Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich discusses conference realignment

Power 5 conferences as we know it will undergo changes over the next few seasons, and it’s a hot topic among program athletic directors throughout the country, especially outside the SEC.

“I’m not sure that there’s a huge number of schools out there looking to move right now,” Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich told ESPN. “Maybe among the Group of 5 there’s continued movement, but I don’t see that as much on the horizon with the Power 5 schools.”

Radakovich is referring to the shakeup inside the Big 12, which will see Oklahoma and Texas join the Southeastern Conference while gaining BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF. When Oklahoma and Texas announced they were joining the SEC last summer, there were talks of the ACC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac-12 joining together to make on huge super conference to rival the SEC, which would have 16 of the most profitable schools under one banner.

“There’s the entertainment piece of college athletics that we all know and love,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN. “To me and the ACC, it’s pushing forward in those three areas in particular. Speaking only for the ACC, we’re incredibly excited about what we’ve seen, the possibilities and some of the work that’s been done in the past six months, but even more bullish on where this thing can go in the future and how the Alliance can be a part of the bigger picture of the future of college sports.”

Likewise, rumors that Clemson and Florida State have shown interest in joining the SEC shortly after Oklahoma and Texas announced their intentions to join the league, but officials from both schools quickly shot down that notion. Losing two of the ACC’s biggest cash cows would’ve been detrimental to the league moving forward.

Add in the fact that the SEC’s Tier 1 rights deal with CBS also expires in 2024, and has already inked a deal with ESPN that runs through 2034, the other conferences need to take action with the SEC expanding deep into Central America, who are quickly becoming the ‘A’ conference in the country’s major sports.

Though at this rate, College Football Playoff expansion will be here before conference realignment does based on the ‘bullish’ tendencies of the conversations between the higher ups inside the so-called aligned conferences.