How Realignment Is Changing College Football, In 20 Maps

In 1896, a bunch of directors from Midwestern schools met in Chicago to settle the principles for what was then known as the Western Convention, which might later be generally known as the Large Ten. They agreed in writing, based on an account within the subsequent day’s Chicago Tribune, “to maintain inter-collegiate athletic contests inside their correct bounds.” A kind of bounds was geographic: For the needs of journey and custom, colleges largely performed the regional rivals that populated their conferences.

It’s tough to think about, then, how the founders of the nation’s oldest athletics convention would have reacted to the latest realignment information that has shaken school sports activities to its core. Final 12 months, the Southeastern Convention introduced it might add Texas and Oklahoma to type a 16-team megaconference. To not be outdone, the Large Ten introduced this summer season that it was increasing to 16 groups as properly by including UCLA and USC.¹ For the primary time, a serious school athletics league goes bicoastal.

UCLA, USC, Texas and Oklahoma rank second, third, fifth and tied for 16^th in Division I historical past in NCAA workforce nationwide titles, respectively. Traditionally, colleges like these type the bedrock of conferences, versus shattering them. Solely one of many 4 has considerably modified convention opponents up to now century.² Now, all of them match into two super-leagues, and it’s potential the Large Ten isn’t executed but: Commissioner Kevin Warren mentioned he could see expanding to 20 teams. The evolution of the faculty sports activities map over the previous a number of many years has been startling, dismantling any notion of regionality that conferences as soon as conferred. 

As just lately because the 2000s and early 2010s, school leagues nonetheless usually match into small geographic pockets. Below the previous Bowl Championship Collection (BCS), as an illustration, there have been six main soccer conferences (the Large Ten, SEC, Pac-12, Large 12, Large East and ACC), most of which had been very close-knit — and none extra so than the Large Ten. We calculated the space from every faculty to the geographic middle of all colleges in its convention, and each Large Ten workforce was inside 500 miles of the convention’s middle in 2010. Throughout the nation, no Energy 5 faculty was even 1,000 miles away from its convention middle.

However the subsequent 4 years introduced a flurry of convention swaps. From 2011 to 2014, 47 Soccer Bowl Subdivision colleges modified leagues, making that the busiest four-year interval in historical past for realignment.³ The SEC added Texas A&M and Missouri, and the Large Ten added Nebraska, Rutgers and Maryland, venturing into a brand new state every time. These strikes — and the corresponding dominos that fell because of this — worn out one soccer league (the Large East), making a Energy 5, and it was clear that school soccer’s traditional boundaries had been being stretched. You may nonetheless see selections made underneath the auspices of geography should you squinted, although. (As an illustration, the Large Ten’s new additions had been a minimum of in states adjoining to the convention’s previous footprint.) Essentially the most far-flung colleges within the Large Ten and SEC had been Rutgers and Texas A&M, which carried distances of 593 and 560 miles, respectively, from their new convention facilities.

Even with their expanded boundaries from the 2010s, the Large Ten and SEC had been nonetheless, coming into 2021, probably the most compact of the Energy 5 leagues. However that modified final summer season, when the SEC moved additional west by agreeing so as to add Texas and Oklahoma. In doing so, the league not solely elevated its footprint but additionally plucked the fourth- and fifth-ranked colleges on school soccer’s all-time wins leaderboard. Whereas whole wins aren’t an ideal metric,⁴ the Large 12 is now bereft of traditional powerhouses, with West Virginia its next-most profitable faculty at No. 27. In additional fashionable phrases, Oklahoma was the one Large 12 faculty that has reached the Faculty Soccer Playoff.

Texas and Oklahoma aren’t completely outlandish cultural or geographic suits within the SEC. They are going to be 576 and 489 miles from their new convention middle, versus the 425 and 84 miles they sat from their Large 12 foes in 2010. They’ll additionally protect the Crimson River Rivalry, and Texas will resume its rivalry with Texas A&M. Whereas the brand new distances are an adjustment, 29 colleges (throughout eight leagues) are extra faraway from their convention facilities than any workforce within the new-look SEC.

Nonetheless, the way in which different conferences responded to the SEC’s additions has considerably warped the college-sports map. To fill its vacancies, the Large 12 added Brigham Younger, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston, and now stretches from Provo, Utah, to Orlando, Florida. BYU and UCF are 986 and 917 miles from their convention foes. In response to that, the American Athletic Convention plundered Convention USA, and Convention USA did what it might to remain intact — in order that league now stretches from Miami to Las Cruces, New Mexico.

And the actual nail within the coffin of the entire “regional conferences” thought would be the new Large Ten, the primary actually nationwide school league. Whereas solely Penn State and Minnesota had been greater than 300 miles from the middle of the Large Ten in 2010, now 10 colleges within the convention exceed that mark, after factoring in UCLA and USC.⁵ The space from Los Angeles to the geographic middle of the Large Ten is a whopping 1,621 miles.

The latest bloat in common distances between colleges and their convention rivals is obvious within the total numbers. In 2010, the typical distance for an FBS workforce to its convention middle was 336 miles. By 2021, that common rose to 365 miles. Inside 4 years of that, the typical can be 412 miles. 

It’s essential to recollect, too, that each one of those distances are measured because the crow flies, moderately than as street journeys. That is notably essential for the sports activities exterior soccer and basketball — and for smaller colleges usually — each of which depend on bus rides greater than constitution flights. (All people has a special definition of “driving distance,” however by any definition, BYU seems to be the primary faculty — in addition to Hawaii, for apparent causes — to be unable to drive to go to any convention foe.)⁶ In non-revenue sports activities, the Large Ten’s UCLA-USC match is deeply unusual for a lot of causes: Each colleges play sports activities that the convention doesn’t supply and don’t play sports activities the Large Ten does compete in. They may dominate their cold-weather counterparts in some sports activities, equivalent to softball and baseball, and battle in others — all whereas maintaining that grueling journey schedule by way of bus rides.

All of this implies the time of conferences as we as soon as knew them — small, regionally constrained teams of comparable schools with shared histories — is all however over. And the period of the super-league seems to be taking its place. In fact, the thought of a 20-team, nationwide sports activities league isn’t extraordinary. All 4 main North American males’s leagues, plus Main League Soccer and a lot of the main European soccer leagues, have a minimum of that many golf equipment. No one thinks twice in regards to the Indianapolis Colts taking part in street video games in each Las Vegas and East Rutherford, New Jersey, throughout the identical season. That’s as a result of the NFL is a financially pushed group intent on maximizing its market. However that’s the purpose — increasingly more yearly, school soccer begins to appear like the NFL. And in the event that they weren’t already, the convention beliefs drawn up in Chicago in 1896 are a relic of the previous.

CORRECTION (Sept. 22, 2022, 3:51 p.m.): An earlier model of the 2025 Large 12’s map confirmed the College of Cincinnati as being in Kentucky. It’s in Ohio.