Interesting Article Written In 1990 About Conference Realignment

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This summer may see the groundwork laid for rampant additions, defections and mergers that could test the structural boundaries of Division I-A, as the nation's elite schools and conferences scurry to establish regional strangleholds in anticipation of megabucks television contracts. The eventual result could be the disintegration of several existing conferences, the affiliation of most independents and, by the mid-1990s, the emergence of three or four "superconferences" with two divisions and 12 to 16 schools apiece -- a transformation many see as the first step toward creating a college football playoff system.

The possibilities are intriguing. What finally could emerge are an Atlantic Coast Conference stretching from the Northeast to Florida; a Big Ten, which recently added Penn State, that might have further holdings in the Northeast or from the current Big Eight (Nebraska, most prominently); a Southeastern Conference sprawling westward into Texas and including South Carolina and one or two more Florida teams among its Atlantic entries; and a revised Pacific-10 picking up what it can in the West (Colorado, Brigham Young and Air Force, among others).

By the middle of the decade, most observers agree, there will be considerable movement involving college football's six major conferences and the 20 or so significant independents. Of those presently unaffiliated, only Notre Dame -- essentially a conference unto itself, owing to its personal network TV contract -- appears likely to remain that way.

Even the relative skeptics concede some reshuffling appears inevitable. "Any time you start discussing these things, people get nervous and the discussion kind of feeds off itself," said Nebraska chancellor and interim president Martin Massengale, who stressed his school has had no official contact with the Big Ten but whose athletic director, Bob Devaney, has written an informal letter of inquiry to the conference.

We've studied the TV situation carefully," said University of Mississippi President Gerald Turner, chairman of the SEC's expansion committee, "and we've concluded that our interests may be best served by operating on the assumption we'll negotiate for ourselves in the future. . . . The first step in that direction is minimizing the force of competing conferences within our geographic area."

The SEC has gone on the expansion offensive, and other conferences are wary of being left behind should a free-for-all exist when the CFA television deal expires after the 1995 season.

"We'd prefer to stay the way we are," an ACC official said, "but we have to protect our interests. Notre Dame and Penn State got everyone thinking they could sign their own TV contract. . . . If the SEC makes major moves, we have to think about what we'll do to keep pace."

The ACC -- which voted against expansion earlier this year but has reconsidered -- presents a wait-and-see stance, but league officials contend privately that Florida State will turn down the SEC because it doesn't want to be in the same conference with Florida, which allegedly once fostered an SEC blackballing of the Seminoles.

The ACC, if properly motivated, could go after Florida State, Miami, Syracuse, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, West Virginia, Virginia Tech or even former member South Carolina. Conference officials insist they can stand pat as long as the Big Ten and Pac-10 are willing to unite with the ACC in TV negotiations.

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