by raiding the American Athletic Conference (AAC), taking UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston.
As a result, the AAC went to Conference USA, taking UNC Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, UAB, Rice, and UTSA.
The PAC-12 Conference lost all but two members, with USC and UCLA bolting for the Big Ten Conference, joined shortly by Oregon and Washington. Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah agreed to become members of the Big 12, with Colorado returning to that conference. California (Cal) and Stanford decided to cross the continental United States and become members of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
Oregon State and Washington State, the lone pieces of the PAC-12, are still seemingly non-committal on where they will spend their future.
In total, all 10 FBS conferences were affected by recent realignment, either by losing or gaining schools, or both.
We now have a Big Ten with 18 schools, a Big 12 with 16 schools, an ACC with 18 schools (17 for football due to Notre Dame being independent), and an SEC with 16 schools.
Mega conferences are back.
Sensible geographical membership is a hilarious non-thought in many instances.
We will now have conference games between schools more than 2,000 miles apart and over 30 hours away from one another.
The new collegiate model has been put together with duct tape, thumb tacks, and silly string.
Change may be inevitable.
But the shaky hold of the NCAA on collegiate athletics has been on the horizon for awhile.
Though you may not be able to stop change, the NCAA could have done a far better job in seeing the signs on the road instead of speeding toward the one that read “Dead End”.
There is not one big thing affecting collegiate athletics, there are many.
And a crystal ball isn’t going to help.
But a team of professionals building a fence around the barn may help us from constantly having to chase down the horses every day.