Toronto, Canada – College athletics looks like it will be going through some major changes over the next few years, particularly when it comes to conference alignment.
The most recent news in regards to schools changing conferences surrounds Syracuse and Pittsburgh, who both left the Big East to join the ACC. In addition to this fact, rumors were floating around that the Big 12 and the Big East may decide to join forces and combine into one gigantic conference.
Stability is the biggest reason given by most schools for leaving their own existing conferences, but looking at the landing spots of a lot of these institutions, it seems the biggest motivating factor is the money that the schools can make from televised football games.
Without question, football is the most popular college sport and it will always take precedence over the other college athletic programs. However, when it comes to conferences like the ACC and the Big East, the football programs don't really stand out. Instead, basketball is king when those two conferences are concerned.
Pitt and Syracuse left the Big East because of the larger football television contract to be had but, when it comes down to it, those two schools are most known for their basketball prowess and the move to the ACC doesn't hurt that reputation.
Since it's likely that the topic of conference re-alignment will come back up, it would be pretty neat to see a conference wholly focused on basketball rather than football and the move that Pitt and Syracuse made could be the beginning of such a scenario.
As evidenced by its record 11 bids in the 2011 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, the Big East is a very strong basketball conference and if it were to officially join forces with the ACC, the super conference that would emerge from the union would become a bonafide basketball juggernaut.
If this merger ever were to happen, there would be benefits for both the conference itself as well as for college basketball in general.
From the perspective of the conference, potential matchups like UConn against Duke or UNC taking on Villanova on a week-to-week basis would drum up a lot of national interest and a television deal could probably be struck to rival that of big football TV contracts.
As far as college basketball as a whole works, the combination of the Big East and the ACC coming together would mean there's one less automatic bid into the tournament, a bid that could be used to get one more mid-major school into the tournament.
This point can obviously be argued against since it would be up to the selection committee and there's always controversy surrounding major conference bias, but just having an extra slot that could be filled by a smaller school would enhance the total quality of play from each conference because there would be another spot up for grabs in the tournament.
Overall, a basketball super conference made up of the Big East and the ACC wouldn't be that bad a thing to see. Even though traditionalists and long-time supporters of the two conferences probably won't like to see that happen, with the way that college athletics are trending right now, and with Pitt and Syracuse actually in the ACC, something like a full merger is bound to happen.
