What if college football downsized from 5 Power Five conferences to 4?

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Tobias Oliver and Jordan Mason, Georgia Tech football (Photo by Mike Comer/Getty Images) /

Reasons it works for the ACC

It beat out the Big Ten for Notre Dame.
It gets two schools other than Notre Dame ranked in the U.S. News & World Report Top 64 national universities.
Even though football is king, all three schools added have historically good basketball programs.
It expands geographic footprint in the north.
To reiterate, the ACC really cares about their members’ academic standing and even though they let Louisville join which is not highly ranked in the U.S. News & World Rankings, they want schools if they are going to expand again, in high academic standing.

The ACC failed to add another thought after school like Notre Dame.
It lost Georgia Tech to the Big Ten and no longer has a school in the state of Georgia.
UConn and UMass both have football programs that are not on par with the rest of the conference.
Would Notre Dame walk away from their TV/streaming deal with NBC? It more than likely would as it can still bring in revenue through ACC’s TV/streaming deal.

Out of the four conferences, the Big Ten wins the race to 16. It got the most valuable school in Texas to join the conference.
They expand their TV/streaming market in the highly-populated areas of Dallas/Fort Worth and Atlanta.
The Big Ten expands geographically southeast and southwest with the additions of Texas and Georgia Tech.
The additions of Texas and Georgia Tech solidifies them as the most financial power conference in America. The Big Ten cares about academics but they also love being very financially profitable as well.
Both Georgia Tech and Texas are members of the very prestigious Association of American Universities.

It was unable to land Notre Dame in which would have been an all-around ideal fit for the conference.
The additions of Texas and Georgia Tech are great for football but they are far geographically from other Big Ten universities and non-revenue sports which are already being eliminated by other large schools will have far distances to travel.
Will Texas and the Big Ten be able to negotiate keeping and incorporating the Longhorn Network into the Big Ten Network or eliminating entirely? The answer is very complicated and it would be a huge obstacle for the Big Ten and Texas.