College football news: SEC, Big 10 will “explore” scheduling arrangement; Is college football headed towards a super league?
The landscape of college football is changing rapidly. Even this year, the conference realignment and advent of the 12-team playoff has significantly shaped the way the season will play out.
But even more change could—and almost certainly will—be on the way very soon. According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports, months after the two conferences formed a “joint advisory board,” ADs from schools in the SEC and Big 10 will meet soon.
The purpose of this meeting? To “begin discussion about a range of topics… includ the House settlement case, a new third-party (not NCAA) enforcement model, the future of the College Football Playoff format and — most noteworthy of them all — a regular-season and postseason scheduling arrangement.”
Though Dellenger reports that most “do not expect impactful decisions to be made” at this meeting, the very occurrence of such an event is significant. It was not long ago that the majority of interaction between these conferences consisted in sniping and jabs about record, number of in-conference games, or whatever else.
Now, though, it looks increasingly as though these two conferences could be spearheading some seismic change in the landscape of the sport. Again, as Dellenger says, the conference commissioners have dismissed the idea that these two leagues will break away from the NCAA in any form, but it’s not hard to imagine that calculus changing pretty quickly.
As the partnership between the two conferences strengthens, it doesn’t seem crazy to say that the inevitability of moving away from the NCAA in some form also increases. It seems to be a foregone conclusion at this point—every new development gestures towards that becoming a reality soon.