In recent years, college football has undergone several realignments as conference affiliation has much less to do with geographical and historical factors and much more to do with economic factors. South Carolina football was part of a major realignment in the 1990s when they joined the SEC with Arkansas, and now, SEC football (and, therefore, South Carolina football) is in for another big change in 2024 when tradition-rich programs Texas and Oklahoma join the league. Other changes (Southern Cal and UCLA to the Big 10, in particular) are also set to happen.
Texas and Oklahoma choosing to leave the Big 12 for opportunities to compete in the SEC will improve their athletic departments significantly. Other college football programs are reportedly interested in joining the Big 12 defectors in making the conference jump.
Over the past several months, speculation about the future of the ACC has made college football fans theorize that the league may be in danger of folding if/when some of the conference’s top programs elect to leave. The chatter has escalated in recent days, and several ACC leaders have only added fuel to the fire as they have gone out of their way to not commit to the conference.
Reports came out that seven ACC schools held a “secret” meeting in which the major topic of discussion was figuring out a way to exit the conference. Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger reported that Florida State, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Virginia, North Carolina, NC State, and Miami would like to leave the league. Since Dellenger’s report, Louisville has been rumored to have joined the Secret Seven to create an Exiting Eight.
The teams may have a hard time leaving the league as the ACC recently signed a conference grant of rights that accompanied a television deal with ESPN. The deal runs through 2036.
Most of the top half of the ACC seems unhappy in the ACC, but according to Florida State athletic director Michael Alford, every team in the league “want to stay here.” Alford would never say anything publicly other than this unless an exit plan was already in place, so college football fans should take his statement with a grain of salt.
For the SEC, the additions of Texas and Oklahoma will bring the conference to 16 teams, a good number for conference alignment. If expansion is on the table from the ACC (or other conferences) going through some misfortune, though, the SEC will be interested. It seems unlikely the league would want to become an 18-team or 22-team league, but expanding to 20 or 24 athletic departments could make sense if enough schools could be brought into the fold all at once.
Schools like North Carolina, NC State, Virginia Tech, and Virginia would be major targets of the league because the SEC is not yet represented in North Carolina or Virginia. Athletic departments like Florida State, Clemson, Miami, and Louisville are appealing for their fanbases and/or athletic prowess. SEC football and SEC baseball are already the premier leagues in the country (and SEC basketball is generally a top-3 conference), but this potential expansion would move the league to an overall dominance that has never before been seen in college sports.
There have also been some more minor rumors about the Big 12’s future as the league already is losing its top-2 schools, and several other programs are supposedly interested in joining the Pac-12, Big 10, or SEC if the opportunity arises.
It is important to note that current SEC rules allow for schools to vote on new members, and the South Carolina football program seems unlikely to willingly allow rivals like Clemson and North Carolina to enter the league without a fight (especially Clemson). However, if the conference decides that adding one or both of those schools is best for the league financially, that will eventually become a reality that South Carolina football fans must accept.
Everything around this story of the ACC collapsing is built on rumors and hearsay, but most of the time in college sports’ realignment, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” and college football fans can smell a wave of something funny in the air.