As we conclude another Summer, we witness yet another round of significant realignment. This seems to be the trend in college athletics: some significant change looms on the horizon every year. The question we pose is how does realignment impact the Mountaineers?
How Does Realignment Impact the Mountaineers?
For better or worse, the West Virginia Mountaineers have seen this road before. They saw it in the 1970s and 1980s when Penn State and others tried to put together a Northeastern football conference, only to see that plan nixed by objecting parties. The ACC (or its predecessor) declined them at least twice (that we know of). The Big East saw a first wave of attrition with Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College leaving, among others.
Then, the Big East faced rumors that the ACC and Big Ten were looking to poach a few more teams. As a result, West Virginia scrambled to find its place among the new Power Five conferences towards the end of the BCS Era. Overcoming some last-minute political pressure from Mitch McConnell to get Louisville into the conference instead, West Virginia landed in the Big 12 in the biggest geographical mismatch among the then-surviving Power Five conferences.
Fast forward a decade, and some things have changed. Oklahoma and Texas announced their departure to the SEC, and the Big Ten matched serve by taking on USC and UCLA from the PAC-12. All manner of speculation and rumors proliferated. Some thought West Virginia would head to the SEC; others thought West Virginia might head to the ACC, where they’d certainly fit better geographically.
Realignment 2.0 Evolves
To maintain their leverage in network negotiations, the Big 12 moved quickly to add BYU, Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF. While the four teams do not match Texas and Oklahoma in terms of TV draw, they help fill at least a part of the vacuum. Folks will certainly argue the merits of those additions for years to come, but, well, they could have done nothing. What would that look like? Well, just ask the PAC-12 (PAC-4?).
This offseason, the musical chairs continued as the PAC-12 remained unable to find a satisfactory media rights deal. The public battle here became downright embarrassing at times, with possible partners including AppleTV, then The CW, then AppleTV again (this time with far less favorable numbers). As a result, Colorado announced their intention to leave the PAC-12 for the Big-12. Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah shortly followed suit. In the meantime, Oregon and Washington announced their intention to depart for the Big Ten.
The SEC, for now, seems happy with what they have, though fans can bet that they are biding their time to add between two and four teams from the ACC if that conference cannot find a way to renegotiate their current long-term, low-paying media rights deal with ESPN. Of course, the conference is also being held together by the long-term strictures of that very ESPN deal, so any team with designs to leave (ahem, Florida State) may find the escape hatch narrow and prohibitively expensive. The Big Ten will also likely stay put for the time being.
For the immediate foreseeable future, then, college football will consist of the Power Four, and, for once West Virginia finds itself on the right side of realignment.
What This Means for West Virginia Fans
Look, we know that plenty of Mountaineer fans hoped (and still hope) that the Mountaineers end up in the ACC where they could renew old rivalries. That said, the ACC’s per-team distribution will stay flat and fall well shy of the per-team distributions in the Big 12. Additionally, we know that at least two schools are looking for creative (or, really, any) ways out of the current Grant of Rights, which really depends on the long-term deal with ESPN. If they find their way out without surrendering media rights to the ACC, that conference may see an exodus. It might try (and seems to be trying) to gain at least some leverage by adding a few leftovers from the PAC-12. That said, it would be difficult to opine that the ACC offers much stability at present. So how does realignment impact the Mountaineers?
For one, it means that fans should dispel the idea of moving to the ACC. This will, of course, mean more travel for the Mountaineers. Unfortunately, this hurts the Olympic sports programs more than the major programs. However, it does afford the program more revenue per year, both in terms of media and in terms of new visiting fan bases who will want to attend away games at a new venue. Does it add much in terms of rivalry factor? Unfortunately, it does not.
That said, it keeps West Virginia in a stable conference generating significantly more revenue than it would have had the Big 12 allowed itself to collapse. It also affords some variance in annual schedules and may offer an easier path to the top third of the conference if the program can get out of its own way and overcome the current losing trends.
