The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 are set to announce an alliance. Still unclear is what such an alliance would do, other than differentiate those conferences from the gargantuan SEC and leave the poor Big 12 standing alone. Or, to be more precise, crumbling alone.
By 2025 if not sooner, the SEC will welcome Texas and Oklahoma. Neither are in the Southeast. Both share the SEC’s worldview, which is, “Get out of our way as we seek to snag every single dollar in this billion-dollar industry.”
That the Big Ten and Pac-12, longtime partners in the Rose Bowl, would forge an alliance isn’t exactly news. Those two have moved in lockstep for decades. (Both canceled their 2020 football seasons this time a year ago. Both wound up playing a semblance of a 2020 season because nobody followed their lead.) Now as then, world waited with bated breath to see which way the ACC would move.