The next two dominoes of the college realignment process have dropped.
On Friday morning, the Atlantic Coast Conference voted to allow Stanford, UC Berkeley and Southern Methodist University to join its conference starting in 2024 in what are the latest moves in the college conference realignment saga.
Yes, two schools from the West Coast and one school in Texas will join a conference designed for East Coast schools.
From Stanford and Cal’s standpoint, this move was inevitable. With the Big Ten Conference seemingly shutting its doors on the two Bay Area Institutions and the refusal from both schools to join a Group of Five Conference, the logical choice here was to join the only remaining conference who has not made a significant move in adding another member school.
It makes sense this was a fight of survival for Stanford and Cal.
Dropping down to a Group of Five conference would eventually lead to the cutting of non-revenue sports teams because of a lack of funding from media rights deals. Trying to rebuild the Pac-12 was going to be a big uphill battle considering the schools that were left to add and the cost it would take to take them out of their current conference.
If any Mountain West member were to leave the conference before 2025, the school would have to pay an exit fee of $33 million, according to an Aug. 4 article from ESPN.
But the fact that this move had to happen is still sad and disappointing.
With the movement of colleges to different conferences across the country, it only hinders the tradition of college sports. What made college athletics different from the pros was the rivalries and proximity of games to local communities.
Gone will be the days when fans from the Bay Area could drive a few hours south to watch a Cal vs UCLA men’s basketball rivalry game on a Sunday afternoon. Gone will be the days that family members of athletes can make family trips to see their son or daughter play in the nearby college.
The fans of college sports have an emotional tie to the team because they were alumni of the school or grew up watching the teams because they were down the street. That all goes away with conference realignment.
What makes this situation even worse is the fact that athletes and coaches were not in the room when these decisions were made.
Football and men’s basketball are the driving money-making forces of college sports and these latest moves were made for those teams in my mind, but this will have a ripple effect on the entirety of collegiate sports.
Imagine being a women’s volleyball player at Stanford and having to go on a three-game road trip that consists of Syracuse, Boston College and Duke University. That means being on a separate coast for a week while trying to balance schoolwork, a social life and the pressure of producing at a high level.
According to a study done by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the leading causes of stress among college students is lack of sleep. Having long flights from the Bay Area to the East Coast certainly doesn’t help with maintaining good mental health for athletes.
But to make this full circle, it certainly seems like the clock is ticking on SJSU.
With Oregon State and Washington State being the two remaining schools from the Pac-12 without a conference in 2024, there are still options on the table for them that are surely going to impact Mountain West Schools like SJSU.
Washington State President Kirk Schulz said as early as last week that there is still optimism that the Pac-12 can be rebuilt, according to a Aug. 29 Sports Illustrated article. In the unlikely scenario that happens, it would likely mean picking schools from the Mountain West not named San Jose State.
If Oregon State and Washington State decide to join the Mountain West, it would help the conference gain some notoriety, but would also mean the progress of winning Mountain West titles that San Jose State has been slowly building goes down the drain, as was shown in SJSU’s blowout loss to No. 18 Oregon State on Sunday.
Ever since USC and UCLA announced its intentions to move to the Big Ten Conference last summer, this situation was going to be inevitable.
For years, college athletics shamed and criticized kids for taking money under the table or transferring from dead-end situations. But this whole process has shown the hypocrisy of college sports.
It was all about the money all along, but not for the athletes who made the big plays nor was it used to enhance the fan experience. It was for the higher ups and the people who already had millions of dollars.
Stanford and Cal's move to the ACC isn’t surprising, but did the administrators that made this decision ask the people who actually matter what they think of these decisions? Did they ask the fans what they thought about moving conferences? They didn’t and that’s what makes this situation unbelievably sad.
