By: Emeline Daley Class VIII

The disbanding of the PAC-12–a college athletic league short for Pacific-12 Conference–in the summer of 2023 led many college sports fans to wonder what would happen to the remaining athletic powerhouses in the conference. With a few programs scattering to the Big 10 and Big 12 conferences, teams from Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Southern Methodist University, Oregon State University, and Washington State University were left with the challenge to find new leagues to join.

Why is it so tough to find a new athletic conference? There are a variety of factors that lead to these decisions, but the outstanding component is money. According to Jarryd Dent’s LinkedIn Article, “Conference Realignment in College Sports, Why Do Teams Move?” the top motivators for college athletic programs and institutions are television contracts, increased revenue, and prestige. Another element for conference decisions briefly mentioned in Dent’s article is the geographic and cultural alignments of a college with the rest of the programs in their league. Although “geographic alignments” may seem like another way of phrasing heavy finances, athletes’ physical and mental health are also at risk when teams are forced to commute far away for games. Overall, competing in conferences with teams that are in a general proximity with one another is beneficial, and if a team has to consistently travel long distances to compete, their program is negatively impacted. Since Stanford, Cal, and SMU moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), which, as the name suggests, is made up of a group of schools on the East Coast, geography is not working in their favor. Despite the long travel distances required for these new programs to face their rivals, Stanford and Cal are bringing a large fanbase to their new conference which translates to copious revenue from television networks. These two institutions will receive 30% of one ACC share for the next seven years, while SMU will not receive any broadcast media revenue for the next nine years because they do not have the same viewer support. Although these three teams are not obtaining significant wealth at the beginning of their transition, they get the security of having a conference to maintain their world-class athletic teams in the future thanks to the welcoming invitation by ACC Commissioner James Phillips and the ACC Board of Directors. We at The Banner look forward to seeing how this conference shift plays out.