After several Division I schools changed conferences in less than 72 hours, Drinkwitz entailed a powerful message at the podium on Saturday
In times of chaos, voices of reason become extremely valuable. Amidst the seismic wave of conference realignment madness last week, Missouri head football coach Eliah Drinkwitz was that voice of reason. In front of a handful of reporters on Saturday afternoon, Drinkwitz had this to say about a bunch of prominent schools changing conferences in the span of less than 72 hours:
“The adults in the room get to do whatever they want,” Drinkwitz said.
“Did we count the cost for the student-athletes involved in this decision?” Drinkwitz continued. “Volleyball, baseball, softball, track…all those other sports, they’re not fortunate to travel like {football}.”
“Did we count the cost of the collateral damage of everybody else?” Drinkwitz said.
The soundbite quickly made the rounds across social media. The clip from KMIZ ABC 17’s Nathalie Jones was viewed over one million times on Twitter. ESPN and 247Sports each made social media posts regarding it. While Drinkwitz has previously made public comments that garnered pushback, his comments on Saturday were received with overwhelming support.
This past week, Oregon and Washington, who’d been a part of the Pac-12 Conference since its genesis in 1915, both agreed to join the Big Ten Conference in all athletics in 2024. Not long after, Colorado (also of the Pac-12) agreed to join the Big 12 next year, too. Finally, Pac-12 schools Arizona, Arizona State and Utah decided that they’d join the Big 12 conference in 2024 as well.
But wait! There’s more. This is the third consecutive year that has seen major realignment within collegiate athletics; in 2021, Oklahoma and Texas agreed to join the SEC in 2025, which then got moved up to 2024 this past February. Last summer, BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston agreed to join the Big 12 in 2023. Soon after, the Pac-12’s two biggest brands, UCLA and USC, agreed to join the Big Ten in 2024.
Pause for a water break.
The main reason for all of this? Dolla dolla bills, y’all, specifically from television contracts, which generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for schools. After a bet on the “Pac-12 Network” being the main TV provider for the conference failed miserably, they’ve lagged behind the other power conferences in TV revenue for a long time. A new proposal to keep the conference together via an Apple TV deal was met with dissatisfaction. Their new homes in the Big Ten and the Big 12 are expected to net the defected Pac-12 teams tens of millions more from TV contracts than they received previously.
Tumultuous effects lay ahead. The Pac-12, once one of the most powerful conferences in collegiate athletics, is set to perish as only California, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State remain. Hundred year-old rivalries, such as Washington vs. Washington State and Oregon vs. Oregon State may not be played annually. Pangea-like superconferences are steamrolling closer to reality, as the Big Ten is set to have 18 teams in 2024, with the Big 12 moving to 16 teams this year.
The past few days have also invoked plenty of understandably negative emotions within naysayers of realignment. As Drinkwtiz mentioned, college football’s most powerful people have been so concerned with athletes having just some professional freedom. Players being able to utilize the transfer portal and NIL a lot more in recent years have drawn the ire of a handful of higher-ups. Why are they concerned about that while they are allowed to literally change the entire landscape of collegiate sports in just a few days? And why isn’t there some sort of governing body regulating all of this?
Feelings aside, let’s focus on the components Drinkwitz mentioned in his three minute-long response: geographics and “everybody else,” a.k.a the non-football athletes.
Schools changing conferences happens all the time. In fact, Missouri did just over a decade ago when they ditched the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012. But from a geographical standpoint, it hasn’t ever changed quite like this.
One aspect that’s made collegiate sports unique for over 150 years is its regionality. Rivalries between schools physically close to one another have fueled people’s burning passion for collegiate athletics. Programs competing against one another for decades has been a huge part of what’s made not just collegiate sports, but sports in general special. There’s a sense of pride in supporting a football team from your own region of the country, especially in an area like the South, where football is closer to religion than a mere game. For fans, being able to travel to away games isn’t usually impossible. From a student-athlete’s perspective – especially the ones who fly commercial – it’s convenient to not have to travel long distances for games, especially since there’s school to worry about, too.
Now, that’s all been turned upside down. This is the first time that the coasts will be connected in collegiate athletics. Outside of the Rose Bowl in football, the Big Ten and Pac-12 have rarely ever crossed paths in competition. Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, UCF and Utah have almost zero history with their new Big 12 partners.
There’ll be trips between Oregon and Maryland, Arizona and Florida, California and New Jersey. In fact, here’s the official mileage between Arizona State and their future Big 12 brethren via college football insider Brett McMurphy:
That’s a lot of miles! And that matters for a lot of reasons! Traveling long distances is exhausting, and athletes have made mention of how it affects their performance. Several current student-athletes who’s schools changed conferences spoke about how they chose their local school because it’d be easy for their families to travel to their games; that’s now become a lot harder. On top of this, the student-athletes have academic obligations to juggle, too.
For the football teams, this is absolutely a hindrance. But they play once a week and are oftentimes able to travel in luxury. This is where the need to address “everyone else”; baseball, softball, volleyball, soccer and all other non-football Division I athletes. These are the athletes who usually play multiple games per week, who will now have to travel across the country semi-frequently while also being a student.
In order to estimate how many people are a part of “everyone else,” let’s do some quick math. Although more recent data is not available, in May 2021, there were 192,000 Division I athletes. Around that same time, when there were 129 schools competing at the Division I-A football level, there were about 15,167 athletes playing football. That’s less than 8% of all D1 athletes. Yikes.
Now, there are some counter arguments that need to be addressed. One is that there are schools who are already far away from the rest of their conference. Correct, but again, it’s not nearly as extreme as something like Oregon going to Maryland. For example, Miami (FL) is geographically far away from a lot of its ACC peers, but they’re in the same time zone. West Virginia has been a geographic outlier to the rest of their Big 12 foes since they joined the conference in 2012. But the opponent furthest from them, Texas Tech, is less than 950 miles away, and only one time zone is crossed.
Even Missouri is outside of the SEC’s geographical epicenter, which resides around Alabama and Mississippi. But when Missouri moved to the SEC, the distance between Missouri’s old opponents – who were mostly in the Midwest – and new opponents – who were mostly in the Southeast – weren’t that different. The Tigers would still compete against schools bordering them like Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee). The opponent furthest away from them – Florida – was just a hair under 1,100 miles away. For comparison, the closest non-Pacific Big Ten team to UCLA and USC is Nebraska, which is nearly 1,500 miles away from Los Angeles.
The choice of the seven Pac-12 schools to ditch the conference for greener pastures is completely understandable. They were in financial despair, and the Big Ten and Big 12 were welcoming them with open arms. Conference realignment is like musical chairs; you don’t want to be left without a seat when the music stops. The Big Ten and Big 12 offered seats to those schools, and all of them were wise to take it from a financial standpoint.
There’s an unfortunate lesson that we’ve been reminded of once again: football rules. In the United States, football will always rule. Ratings. Revenue. Realignment. Everything. Even though they’re a fraction of the population, their influence compared to other sports’ is greatly outsized.
Stanford is a perfect example of why football completely overrules every other sport. Stanford has kicked everyone’s butt in basically every other sport for decades. Since the creation of the NACDA Directors’ Cup 30 years ago – the award for the most successful Division I program across all Division I sports – Stanford has won it 26 times. Tiger Woods, Katie Ledecky, John McEnroe and a handful of other decorated Olympians are all Cardinal alum. Yet Stanford remains stranded in the Pac-12, their future unknown because of the football team’s downward spiral in recent years.
These next couple of years are going to be strange. Seeing Washington-Maryland and Utah-West Virginia as in-conference matchups is going to feel unbelievably weird. But football, as Drinkwitz said, will be fine. It won’t matter that what’s made college football college football for the past 150 plus years has been torn up. People will still watch. As long as there’s college football happening, the sport will be A-OK. “Everyone else,” on the other hand, is getting the short end of the stick.
Updated 08/12/2023 at 7:26 p.m.