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The Pac-12, Big Ten and ACC are engaging in high-level discussions about an alliance, sources tell The Athletic.

Talks have centered around not just a scheduling alliance in football but in broader cooperation, according to sources in the three conferences. Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips have been having conversations for several weeks.

“I’ve been in frequent and regular contact with all of the other A5 commissioners the last few weeks about the complex issues that are facing the industry,” Kliavkoff said, adding that there’s “nothing to report on this specific matter at this time.”

How will an alliance work?
Max Olson, staff writer: While the specifics on how a scheduling pact might work remain unclear, sources in the three conferences suggest the larger goal is alignment so that the Pac-12, Big Ten and ACC can work and vote together on major issues such as College Football Playoff expansion and upcoming NCAA governance changes.

“This is their shot right back at the SEC,” one athletic director said.

All three leagues and their relatively new commissioners are feeling some pressure to respond to the SEC’s aggression after the conference added Texas and Oklahoma as new members starting in 2025. None of the three have expressed serious interest in raiding what’s left of the Big 12, so working together is a logical next step and appears to be the likely outcome.

There are differing beliefs among sources in the three conferences as to how imminently this alliance could be finalized and formally announced. Kliavkoff and Warren were together this week in California for Rose Bowl-related meetings.

What about the Big 12?
Olson: While these plans are still in the works, it does appear the Big 12 will not be included in the alliance. Last week, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby met with Kliavkoff to discuss potential options for a strategic alliance. The Big 12 is currently exploring options to preserve its future after Texas and Oklahoma exit.

If this alliance comes together, it would clearly be a setback for the Big 12. Sources in the conference said Bowlsby was optimistic about the potential of working with the Pac-12, and the possibility of this three-league alliance was not discussed on a call between Bowlsby and Big 12 athletic directors on Friday.

While this alliance would presumably mean Power 5 leagues will not look to poach Big 12 members and helps keeps the eight members together, this is not a good development for Bowlsby. The Big 12 could focus its efforts on expansion going forward, but trying to align with a Power 5 league was considered a preferable possibility.

Why would the three conferences do this?
Matt Fortuna, staff writer: On Tuesday the NCAA announced the formation of a constitution committee, with the hopes of expediting a proposed governance model. It is there, in voting power, where an alliance among the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 would really show those three conferences’ power — 41 votes to the 16 votes of the expanded SEC.

New ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, who was announced as one of 23 members of the constitution committee, has told ADs that strength comes in numbers, not in one conference stacking the deck. This is where the real difference could come for these three conferences.

The question of timing
Nicole Auerbach, senior writer: Even if such a move is not exactly imminent, there is still pressure to do something in the wake of the SEC's power play.

A formal alliance between these three conferences could be announced with specific scheduling details to be ironed out later. But it would still be valuable to get this out there at some point soon because the three leagues could then work together to vote as a bloc on CFP expansion (timeline and format), upcoming NCAA governance decisions and other pressing issues.

Dan Wolken@DanWolken
There’s a reason the NFL gives multiple network partners a piece of the playoffs and Super Bowls, or why the NBA has TNT and ESPN/ABC. This has to be the future for college football. The SEC and ESPN were trying to cut that off at the knees.

Dan Wolken@DanWolken
In my conversations with people across the sport this is by far the No. 1 concern of what the SEC has done and why other leagues feel deceived. Creating a new playoff under those auspices would have meant an ESPN/SEC monopoly on the television landscape.

Dan Wolken@DanWolken
Short of pooling media rights, the most significant thing (perhaps only significant thing) the ACC, Big Ten and Pac 12 can do in any “alliance” is to ensure the expanded Playoff goes to market and is broken up into pieces for bid instead of being giftwrapped for ESPN

Sounds like this is more than just a scheduling alliance. A scheduling alliance though would probably hurt G5 teams if ultimately done. I could envision a scheduling alliance being developed to help the weaker P5 teams that have less attendance, landing OOC P5 home games to replace G5 match-ups and help fill their stadiums. For example, a Washington State home game match-up with Clemson would sell a lot more tickets that a match-up with Utah State. Same goes in reverse, a Clemson home game with Washington State is more attractive than a home game with Connecticut on paper.

The G5 conferences need to form some type of alliance to ensure the top teams in each of the conferences play each other. The challenge to that is that a team's fortunes can change so much during the long period before games are scheduled. What could be done to help improve the head to head match-ups would be for all the conferences to block in a couple of weeks every year for OOC games with other G5 teams to be chosen only a couple of years out. Basketball has been successful at scheduling games only a year out, no reason football can't do the same if the same weeks are blocked by all the G5 teams. For example, if this were done, UAB could have a home game against the top MWC team and an away game at the top AAC team. This could be repeated every year, rotating the conference opponents. With an alliance, it wouldn't necessarily be a requirement to make these match-ups home and home series. This would help ensure that there are multiple teams in each of the G5 conferences that are in the discussion that have quality schedules.

(08-14-2021 08:28 AM)Ramblin Wreck Wrote:  Sounds like this is more than just a scheduling alliance. A scheduling alliance though would probably hurt G5 teams if ultimately done. I could envision a scheduling alliance being developed to help the weaker P5 teams that have less attendance, landing OOC P5 home games to replace G5 match-ups and help fill their stadiums. For example, a Washington State home game match-up with Clemson would sell a lot more tickets that a match-up with Utah State. Same goes in reverse, a Clemson home game with Washington State is more attractive than a home game with Connecticut on paper.

The G5 conferences need to form some type of alliance to ensure the top teams in each of the conferences play each other. The challenge to that is that a team's fortunes can change so much during the long period before games are scheduled. What could be done to help improve the head to head match-ups would be for all the conferences to block in a couple of weeks every year for OOC games with other G5 teams to be chosen only a couple of years out. Basketball has been successful at scheduling games only a year out, no reason football can't do the same if the same weeks are blocked by all the G5 teams. For example, if this were done, UAB could have a home game against the top MWC team and an away game at the top AAC team. This could be repeated every year, rotating the conference opponents. With an alliance, it wouldn't necessarily be a requirement to make these match-ups home and home series. This would help ensure that there are multiple teams in each of the G5 conferences that are in the discussion that have quality schedules.

I agree. It certainly would give the G5 an opportunity to create more attractive OOC match ups for media interest. Unfortunately, these will probably be attendance killing mid-week games.

(08-14-2021 08:28 AM)Ramblin Wreck Wrote:  Sounds like this is more than just a scheduling alliance. A scheduling alliance though would probably hurt G5 teams if ultimately done. I could envision a scheduling alliance being developed to help the weaker P5 teams that have less attendance, landing OOC P5 home games to replace G5 match-ups and help fill their stadiums. For example, a Washington State home game match-up with Clemson would sell a lot more tickets that a match-up with Utah State. Same goes in reverse, a Clemson home game with Washington State is more attractive than a home game with Connecticut on paper.

The G5 conferences need to form some type of alliance to ensure the top teams in each of the conferences play each other. The challenge to that is that a team's fortunes can change so much during the long period before games are scheduled. What could be done to help improve the head to head match-ups would be for all the conferences to block in a couple of weeks every year for OOC games with other G5 teams to be chosen only a couple of years out. Basketball has been successful at scheduling games only a year out, no reason football can't do the same if the same weeks are blocked by all the G5 teams. For example, if this were done, UAB could have a home game against the top MWC team and an away game at the top AAC team. This could be repeated every year, rotating the conference opponents. With an alliance, it wouldn't necessarily be a requirement to make these match-ups home and home series. This would help ensure that there are multiple teams in each of the G5 conferences that are in the discussion that have quality schedules.

This might be one of those “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” moments. The G5 could form an alliance and work with the other alliance to make sure that marquee G5 programs still get access to the P5, effectively isolating the SEC.

This is basically the Big Ten/ACC/Pac-12 admitting they are in a cold war with the SEC over the direction of college sports. It's also their way of protesting Sankey (and ESPN) driving the playoff committee while secretly negotiating with Oklahoma and Texas.

The fact that the Big 12 schools are not included strikes me as a big clue as to how they will be treated in the future.

The challenge for the G5 will remain the same as it has always been, all the way back to the 1970s: The top of the G5 aren't willing to band together with the rest because they don't want to be G5. This was true when those schools were C-USA also. The thing they need to remember is that the Big 12 i going to treat them exactly the same.

(08-14-2021 08:28 AM)Ramblin Wreck Wrote:  Sounds like this is more than just a scheduling alliance. A scheduling alliance though would probably hurt G5 teams if ultimately done. I could envision a scheduling alliance being developed to help the weaker P5 teams that have less attendance, landing OOC P5 home games to replace G5 match-ups and help fill their stadiums. For example, a Washington State home game match-up with Clemson would sell a lot more tickets that a match-up with Utah State. Same goes in reverse, a Clemson home game with Washington State is more attractive than a home game with Connecticut on paper.

The G5 conferences need to form some type of alliance to ensure the top teams in each of the conferences play each other. The challenge to that is that a team's fortunes can change so much during the long period before games are scheduled. What could be done to help improve the head to head match-ups would be for all the conferences to block in a couple of weeks every year for OOC games with other G5 teams to be chosen only a couple of years out. Basketball has been successful at scheduling games only a year out, no reason football can't do the same if the same weeks are blocked by all the G5 teams. For example, if this were done, UAB could have a home game against the top MWC team and an away game at the top AAC team. This could be repeated every year, rotating the conference opponents. With an alliance, it wouldn't necessarily be a requirement to make these match-ups home and home series. This would help ensure that there are multiple teams in each of the G5 conferences that are in the discussion that have quality schedules.

I don’t know, this could get really interesting. What if this group of teams collectively says F the SEC, we have each other and will force their hand? While nobody will dispute the SEC is the dominant college football conference right now, it would be very interesting if the other power leagues decided to avoid them in all sports OOC, and how that would pan out in the long run. It’s a smart play by these three conferences in my opinion, I guess we will see what the details are further down the road.

The problem is that this could easily turn into the two super leagues that we dread.

If the 3 conferences team for a scheduling alliance and refuse to play SEC teams, the SEC may be forced to do what they do not want to do - play G5 teams. I don’t think what’s left of the Big 12 would bow and schedule the SEC. Also, I don’t think they would want to play a 13-game schedule amongst themselves.

(08-14-2021 10:46 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  The problem is that this could easily turn into the two super leagues that we dread.

The G5 schools have a decision to make about offering up the automatic "W" games for the aristocratic programs just to make the money? What happens if the G5 refuses to play that role for those P5 programs? Do the P5 programs really want to play only similar teams for their whole schedule? Right now the P5 teams can count on 1/4 to 1/3 of their games as "W" games with the likes of Mercer, Western Carolina, UT Martin and such..

(08-14-2021 11:11 PM)WesternBlazer Wrote:  If the 3 conferences team for a scheduling alliance and refuse to play SEC teams, the SEC may be forced to do what they do not want to do - play G5 teams. I don’t think what’s left of the Big 12 would bow and schedule the SEC. Also, I don’t think they would want to play a 13-game schedule amongst themselves.

I think that the Big 12 will schedule the SEC to try and preserve their P5 status. The money involved and the media opportunity may over rule any pride.

(08-15-2021 04:20 PM)MAN4UAB Wrote:  

(08-14-2021 11:11 PM)WesternBlazer Wrote:  If the 3 conferences team for a scheduling alliance and refuse to play SEC teams, the SEC may be forced to do what they do not want to do - play G5 teams. I don’t think what’s left of the Big 12 would bow and schedule the SEC. Also, I don’t think they would want to play a 13-game schedule amongst themselves.

I think that the Big 12 will schedule the SEC to try and preserve their P5 status. The money involved and the media opportunity may over rule any pride.

I’m still not sure that’ll be the case. If the other 3 conferences band together, they can really hamstring the SEC. They could even go as far as deciding to offer the G5 programs 2/3 for 1 deals, just to entice those programs over the SEC money. I think the best thing these other 3 conferences can do at this point is anything that takes power back from the SEC. There are many ways these groups can go about this, but they currently have a lot of strength in numbers if they can all stick together.

I just see it as an alliance to set up future raids. Self interest will eventually take precedent.

Don't sell ESPN's influence short either.

Seems like a scheduling alliance. Big 12 will either add two or stay put and then AAC will need to make a decision. If the AAC doesn't lose anyone do they be proactive or stay put? If I'm UAB I'm wearing out the Big 12 and AAC Commissioner's phone.

(08-16-2021 07:44 AM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  Seems like a scheduling alliance. Big 12 will either add two or stay put and then AAC will need to make a decision. If the AAC doesn't lose anyone do they be proactive or stay put? If I'm UAB I'm wearing out the Big 12 and AAC Commissioner's phone.

THIS

It appears as if the Power 4 conferences are trying to force the Big 12 out.

LOVE that we've come full circle on all of the media nonsense. Supreme court case in the 80s for conferences to argue their own television agreement....they're going to end up right back there anyway.

Amazon offering elite money for a top-30 football-only conference in the 2010s - conferences scoff at the idea. Now we're headed straight for it.

The Big 12 will not stay at 8. Trying to schedule 5 OOC games will be extremely difficult. If the 8 stays together they'll add two and I am putting BYU and Cincy as the top 2 targets.

Question becomes if the AAC replaces Cincy or stay at 10. From a money perspective it makes sense the Big 12 and AAC stays at 10.

(08-16-2021 01:15 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  The Big 12 will not stay at 8. Trying to schedule 5 OOC games will be extremely difficult. If the 8 stays together they'll add two and I am putting BYU and Cincy as the top 2 targets.

Question becomes if the AAC replaces Cincy or stay at 10. From a money perspective it makes sense the Big 12 and AAC stays at 10.

ESPN will have a say in what both do.