You may not remember it, but a few years ago the college football world was relatively stable. Every team had a conference they were in, and no one wanted to move, or so we thought. A few years later, everything changed, with teams from California and Texas in the ACC, as well as many teams left without a home. To understand this though, we must go much farther back than a few years ago, as conference realignment is a cyclical thing, so let us take a trip with the ghost of college football past to where it all started, in the 80s and 90s, in the old Southwest conference. Back then the biggest conferences were the SEC, the BIG 10, the PAC 12, and the Southwest. The Southwest conference consisted of Baylor, Rice, SMU, Texas A&M, TCU, Texas Tech, Houston, Arkansas and Texas. The conference was around for a while, but realignment began to play in towards the end of the southwest conference. To understand the break up of the southwest, it’s important to look at one key member. Arkansas. Arkansas was the only member that was not a Texas school and was thus alienated from the rest of the conference, so when the SEC came calling, Arkansas picked up the phone and agreed to leave the Southwest for the SEC. While you may think this isn’t a big deal, Arkansas moving caused a chain reaction in the Southwest that destroyed the conference. Texas, A&M, Baylor and Tech all left and merged with the Big 8 to form the BIG 12, and all the other schools left for smaller conferences. What just happened was round one out of three for college football realignment, so let’s hop into round two.

Now, onto the second happening, where we will leave the south and journey to the midwest, specifically BIG 10 headquarters. In early 2010, the Big Ten announced its plans to expand, shortly after, Nebraska applied for membership and was unanimously voted in, and over two years later, Maryland was taken from the ACC and Rutgers from the big east, creating the current big ten. Meanwhile, the Big 12 began to lose​​ teams. Colorado left for the Pac 12,  and A&M and Missouri went to the SEC thus concluding Round 2. Now we are at round three, with Texas and OU in the SEC, UCLA and USC in the BIG 10, and many others moving.

Now, there are positives and negatives to this. One negative is that now you have teams without a home. Oregon State and Washington State currently have nowhere to go, and many smaller teams are in similar situations. However, there are some positives. As a Texan, I am personally very excited for the return of Texas vs Texas A&M, which is a classic rivalry soon to return because both teams are now in the SEC.