In a guest-post to Sportisphere, Steve Goldberg outlines his thoughts on conference realignment:
It’s September, and the smell of college football is in the
air on every campus across America. As a student, you live for spending your
Saturday afternoons cheering your team to victory.
However, turn on ESPN for just a few minutes and you will
soon realize that the focus is not on the usual upsets and early BCS
predictions. Instead, rumors are constantly circulating on television and the
Internet about schools headed for new conferences.
Last offseason, Colorado and Nebraska decided to leave the
Big 12 for the Pac-12 and Big Ten, respectively. This offseason, Texas A&M
decided to leave the Big 12 and play in the SEC next year. There is talk that
Oklahoma, Texas, and Oklahoma State will soon leave the conference as well.
So what does this mean for the future of the athletic
programs at the remaining Big 12 schools? Six schools are still left without a
home; Missouri, Baylor, Texas Tech, Iowa State, Kansas State, and Kansas. These
schools were committed to a conference that is now falling apart and inching
closer to its demise every day.
As a student at the University of Missouri, I find myself
stuck in the middle of all this madness. Mizzou has said they will stay in the
Big 12 until the conference falls apart, but the future of our athletic program
is now out of their control. The school’s fate will ultimately be determined by
the decisions of Oklahoma and Texas.
If Oklahoma and Texas decide to stay in the Big 12, the situation
becomes quite simple. The conference will survive and likely add one more team,
possibly Houston, BYU, or SMU.
If Oklahoma and Texas decide to leave, chaos will erupt in
the world of college sports. According to a report in the Kansas City Star, the
SEC will invite Missouri to join their conference if the Big 12 collapses.
From a geographic standpoint, this makes absolutely no
sense. Missouri is a Midwest school with no ties in the Southeastern United
States.
However, the move makes perfect sense from a financial
standpoint. With the SEC’s lucrative television deal and equal revenue sharing,
the school would have more money to spend on upgrading its athletic facilities.
Analysts are constantly talking about how this will impact
football and men’s basketball, the two most popular college sports. However,
people do not usually consider the effect of conference realignment on less
popular sports, like soccer or volleyball.
These student athletes will now be spending less time in the
classroom and more time on the road traveling due to the geography of the new
conferences. Texas A&M illustrates this example perfectly. Its two closest
Big 12 opponents are Baylor (92 miles) and Texas (105 miles). Its two closest SEC
opponents next year will be LSU (337 miles) and Arkansas (505 miles).
Unfortunately for the student athletes at these schools,
conference realignment may mean more travel time, tougher opponents, and
possibly losing seasons in the immediate future. However, these schools will be
much more successful financially, and fans can only hope that their teams will
use their additional resources to improve their facilities, recruit better
athletes, and compete against more challenging opponents.
Rumors will continue to circulate about these topics on ESPN
and Twitter every day. Eventually these schools will make the decision that
will impact the future of their athletic programs forever. But for now, all we
can do is wait as the conference realignment madness continues.
Steve Goldberg is a
freshman sports journalist at the University of Missouri. You can follow him on
Twitter @SG_Mizzou15.
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