Pac-12, ACC, Big Ten announce The Alliance

The Pac-12, ACC and Big Ten conferences announced the official formation of an alliance on Tuesday, bringing 41 schools together and launching a “collaborative approach surrounding the future evolution of college athletics and scheduling.”

The alliance was announced in a press release from the three conferences.

This is simultaneously a massive change to the future of college athletics and also something that will likely result in very few immediate impacts. There will be a scheduling component to this for football and both men’s and women’s basketball, but it will only go into effect after all existing scheduling contracts are fulfilled. This crossover already exists a bit. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said there are already 68 football games scheduled between the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC between the 2022 and 2035 seasons. The numbers moves past 100 if including Notre Dame. The only thing that could change and bring more games quickly is if the Pac-12 or Big Ten decides to go to an eight-game conference schedule, opening another non-conference scheduling slot. USC has a full non-conference slate in 2022, 2023 and 2026, but could add games every other year moving forward.

The biggest news that will come out of the press conference announcing the alliance was when Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said there is no signed agreement between the three conferences.

“There’s an agreement among three gentlemen and a commitment from 41 presidents and chancellors and 41 athletic directors to do what we say we’re going to do,” Kliavkoff said.

That immediately puts a big question mark over the entire idea of this alliance, but there are reasons for all three conferences to continue moving forward as part of this group, the Pac-12 especially.

It doesn’t make sense for the Pac-12 to add “local” schools like San Diego State, Nevada, Boise State, UNLV or others to the conference to try to reach the “superconference” level because that wouldn’t increase the value of the conference enough to warrant spreading the revenue over more schools. The same goes for picking up some of the pieces of the Big 12. Big Ten teams won’t be looking to leave the conference because the revenue share there is so much more than the Pac-12.

This alliance puts the Pac-12 in the same boat as two bonafide power conferences in the Big Ten and ACC — consistent participants in the College Football Playoff — and not adrift on a raft like the Big 12 will be once Oklahoma and Texas head off to the SEC.

With the NCAA’s power eroding by the day and the SEC ready to capitalize on the potential power vacuum, there now should be a competing faction that can help guide the direction of whatever is coming over the next two, five, 10 or 20 years. This should position USC well, as an historical power program in the Pac-12, which now looks more poised to be an official power conference after watching so much of its prestige fall away during Larry Scott’s tenure as conference commissioner. The Big Ten and ACC might have to do most of the heavy lifting in the immediacy, but Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 were smart to grab hold. The moves of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC might have obliterated the Big 12, but it left the Pac-12 in a very perilous position, which now seems much more stabilized.

Ultimately, this feels like its about three conferences hoping to take a breath and not worry about being cannibalized for a few minutes while they deal with a number of others things, including future media rights negotiations, NIL rules, health and safety protocols and so much else. It’s an agreement that makes sense for all parties, but has little in the way of absolute specifics at this point.

And of course, that comfortable feeling lasts only as long as this handshake agreement stays in place.