College sports conferences need to be geographical. It is the only system that works and it is what is best for everyone involved. But that’s not what is happening. The latest trend is for conferences that have little to no regard for proximity to each member.
The Big Ten recently announced they will add UCLA and USC. The addition will bring the total number of schools in the Big Ten to 16. If anyone needs a name change it’s the 16 member Big Ten, but we’ll save that for a different article.
These college conferences are getting out-of-hand. I should really just say college football conferences are getting out-of-hand because that’s what is driving this nonsense, but it’s important to appreciate that it impacts every team on campus.
Let’s take West Virginia University Mountaineers as case in point. They used to be in the Big East, which made sense. But Syracuse, a basketball school that also has football team, left the Big East for the ACC and it was all about football money. Don’t let Jim Boeheim tell you otherwise, Syracuse left for their 30 pieces of silver. Others joined. The Big East was dying, so the Mountaineers went to the Big 12. That made their closest conference opponent Iowa State at a mere 800 miles away.
For the football and basketball teams this means more money from ESPN, CBS and other TV contracts. It also means plane rides for them, but for the swim team it means a lot of long bus rides. And for the fans, it creates a lot of meaningless games.
I saw a post on social media that described WVU vs. Texas Tech as a bad bowl game, not a meaningful conference match-up. That’s the right way to describe it.
These new conferences are costing fans the best games. Gone are the annual rivalry games that fans love. For Mountaineers fans, we don’t play Pitt, Penn State, and Virginia Tech anymore. Now the Mountaineers play Kansas State and TCU. The average fan can’t go to those games on the road and has little interest to see them in Morgantown. If the trade-off is the Mountaineers get to play Oklahoma in primetime on ESPN, then still no thanks, not worth it.
For UCLA, the backstory is they are in debt over $100 million and need the Big Ten to bail them out. That’s a poor excuse. The first step is the school should fire everyone responsible for racking up that much debt. With the increased costs of going to college and the increased costs for fans to attend college games, that much debt for a major program is inexcusable.
Geographical conferences are what is best for the fans and it is also what is best for the schools and the athletes. In a tight geographical conference, schools need to compete against each other for best local talent. A geographical conference ties nearby communities together, creating a larger, functioning regional community.
The Big 14, I meant the Big Ten, already stretches from Rutgers in New Jersey to the Cornhuskers in Nebraska. The addition of UCLA and USC will make it the first coast-to-coast “conference.” C’mon, coast-to-coast is not a conference; it’s a bad TV schedule.
Here are some suggestions.
Bring back the real Big East with WVU, Syracuse, Virginia Tech, and Penn State. Put Florida, Florida State, and Miami in the same conference. Put East Carolina, North Carolina, NC State, Clemson, and South Carolina together. Remove Maryland, Rutgers, Nebraska and the west coast schools from the Big Whatever Number. And please don’t make the Maryland swim and dive team take a bus to UCLA because some TV executive thinks the Terps and Bruins playing football in primetime will draw a large audience.
