In this day and age, every corporation or brand is trying to make money. This is seen in everything from food companies to movie producers. People are getting greedy. Sports has gravitated towards this idea as well, especially as of recently. The bizarre thing, however, is how this greed has made its way to the college sports scene. An association built on tradition and heart has now settled for the cash grab. The idea of NIL deals and the transfer portal has started a new wave of cash flow for student athletes. With this installment, the conferences wanted to get in on the profits. Per Fortune.com’s journalist, Aman Kidwai, conferences are getting exclusive deals with TV providers. The schools of these deals benefit from these, which causes some programs to look for where the grass is greener. With these exclusive deals starts a new era of college sports, the Super Conferences. 

     The most mainstream of this mess is the PAC-12. A conference founded on Western Schools in 1959. Per Rookie Road, the conference started as the Big Five but grew to twelve teams at its peak. The conference had been running smoothly for decades with 553 Team NCAA National Championships in its tenure. The self proclaimed “Conference of Champions” ran into shocking news as two of its founding members, USC and UCLA, announced their departure of the PAC-12 to the BIG-10. This move shocked many but they had no clue what was ahead. In the summer of 2023, the PAC-12 could not agree with any major TV providers to air their events. The programs knew this and sprang into action. Within a week, six schools packed their bags and headed east, The Coach Prime led Colorado Buffaloes decided to leave for the BIG-12, and  Oregon and Washington announced together that they will be joining the BIG-10. A short while later, AZcentral’s Jeremy Cluff announced that Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah announced their departure for the BIG-12 as well. All of these will take place in 2024. This leaves the “Poor-4”, Oregon State, Washington State, Cal, and Stanford. These teams are stuck at this point, as they were the smaller programs in the conference. They do not have much value outside of the West region, per NPR editor. The smart decision for the remains is to call upon their “little brother” conference, the Mountain West. In doing so, it takes away their “Power Five” respect. At this point, the sunny skies of the Pacific West are looking gloomy, and it is going to take a miracle to pull them back into relevancy. 

     For those who do not know, Division One conferences are broken into two categories, Power Five and the Group of Five. In recent years, we’ve seen many talented groups of five schools hop onto the power five scene. The conference who took a lot of these teams is the BIG-12, a conference founded in 1994, which took many teams in the Great Plains region, as said by staff reports for Tulsa World. This conference was the first to deal with movement. In 2012, Texas A&M and Missouri left for the SEC as they were founding members of the conference. This was the start of SEC superiority, which needed to be stopped. To try and counter this, the BIG-12 picked four of the best group of five schools, BYU, Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston, whose tenure begins this year. If we include the PAC-12 moves, the BIG-12 will have eighteen teams. 

     Another conference trending in the right direction is the BIG-10, a conference based out of the Midwest, which has seen a growth out east in the recent past. With the addition of Maryland and Rutgers in 2012, the conference finally reached the east coast and held fourteen teams. Their focus would change, however. The conference announced their new west coast teams in 2022, USC and UCLA. In the previously mentioned move, the conference went from a landlocked, midwest conference to having programs from coast to coast. The story gets even juicier when ESPN announced that Oregon and Washington are moving in as well. This grows the conference to eighteen teams in 2024. 

     The biggest titan in the college sports scene is the SEC. Per SEC.com, the conference has all-around talent with five National Championship teams and 38 individual winners last year. This conference has picked up teams before the whole mess started. As mentioned before, they picked up Texas A&M and Missouri in 2012, which led to a SEC migration from the BIG-12. Two of their biggest programs, Texas and Oklahoma announced they will be under the SEC in 2024. This is only the beginning for their takeover, as the neighboring ACC is crumbling under itself. ESPN News noted that the teams have contracts until 2034, but internal problems could cause free agency quickly. Many ACC teams have expressed their grievances with the conference and are trying to find their way to the SEC as well.

     Ten years from now, college football is going to look nothing like it does today. Super Conferences are coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it. The BIG-10, BIG-12, and SEC will keep gaining power until they’ve consumed every successful program in the NCAA. This then brings questions to how Bowl Games and conference titles will play out. For example, if we look at the BIG-10 next year, they will have four top ten AP-ranked teams, as of August 2023. Only two of these will compete for a conference title. Doing this will cause controversy within college football playoff picks. Questions like, “How much weight does a conference title have?” and “Does their record match their talent?” will arise. In the end, however, the same question will be asked. Who will get in?