Picture a University of California (UC), Berkeley student-athlete forfeiting academics and social life on a random Tuesday to fly cross-country to North Carolina, adjust to a three-hour time change, play Duke, and then repeat the same grueling travel the following week to another school.
College sports conferences are no longer defined by geography but by financial opportunity for sports institutions and conferences.
According to Sports History Network, in the early 1900s, schools were grouped based on their proximity to one another with the primary goal of making it easier for student-athletes to keep up with their academic and social lives by minimizing travel. That is no longer the case.
Conference realignment in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCCA) is not a new phenomenon. There have been teams entering and leaving conferences since the 1950s, according to ESPN. However, the changes in conferences were largely driven by the incentive to even the playing field and move the lower-performing teams into a lower division, such as NCCA’s Division II or Division III, and move the higher-performing teams up a division or two. That is no longer the case.
Recent conference changes are not for student-athlete betterment: they are driven by money.
As of 2022, major conferences like the Big Ten have attracted top Division I schools to switch conferences, such as USC and UCLA, leaving the Pac-12 primarily for financial incentives that benefit the school and conferences like TV deals with ESPN co-channels. For example, the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference (SEC) are projected to see the most significant revenue increases, with each respective conference earning an additional $21 million due to media rights deals, according to NBC.
According to Forbes, though conference realignments allow for student-athlete games to be recognized more frequently, such as a higher percentage of streamed games and more tickets sold per game, student-athletes are having to give up far more than the few benefits of TV recognition and competing in high-stake games. Beyond travel fatigue, student-athletes miss out on academics, extracurriculars, and career opportunities. Not to mention the disappearance of classic rivalry matchups such as UCLA vs. UC Berkeley or USC vs. Arizona.
Conference power consolidation takes away from smaller college programs, such as Division II and III schools, where student-athletes face the challenge of not having their work recognized as the focus shifts to larger conferences. Partnered with little earnings for the majority of college athletes due to a rise in Name, Image, and likeness (NIL), it’s evident that college sports exploit athletes whose commitment mirrors that of a full-time job.
If colleges truly valued student-athlete well-being, they would prioritize regional conferences while pursuing alternative ways to increase profit, like more localized TV deals and expanding regional conference teams to minimize travel.
*This editorial reflects the views of the Editorial Board and was written by Ben Romanowsky. The Editorial Board voted 7 in agreement and 6 somewhat in agreement.
