Wouldn't it make sense to think smaller? Schedules are being made and remade on a weekly basis. We've got athletic programs predicting losses in the tens of millions of dollars. Maybe our lives would be better served by living where we wanted to be all along. Maybe we don't have to go to the office in order to do our jobs. The pandemic has given us the power to reconsider the basic architecture of our day-to-day lives. That Division II league isn't using it right now.įootball should be no different from the rest of America. They could borrow the name Lone Star Conference for the season. The seven FBS schools in Florida should play one another. But the SEC wouldn't be any less appealing if Missouri returned to its natural habitat. No offense to the Mizzou Tigers, who won the SEC East in their second and third seasons in the conference. In a time when we are trying to limit contact and control a virus, it would make sense to schedule that way, too. Even in this era of national recruiting, when Alabama's best running back is from California and Oregon's best offensive lineman is from Utah and Oklahoma State's best running back is from Canada, coaches still say they want to get the bulk of their players from within driving distance. Limiting teams (pretty much) to conference play is a logical response, but it would be a lot more logical if conferences didn't span thousands of miles. But neither is the case now, and the season is disappearing right out from under our noseguards. We are no longer in the best of times.Īfter realignment got done with college football, there is so much that makes no sense historically, traditionally and now, medically, and the administrators shrug it off like Hyman Roth in "The Godfather Part II." This is the business we have chosen.Ĭhoosing to fly across the country to play a conference game makes sense when the money is flowing and it's safe for one American college football fan to breathe on another. The geographic inanity of Utah booting its annual rivalry against BYU worked out well in the best of times. During this coronavirus pandemic, when the epidemiologists are saying don't leave home without a mask, it's time to reconsider conference realignment. Only now it's about more than your money. You want to send your student-athletes halfway across the country for a conference game? It's your money. Colorado is about as close to the Pacific Coast as Morgantown, West Virginia, is to Lubbock, Texas, and Missouri set aside a 120-year Border War rivalry against Kansas to play in a division with Georgia and Florida. It has been several years since West Virginia leapt to the Big 12, and Missouri and Texas A&M to the SEC, and Colorado and Utah to the Pac-12. It's about a regional sport turning national, about the conferences increasing their geographic footprint to grab more television market share (including ESPN). We have become numb to the consequences of the periodic spasms of conference realignment in intercollegiate athletics over the past three decades. When native-born head coach Scott Frost expressed the frustration last week that the entire state feels over the loss of the season and offered to play anyone, anywhere, it would have been heartless to point out that if Nebraska had stayed in the Big 12, the Huskers would still be playing. Last week the Big Ten told Nebraska it couldn't play football this fall, which went over in the Cornhusker State like, oh, I don't know, stalk rot. After all, the Panthers, 75 miles away, are in the ACC.īefore the Pac-12 broke the emergency glass on its 2020 season, the conference approved of Colorado flying 1,300 miles to play at Washington but thought it too risky for the Buffaloes to drive 100 miles to play at Colorado State.Īnd there's Nebraska, which a decade ago sued for divorce from the Big 12 (née Big Eight), dissolving a marriage consummated in 1928 to grab the money and security and money and money offered by the Big Ten. 24, but let's not allow West Virginia to play Pittsburgh. Hey, here's a great idea during a pandemic: Let's have West Virginia fly 1,400 miles to play a Big 12 game at Texas Tech on Oct. Why now is the time to reconsider college conference realignment
#Wvu football conference realignment upgrade#
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