College Football season is loved by many fans all over the country whether a person goes there went there, or just loves the school, many people look forward to watching their team play head-to-head with their rivals in the fall. A big part of college football is the rivalries made throughout the years with the teams in their own division, which has about ten to twelve teams that compete against each other.
Many teams that make up the Pac 12 (a west coast division) decided to leave their division and join the big 10 and big 12 going into the 2024 season. According to LA Times sports editor “The announcements of their departure last summer created a domino effect as the conference that once defined college sports on the West Coast imploded.” This is going to create many problems such as academics, problems for other sports and travel costs.
The main reason for these ten teams to leave was all about money. Sports journalist Zac Al-Khateeb when asked why the teams are leaving said, “multiple answers exist, but the simplest at the moment is money. The Pac-12 has long trailed behind the other so-called “Power 5” conferences in terms of their media rights deals”. By joining these other divisions, they are going to get better coverage for their games and the television services are going to pay more money for these teams to play on the east coast.
This does create some major problems for these student-athletes because now instead of only traveling a couple of hours to play their games they now are going to have to travel across the country to different time zones and areas they are not familiar with. This is going to make a significant impact on their studies and college campus life. Not to mention all the other sports that this is also going to play, such as basketball, baseball, swimming and many more. Unlike football which is mostly played during the weekends these other sports do have matches and games during the week
There are also many rumors that in the next couple of years the divisions all over the country are going to merge into two or three conferences. Or another option is to just make a smaller version of NFL. According to editor of the New York Times editor, Will Leitch “The vision here is clear. There is nothing “regional” about any of this anymore. College football is not really college football anymore; it is now NFL Lite.” By introducing this it is going to create many financial problems for the universities to travel all over the country.
