![]() ![]() Furthermore, this mass migration must now occur five or six times per season. Moreover, this does not include the thousands of die-hard fans who religiously travel to all the away games. While that may not seem like much, remember that the average traveling party for a football team is around 100 members including players, coaches and support staff. ![]() A single round trip (economy class) from RDU to San Fransisco emits 1.04 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. But, given that it is infeasible for a visiting team to drive across the country, a larger share of away games will now require flights. In the old days when conferences followed the rules of geography, most away games could be reached by bus, which is far more environmentally friendly than air travel for short trips. Never mind that Palo Alto is 2,380 miles away from Durham. Not to be left behind, the ACC sounded the death knell of the Pac-12 by adding Cal and Stanford. Still reeling from the loss of its two biggest members, Texas and Oklahoma, the Big-12 responded decisively, snagging four Pac-12 schools. Hardly constrained by insufficient state and federal regulations or the toothless NCAA, conferences realized schools were willing to enter a Faustian bargain with the highest bidder.Īs the SEC and Big Ten gained sports hegemony with their additions of flagship institutions such as Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Maryland and Rutgers, the remaining 3 power five conferences felt they needed to play the acquisition game to survive. ![]() These changes - though minor - awakened conference commissioners to the power that they possessed. With the advent of cable TV, conferences realized adding more TV markets to their portfolio would supersize earnings, spurring the realignment revolution. But this harmonious balance of power was quickly upended when in the early 2010s conferences began to poach other schools - including the notable moves of Missouri and Texas A&M from the Big-12 to the SEC and Maryland from the ACC to the Big Ten. The other power five conferences also were geographically compact, limiting the need for long flights or travel across time zones. Just a mere 20 years ago, the ACC contained eight teams (three of which were in the Triangle), with the longest trip a visiting team would have to make being 732 miles from Florida State to the University of Maryland. Only when conference realignment eventually runs into the realities of climate change will the foolishness of universities be exposed. However, these concerns get drowned by trivial discussions of a potential Stanford-Duke rivalry or what the new divisions of an 18-school ACC will look like. That travel will emit billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, despite many universities identifying climate change as an institutional priority. Conference realignment entails thousands of miles of transcontinental travel on a weekly basis. The shocking gambit evoked plenty of punditry from the sports world - mostly reminiscing about the tragedy surrounding the downfall of the ‘ Conference of Champions.’ But the real tragedy lies off the field. The ACC is posed to gain over $600 million from its contract with ESPN as a result - and that doesn’t include revenue earned from other multimedia companies. While ACC executives framed the move as necessary for survival in the anarchic world of college sports, it is apparent that the primary motivation for this move was TV revenues. Like a vulture feeding on a rotting carcass, the ACC capitalized off the surprisingly swift decline of the Pac-12 (the most prominent college athletic conference in the Western US) to expand its national appeal. 1, the ACC unofficially became the All Coast Conference after its additions of Stanford, Cal and SMU. ![]()
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