Conference realignment news is going to be with us all summer, and based on the coming playoff system, the Big 12 and SEC alliance, Notre Dame’s TV contract, and league changes that are already set to take place years down the road, it’ll be with us for farther than that. But we can still try and get a sense of exactly where things stand for the next month or so.
Big 12 Expansion: FSU, Clemson In Touch, But Texas Still Wants Notre Dame
During his radio show, Chip Brown of Orangebloods.com talked (starting around the 2 minute mark) about the current state of things. The basics:
Big 12 won't do anything til after playoff is set, ACC's football schools are using back channels to talk to B12, and Texas is trying to pump the brakes on expansion to wait to see where Notre Dame is at.
David Wunderlich The Notre Dame part is no surprise, as that’s been in the news for almost a solid year now. Those schools include Florida State, Clemson, Miami and Virginia Tech (which also has SEC rumors of its own), and the playoff stuff won’t be set until June. It’s worth noting that the report from Brown, who covers the Big 12 side and not the ACC side, has the ACC schools approaching the Big 12 and not the other way around.
In the event of a move, the Big 12 will want that to be the official story line in order to avoid accusations of tampering with the ACC’s schools. The SEC did this masterfully in its pickups of Missouri and Texas A&M. If FSU and others do join the Big 12, look for several statements from the conference about not really wanting to expand, but being presented with an offer too good to pass up.
Brown also revisits the moment when it looked like Texas could join the ACC, but the ACC declined. Imagine what we’d be talking about right now if that had happened.
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