Cole Cubelic hypothesizes that basketball changes the equation in breakup of major college programs

The 2024 calendar year will mark a monumental one across all collegiate athletics and more specifically college football, as a new round of mass conference realignment and a 12-team College Football Playoff debut this year.

Despite some major changes being on the horizon, important decision-makers and others surrounding college sports can’t help but start to discussing even more changes in the future. Including further expanding the College Football Playoff and further alignment working towards potentially having one or two ‘super conferences.’

College football analyst Cole Cubelic joined Andy Staples to discuss some of these big picture of college athletics items, speaking on the rapid change and how basketball could potentially impact the future.

“We have not played a regular season game in a season in which we have a 12-team playoff yet we’ve already been introduced to four different 14-team playoff models,” Cubelic said. “It gives you an idea of where we’re headed, and I think you were right earlier when you just said that a lot of this stuff is being floated for reasons we might not be able aware of and we’re not even thinking about.”

The SEC and Big Ten have already started pushing toward a 14-team playoff model, a move that some believe forecasts the two leagues trying to establish themselves as two super conferences in the future.

Two strong conferences representing the country’s best programs could be what the future of college football looks like, similar to the AFC and the NFC at the professional level. But one major point of conference realignment that has already been seemingly overlooked is the other sports outside of football. With Cubelic questioning where basketball fits in the future of super conferences.

“I’ll dirty this water a little bit more, since you wanted to throw the red meat out. What if we’re just talking about football?” Cubelic asked. “And a lot of us would have said oh well where’s Kansas fall in that? Where’s North Carolina in that? Where’s Duke in that? And that’s where a lot of those schools, all of a sudden, you’ve got to bring North Carolina for basketball right? Oh, Duke’s in there for basketball.”

“Well what if basketball’s staying? It totally changes everything that we’re talking about,” Cubelic said.

The three schools Cubelic mentioned are much more well known for their exploits on the hardwood compared to on the football field. But would their strength in basketball programs include them in a future super conference?

Or does college football potentially become a separate entity compared to other collegiate sports? Another instance that’s been discussed as college athletics continues to look towards the future.

“And you heard Trent [Dilfer] say it, the Title IX thing, I’m not smart enough to know exactly how that works when we take this step or where it goes. Because if your football team does leave and do something else how does that impact the other sports? And I just don’t know those things either, there’s just so much to it,” Cubelic admitted.

College football’s short-term changes are exciting, but in the long term, there’s no question that if they continue to evolve the college athletics ecosystem as a whole could see some seismic shifts that are hard to comprehend and quantify.