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

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Justin Gilbert, Oklahoma State football (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) /

Reasons it works for the Pac-12

Outside of Texas and Notre Dame, the Pac-12 got the next most sought-after school in Oklahoma which helps a conference that needs a football titan.
It expanded east with the addition of four schools in TCU, Iowa State, Kansas and Oklahoma. Being able to connect the Great Plains and Texas with the West Coast is just what the conference needs.
Because the ACC, Big Ten and SEC already had 14 teams, the Pac-12 expanding from 12 to 16 helps give them leverage when negotiating their next TV/streaming contract with four new schools as opposed to the other conferences who just added two.
The moves outside of adding Oklahoma are not major add ons but they are solid ones all around which will benefit the Pac-12 long term.

The travel for competition for non-revenue sports could be costly as the distance from TCU to Washington would be a long journey for a lot of teams to compete against one another.
It’s a big gamble financially to expand conferences landscape that far from the West Coast to the Great Plains. The linguistics of operating a conference with various schools expanding so many miles apart from one another is a financial risk.
Did they pick the wrong former Big 12 teams? A case could be made that picking Baylor and Texas Tech instead of two Association of American Universities schools like Iowa State and Kansas would be better for Pac-12 football.

West Virginia and Oklahoma State have very passionate and dedicated fans that fit the mold of the vast majority of SEC teams fanbases.
It expanded north and continued to add teams out west. The addition of West Virginia would be the furthest team north surpassing Kentucky as the furthest located northern team in the conference. Adding Oklahoma State to go along with Texas A&M, pushes the landscape of the SEC.
The additions of West Virginia and Oklahoma State continues to help balance the SEC. Alabama, Georgia, LSU and other top-tier SEC teams have very difficult conference schedules as is and both additions to the conference are not pushovers but not lightweights either which continues to help the balance of play and still keeps the SEC the most competitive and difficult league to win.

It didn’t add Texas or Oklahoma. Not all SEC teams may have glamoured to add another elite team to a conference with at least four elite programs, but the conference itself for financial and other reasons would love to add another powerhouse like Texas.
Oklahoma State and West Virginia have not highly-rated academically according to U.S. News & World Report and neither are members of the American Association of Universities. With expansion talk, the SEC only has three members of the AAU and if they were to have added a school like Texas or even an institution like Georgia Tech or Virginia it would have bolstered the academic status of the conference.
Out of the four conferences, the SEC may be the least motivated to expand. When the SEC added Texas A&M and Missouri, they significantly improved their conference in numerous ways. Unlike the ACC and Pac-12, the SEC doesn’t need a boost to conference because their football teams collectively made the SEC the most competitive and best football conference in America.