Summer 2024 Reset: Conference Realignment Edition
Welcome to the SEC, Oklahoma and Texas. You're first in this wild realignment summer. But not last.
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It’s July 1, which this year means more than just celebrating Bobby Bonilla Day.
It just means more.
As in, the SEC is getting Oklahoma and Texas, officially.
And, lest we forget, the ACC is getting Cal, SMU and Stanford.
And, of course, Conference USA is getting Kennesaw State.
And the American Athletic Conference is getting Army.
Got all that?
Good.
Because in exactly one month and one day, the Big Ten will be getting Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington. And the Big 12 will be getting Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
And yes, that means that all of those programs will be at their new conference media days later this month while still, technically, members of the Pac-12.
The Pac-12 Networks, by the way, stopped airing as of today.
Everything, at the very least, will be aligned for this coming season — conference realignment, a 12-team College Football Playoff, the return of the EA Sports video game, you name it.
It will be a season like no other, after an offseason like no other.
There will be no more divisions in the Big Ten and SEC, though only one is still committed to a nine-game conference schedule.
There will be conference championship games that we can all actually get excited about: Instead of Michigan vs. Iowa, how about Michigan vs. Ohio State again? Or maybe Ohio State vs. Oregon for a second time this season?
If either of those sound like great primetime theater, how about an appetizer in the SEC? Say, an Alabama-Georgia rematch? Or maybe an Oklahoma-Texas rematch?
It’s all on the table this year.
Perhaps nowhere will that parity be more evident than in the Big 12. Yes, the conference is losing two programs that combined to win seven of its last nine championships (six of those seven by Oklahoma), but another way of looking at it is that the league has had four different champions in the past four years — and a fifth non-champion (TCU) that played its way to the national title game.
Throw in Utah — which won the 2021 and 2022 Pac-12 titles, and which decided to add to the newsy Monday by naming Morgan Scalley coach-in-waiting — and Arizona — which has the longest active winning streak this side of Michigan — and perhaps there will be new bullies on the block from Day 1.
Or maybe Mike Gundy and Oklahoma State re-establish order.
Don’t forget about the ACC, either. On paper, Miami is back. On paper, Florida State and Clemson are suing the league — but they aren’t going anywhere on the field, especially with all the talent that both programs have coming back. And then there’s SMU, which broke through at the perfect time, winning the AAC in its last year as a Group of 5 program, declaring once and for all that it is ready to re-join the big boys of college football.
All four of those power conferences are guaranteed a Playoff berth.
So, too, is one Group of 5 program.
Media days start next week.
Soon, the games will be here, too.
Buckle up.
And, while we’re at it, remind our baseball friends that Bobby Bonilla’s deal has nothing on Jimbo Fisher’s.
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