The 2014-15 college athletic season has officially begun and it has started with another round of conference realignment. Earlier today twelve teams either changed leagues or moved up from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to an FBS-level conference. Here is how today's changes occurred:
The American Athletic Conference added three teams (East Carolina, Tulane, and Tulsa) and lost two (Louisville and Rutgers). The changes give the American eleven teams for the 2014-15 season, but its football membership will increase to twelve when Navy joins in July 2015. Once Navy's move occurs, the American will split into two six-team divisions and will sponsor a championship game.
The Atlantic Coast Conference welcomed Louisville as its newest member. The Cardinals replace the outgoing Maryland Terrapins, a charter member of the ACC when it first began intercollegiate play in 1953.
The Big Ten Conference added Maryland and Rutgers as its thirteenth and fourteenth members respectively. In admitting these two teams, the Big Ten encompasses a geographic footprint stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Coast. It now has access to media markets in the Baltimore-D.C. area as well as metropolitan New York City.
ESPN's Adam Rittenberg has more information about the Big Ten's eastern expansion in the following video:
The BIG XII, the PAC-12, the Mountain West, and the SEC were not affected by this year's realignment. The Mid-American Conference will lose UMass in 2015, a departure which will reduce the MAC's roster to twelve teams. However, the BIG XII did unveil a new logo, which can be found on the conference's website.
As for Conference-USA, the league experienced five changes to its membership roster. While East Carolina, Tulsa and Tulane all left for the American Athletic Conference, C-USA admitted Old Dominion, which upgraded its football from FCS to FBS, and Western Kentucky from the Sun Belt Conference. For now, C-USA's football membership stands at thirteen until UNC-Charlotte is admitted in 2015 as a full member. More information can be found at Conference-USA's website.
Speaking of the Sun Belt Conference, the league has added four teams: Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Idaho, and New Mexico State. Both Idaho and New Mexico State played as FBS-level independents last year after the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) stopped sponsoring football after the 2012-13 season. Both Appalachian State and Georgia Southern upgraded their football programs from FCS to FBS-level as part of their move to the Sun Belt. It is also worth mentioning that these two former FCS teams have upset teams from major conferences at games played outside their home stadiums. Appalachian State defeated Michigan at Ann Arbor, 34-32, on September 1st, 2007, while Georgia Southern embarrassed Florida, 26-22, in Gainesville on November 23, 2013.
Excluding a couple more team movements (e.g., Navy's move to the American Athletic Conference) that will occur at the start of the 2015-16 season, the grand conference realignment which started in 2010 has largely concluded. I am not sure if anyone could have anticipated the nationwide effects of the Big Ten Conference's decision to add a twelfth member. But, four years after the Big Ten presidents voted to admit Nebraska, the geographic landscape of American college sports at the FBS-level has been significantly reshaped. The PAC-12, SEC, Big Ten, and the ACC have all expanded outside their historical geographic footprints; the BIG XII has shrunk to ten teams; the Mountain West is now a major regional conference; and two conferences, the Big East and the WAC, no longer exist as football leagues. Finally, the stability of a new association, the American Athletic Conference, is questionable after losing two of its charter members to larger, wealthier conferences.
Unfortunately, the end of the grand realignment only raises more questions about the current state of college football. One of which is whether or not smaller conferences like the American, Conference-USA, and the Sun Belt can endure in a game at risk of being controlled by the five "Power Conferences." Or if the new College Football Playoff system will lead to calls for more equal representation of all FBS-level conferences during the postseason. It may be a long time before we as fans find the answers to those questions. For now, let us wait and see what happens after the 2014-15 season begins in August.
No comments:
Post a Comment