Ben Lepper ‘25,
Chief Sports Editor
Most every year, summer is the college sports dead zone. The only noteworthy events that happen in the summer involve things like football camps, summer college baseball leagues, and recruitment. 2023 was not one of those dead years. It seemed like every day, a new school jumped ship from their old conference to the promised land.
Conference alignment is not a new phenomenon, but these days, it has been getting more media attention than ever considering the sheer number of notable universities jumping to new conferences. The most recent wave began in 2021 when Oklahoma and Texas were invited to join the SEC starting in 2025, leaving the Big 12 behind. The Big 12 responded by adding BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF to their member schools later that year, and then re-introducing Colorado in July 2023, who would leave the Pac-12.
Speaking of the Pac-12, everyone, and I mean everyone, has been leaving. They lost UCLA and USC to the Big Ten in summer 2022, and continued to lose schools in 2023. On August 4th, 2023, the Pac-12 witnessed a mass exodus: Oregon and Washington followed their California brethren to the Big Ten, and Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah would leave for the Big 12, leaving the Pac-12 with only four member institutions.
Then, in September 2023, the Pac-12’s already small numbers halved, as Stanford and California announced that they would be joining the ACC in 2024, leaving the Pac-12 with only Oregon State and Washington State as member institutions, and effectively turning the Power 5 into the Power 4. What’s mind-blowing is that there has been even more movement in conferences such as the Sun Belt, C-USA, and the CAA, but there is simply not enough time to go over all of it. There has just been so much.
Often, a school will leave their conference for the sole purpose of money. That’s really what everything is about, after all — the Pac-12 exodus happened partly because their contract with Fox ended, and they were still negotiating on a new media-rights deal. With the money uncertain, schools left for conferences with long-standing media deals for a better paycheck.
However, it is important to remember that these decisions are made by the higher-ups, and students, coaches, and families often are left scrambling. Let’s say a student chose to commit to Stanford to play closer to home. Being in the Pac-12, they would stay primarily on the west coast, and their families would be able to go see their games at Stanford, at USC, at California, and so forth. But with Stanford joining the ACC, with member institutions primarily on the east coast, this would no longer be possible. The student would have to endure frequent cross-country flights, would not be able to have their family come to a majority of games, and would have to juggle their studies with the eventual exhaustion and jet lag. It would, quite frankly, ruin this student athlete’s life.
Now, it seems uncertain if the conference realignment wave would ever hit Worcester. Holy Cross has been a member of the Patriot League for 45+ years now, and as far as conferences go, it’s a fairly good one. Not only are the schools in close proximity to each other, but it has also been fairly stable in terms of realignment, as nobody has joined or left in ten years.
But let’s consider the possibility that Holy Cross would jump ship. Where would they go? They could follow Fordham to the Atlantic 10 and join schools such as UMass, URI, and Loyola Chicago. Or, they could jump to the NEC and compete against Merrimack, Sacred Heart, Stonehill, and Saint Francis. I am not saying I expect either of these to happen, as I anticipate Holy Cross being in the Patriot League for years to come. But with all this recent movement, one has to ask “what if”.
In the end, I don’t know when this is going to stop. I don’t know if the Pac-12 will exist next year, and I don’t know if student-athletes will even want to stay at programs like Stanford, USC, Oregon, and so forth considering the intense amount of travel they will have to endure next year. There are a lot of moving parts to this, and it is a situation that student-athletes, fans, and coaches will continue to monitor as conference realignment continues on.
Featured image courtesy of Bryan Armetta
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