To be perfectly honest, I was struggling to come up with something about which I could rant. It was a good weekend for the teams for whom I cheer–the Penguins won their two games on Friday and Saturday, Pitt upset #14 Louisville by ending the game on a 24-0 run, the Steelers did not lose (they had a bye), and Manchester City did not play. Because of this oddly pleasant weekend (from a sports perspective, at least), I figured I would share my two cents on conference realignment in college sports.

It was not all that long ago that the Big East dissolved as a football conference and teams like Pitt, Syracuse, and Louisville were left standing in the cold. All three found a new home in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), one of the power-five conferences. West Virginia was able to join the Big XII, another power-five conference. Some teams were less lucky though, as UConn and Cincinnati were stuck joining the American Athletic Conference (ACC), widely considered to be a tier below the power-five conferences. A decade later, college sports–especially college football–are perched precariously on the boundary between competitive balance and sheer greed.

The new phase of realignment began with a bombshell–the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma would be joining the Southeastern Conference (SEC), generally regarded as the best conference for football. This came as a shock to many. What would happen to Bedlam, the rivalry between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, when the latter was stuck in the Big XII while the former jetted to the SEC? Would Texas no longer play against the other Big XII schools in the state, including Baylor, Texas Christian University, and Texas Tech?

From there, it spiraled out of control. USC and UCLA–two of the westernmost schools in the country–would be joining the Big Ten, a conference with teams as far east as College Park, Maryland and East Brunswick, New Jersey. With these two storied schools leaving the Pac-12 (bear in mind that Pac is an abbreviation for pacific), other schools panicked. Oregon and Washington followed suit and joined the Big Ten. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah decided to join the Big XII, a largely central conference with the majority of its members being in or near Tornado Alley. Stanford and the University of California joined the ACC. The ATLANTIC COAST conference. Stanford and Cal are on the PACIFIC COAST.

There is no rhyme nor reason to these schools leaving the Pac-12 outside of money. There are only two members of the conference left–Oregon State and Washington State. Their fellow members absolutely screwed them, leaving them to pick up the pieces of a once-proud conference that has been destroyed like the Parthenon. What is going to happen to the Oregon-Oregon State rivalry? What about the Washington-Washington State rivalry? Who thought this was a good idea?

Not only is it a bad move for the integrity of the game to dismantle classic rivalries that tell the history of college sports, but it is also a disaster for the student-athletes. Football aside (seeing as football teams generally only play one game per week), travel for these other sports will be hellish. Why should a Washington Huskies basketball player have to travel to Maryland on a Wednesday, only to come back and play a home game in Seattle four days later? Where is the logic in that? The short answer is that this is completely illogical unless you are following the money.

To cut this rant short and prevent myself from going off the rails, I will make one final assertion: conference realignment will completely ruin college sports. The student-athletes will be taxed from all the travel, leading to a worse product. The annual matchups that so many alumni look forward to will cease to exist. The larger conferences will absorb more and more schools until there are only 2-3 super-conferences, leaving the proverbial “little guys” behind in a state of disrepair. The schools will get richer, but the sports will never be the same again. Shame on every board member of these universities that voted to leave their conferences–you just ruined the games we love.