What if college football downsized from 5 power conferences to 4?

Explanation of realignment

There have been some recent proposals about conference realignment and with all due respect, there is a zero chance of some of these popular and shared ideas from actually becoming a reality.

For example, Pat Forde’s conference realignment would never happen in a million years. The image showing the proposed conference realignments has been shared through numerous social media outlets on Facebook and Twitter. Fans get their hope up because after reading the article you may be convinced that something like this can actually happen. However, there is no way that Akron, Kent State and Ball State would ever be in the same conference as Ohio State, Michigan State and Michigan as Forde suggests in his Great Mideast Conference, and here’s why.

Whenever major college football realignment talk is discussed, there are four key factors off the field that come into play.

1. Revenue that the school brings in through athletics
2. The school expanding the geographic footprint of the conference
3. Academic standing of the university such as is the school a member of the Association of  American Universities or their rankings in the U.S. News & World Report national rankings
4. The school expanding the TV and streaming market in higher populated areas

There are different variations of how much value each conference puts into the four factors. The Big Ten, for example, has slightly different criteria than the SEC when adding new teams. If you look at the top five schools from each conference in each of the categories above, you will see more similarities than differences.

Top five revenue schools in Big Ten and SEC

According to the NCAA finances provided by USA Today

SEC

• No. 2 Texas A&M
• No. 5 Georgia
• No. 7 Alabama
• No. 9 Florida
• No. 10 LSU

Big Ten

• No. 3 Ohio State
• No. 4 Michigan
• No. 6 Penn State
• No. 11 Wisconsin
• No. 14 Iowa

Top five ranked academic schools in Big Ten and SEC

According to the U.S. News & World Report 2020 National Rankings.

SEC

• No. 15 Vanderbilt
• No. 34 Florida
• No. 50 Georgia
• No. 70 Texas A&M
• No. 104 Auburn

Big Ten

• No. 9 Northwestern
• No. 25 Michigan
• No. 46 Wisconsin
• No. 48 Illinois
• No. 54 Ohio State

Top five designated marketing areas for schools in SEC and Big Ten 

According to the 2019 Nielsen DMA Rankings

SEC

• No. 7 Texas A&M (Houston)
• No. 10 Georgia (Atlanta)
• No. 11 Florida (Tampa/St. Petersburg)
• No. 21 Missouri (St. Louis)
• No. 27 Vanderbilt (Nashville)

Big Ten

• No. 1 Rutgers (New York)
• No. 3 Northwestern (Chicago)
• No. 4 Penn State (Philadelphia)
• No. 5 Maryland (Washington D.C.)
• No. 14 Michigan (Detroit)

When conferences like the Pac-12, ACC, Big Ten or SEC looks to expand, they don’t just look at the current state of the football program even though it is definitely a factor, they look at all of the four off-the-field factors discussed above.

Now that college football season is in jeopardy of being canceled, some football programs in the FBS may suffer serious financial hardships in 2020.

Even in the best possible scenario where only non-conference schedules are canceled, schools from the MAC will lose millions of dollars due to dropping games against Power Five schools. In other words, even though the Power Five will lose money this year, they will more than likely be able to weather the financial storm.

However, the Group of Five conferences like the MAC, Sun Belt, Conference USA and — to a lesser extent — the Mountain West and the AAC will suffer more financially in 2020.

Can financial distress cause conference realignment in 2020? The answer is probably likely that serious realignment will at the minimum be seriously discussed.