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Realignment rewind: How last round of movement affected CFB
CONFERENCES
ACC
Gained: Louisville, Syracuse, Pitt
Lost: Maryland
How it's worked out: Had the ACC not expanded to 14 teams, the television deal with ESPN likely never would have happened. "The one-word answer is opportunity," said ACC commissioner John Swofford. "It gives us opportunities we'd never have otherwise. I think it's enhanced our league in every way. We wouldn't be where we are with the 2019 launch of the ACC-ESPN channel without growth, and not just growth, but quality growth." The ACC and ESPN agreed to a 20-year deal, and the conference extended its conference rights deal nine years through 2035-36. That grant of rights makes it financially untenable for a school to leave, giving the ACC the utmost long-term stability. The only way the ACC would change would be to grow even more, should Notre Dame ever decide to join a conference. Notre Dame is locked into an agreement that it would join the ACC if it ever joined a conference. If that happened, then the ACC would likely add one more program to have balanced divisions in football. "There's no question we're better and stronger as a league," Swofford said.
BIG 12
Gained: TCU, West Virginia
Lost: Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas A&M
How it's worked out: While things are not quite as volatile as they were in the summer of 2010,when it looked like the conference might be on the verge of extinction, the league has had its fair share of issues since then. The entire "Will they expand or not?" fiasco of 2016 was a poor look for the league. There remains no conference television network, while their counterparts in the Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC all have one. And even though they have a grant of rights deal that likely keeps the conference intact until 2024-25, the national perception of the league is that, while competitive and having some quality teams, it can be dysfunctional at times and is behind the others (the league has been left out of the College Football Playoff two out of the first three years and it is the only league without a conference football championship game, a distinction that will change for the first time in 2017).
Big Ten
Gained: Maryland, Rutgers, Nebraska
Lost: Nobody
How it's worked out: The conference got exactly what it was looking for -- which goes much deeper than football and basketball teams. Every new member was in a contiguous state, and the league was also looking to grow with institutions that were similar academically. Maryland, Rutgers and Nebraska have brought the Big Ten over 800,000 new alumni combined and hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research money. Commissioner Jim Delany wasn't expecting any of these programs to come in and beat Alabama in in their first three years in the conference. Instead, the benefits of expansion have been measured on a broader scope. The league has taken advantage of a profitable market, with offices in D.C. and New York, and championship sites in both Baltimore and New York. The Big Ten also has a marketing agreement with the Yankees, and it has expanded its brand not just for athletes, but also prospective students.
Pac-12
Gained: Colorado, Utah
Lost: Nobody
How it's worked out: We'll call them a winner for now, but it's a precarious position if things don't change, particularly when it comes to revenue, in the future. The conference took a home run swing at a Pac-16 that didn't formulate but still added a pair of teams. Colorado was a football bottom feeder for its first five years in the league until it turned in a 10-4 campaign last year, which included a Pac-12 championship game appearance. Utah has fared better, finishing in the AP Top 25 each of the past three seasons and having four winning seasons in its first six. The conference is stable, it has quality programs in attractive locations, and early in the decade seemed to be ahead of the media-rights revenue curve. The latter part has changed. The Pac-12 Network suffered to get the kind of distribution that its Big Ten and SEC counterparts did, thus creating a revenue gap. The league paid out an average of $28.7 million to each school in fiscal year 2016 while the SEC distributed roughly $40 million per school and the Big Ten distributed nearly $35 million per school. "I think a lot of us, ADs especially, are concerned about this gap that's growing in TV revenue [between the Pac-12 and] the Big Ten and the SEC," Utah athletic director Chris Hill said. "We're concerned we're going to get priced out if we're not careful."
SEC
Gained: Missouri, Texas A&M
Lost: Nobody
How it's worked out: The conference expanded its geographic footprint, and both football programs had success early on (the Aggies started 20-6 in the first two seasons, and Missouri won SEC East titles in 2013 and 2014). In 2014, two years after the schools joined, the SEC Network launched, and it has been successful in terms of distribution and revenue. That has only strengthened the conference. The league outpaces every other in the country when it comes to media-rights revenue distribution.