Pac-12 Leaders Suggest Realignment Response as SEC Growth May Compromise CFP Expansion
excerpt:
For two years, a group of CFP executives worked to create a model that they presented to decision makers and have disseminated across college football. Their 12-team proposal, largely celebrated across America, appeared on the fast track to approval in a September meeting, potentially within two years of replacing the current four-team model.
And then, in a seismic and stunning shift, the Big 12’s two biggest brands, Texas and Oklahoma,
started the process this week of joining the SEC. Pac-12 leaders here at the conference’s annual media day say the move compromises the expansion model and will almost assuredly delay its approval, even potentially resulting in wholesale changes to its structure.
In fact, league administrators believe the SEC’s chess move, while calculated and cunning, will start a responsive chain of significant changes across the landscape of American college sports........
It’s clear who the bad guys are this go-around: commissioner Greg Sankey and the Southeastern Conference, brandished by some here as the person and the entity that helped destroy a conference, pushed college football into a mess of disruption and compromised the expansion model.
Sankey was on the four-person working group that created the 12-team proposal, leading some around college athletics to question his motives as one of few who knew that his league could soon expand.
“It’s fishy,” says one.
“It’s insider trading,” says another.
While some say the SEC wisely and secretly leaped ahead of everyone else in the next wave of realignment, others describe the move as unnecessary and harmful to college sports. The SEC burned already charred bridges and even ruined personal relationships, they say.
As a result, high-level decision-makers are contemplating a retaliatory move. Does the Pac-12, Big Ten and others form an alliance against the big, bad SEC?
“We will have a response,” says one Pac-12 administrator.
