Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Now that EA Sports College Football 25 has been released for several weeks, my inbox and DMs are no longer buried in a deluge of video game related questions. While I still get plenty of people asking me about patch updates or uniform fonts, the most common questions I get now are about conference realignment.

What’s gonna happen with Florida State, Clemson and the ACC? What about the Pac-2? Why hasn’t the Missouri Valley found somebody to replace Missouri State yet? When are we gonna hear about more D-II schools reclassifying?

A non-trivial number of my premium subscribers first became exposed to Extra Points because they wanted to hear the inside scoop on realignment, so I realize this answer might not be so great for business.

But based on what I have been reading and hearing from around the industry, I think the realignment landscape right now is fundamentally different from last year, or the year before. Right now, we have conditions that make any realignment less likely, from the largest power conference programs, all the way to the lowest - resourced leagues in D-I. Not impossible, of course, but less likely.

Here’s why I think we’re headed for a few more months of actual realignment calm…

The ACC situation isn’t just in the hands of university presidents and commissioners…but judges

On the off chance you need a quick primer, here’s the situation with the ACC. Florida State and Clemson are both suing, in separate cases and in separate states, to be able to leave the ACC without paying a massive exit fee. If the ACC’s Grant of Rights is held up as legally enforceable, it would cost in the neighborhood of $500 million for either school to extricate themselves right now from the league.

Yahoo! Sports reported last week that Florida State and the ACC will begin mediation, although others have reported that not only is mediation not guaranteed to lead to a settlement (i.e Florida State paying a smaller number to leave the conference), it isn’t expected to do so.

Normally, when a school indicates they want to leave a conference, the two sides, and perhaps the relevant broadcast partners, figure out some sort of settlement or compromise over exit fees, championship access, etc, rather than have a disgruntled member hang around as a lame duck. But this isn’t a normal situation, as the ACC’s ability to enforce the GOR is an existential threat to the longevity of the conference. There’s really no incentive for the ACC to try to settle for one penny less than they think they’re owed…at least for the moment.

Unless some outside party (an institutional investment fund, a broadcast partner, etc) decides to drop a massive amount of money to essentially buy an expedited solution, what happens to the two major brands, and ACC, depends on the legal system, not the negotiations of university presidents and broadcasters. I have not read any report, nor heard from any industry source that I trust, anything to suggest such activities are imminent. I heard chatter that this was a possibility earlier in the summer…but not now.

The more interesting question, to me, isn’t what various judges and lawyers end up doing with a very complicated contract law question…but where Florida State, and to a lesser extent, Clemson, think they’re going if they leave the ACC.

Last month, Brett McMurphy reported, after talking to “more than a dozen individuals, including university presidents, conference personnel, athletic directors, network executives and consultants”, that the Big Ten or SEC were “unlikely” to take either school if the ACC continued to survive.

I haven’t had the chance to talk to a Big Ten or SEC president about this, but the sources quoted in McMurphy’s story share talking points that broadly line up with what I’ve heard from ADs, television people, and industry consultants. Essentially, the TV money doesn’t increase enough for the B1G or SEC to make the addition work, and there are concerns about how “disruptive a partner” Florida State might be for either league.

Something not mentioned in McMurphy’s story, but that I’ve had relayed to me a few times, is the explicit political challenges for Southern expansion for the Big Ten.

The bulk of B1G membership comes from public institutions, who are at least indirectly controlled by state lawmakers or politically appointed individuals. With the last round of expansion, a majority of Big Ten schools are in historically Blue states (Washington, Oregon, UCLA, Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Rutgers), with another two private schools in blue markets (Northwestern and USC). There are five in deep red states (Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State), and four in purple-ish states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State).

For most issues, the political orientation of these schools or regents wouldn’t matter. But it’s important to remember that the actual big votes in conference policy come down to presidents, and presidents are accountable to regents or boards who may have been appointed by governors or statehouses. As we saw with COVID, if you have conference membership that approaches a governance question from very different political constituencies, you can have problems.

Let’s say the Big Ten adds a few more schools in Florida or South Carolina. What happens if those state boards want the Big Ten to take a harder line on trans athlete participation in sports, or on LGTBQ issues, or anything related to DEI? What will lawmakers in New Jersey and Washington say? Is the TV money enough to keep everybody together?

I’m not saying that it’s impossible for the Big Ten to add more red state schools. But I am saying this is another angle to consider, especially as many states look to get more politically involved in higher education governance. There’s a reason conferences were often geographically and institutionally aligned for so long…it makes governance easier.

What about the Pac-2?

After the last massive round of realignment, the Pac-12 is now the Pac-2. Oregon State and Washington State have temporary schedule agreements/affiliate memberships with the WCC and Mountain West, but neither are a permanent solution.

It’s not exactly a state secret for what the remaining Pac-2 schools want. They want to be in a league that can pay out financial distributions similar to what they enjoyed in the Pac-12, with power conference level championship access and prestige. Ideally, that would mean joining the Big 12 or ACC, but neither of those are likely to happen in the short term without some other massive event changing the landscape (like say, whatever happens with FSU and Clemson). Folks in the WCC and MWC orbits have told me that their peers do not expect OSU and Wazzu to keep their current affiliate arrangements over the long term.

Whenever the Pac-2 makes a decision, it will send shock waves that could impact the rest of D-I’s membership. If the two decide to rebuild the Pac-12, it will likely come from adding members from the MWC and AAC, (and potentially the Big Sky, WCC, WAC or others), causing a new run of mid-major realignment. I’m told other mid-major leagues would prefer to pull the trigger on potential new member invites until they have more clarity on what OSU/Wazzu decide. Nobody wants to join a league, after all, if half the conference is about to bail for the Pac-12.

I do not expect a resolution to this situation in the immediate future. Time is on OSU and Wazzu’s side at the moment…the longer they can wait, the more time they have for something to happen elsewhere that could create an opening.

So many mid-majors are waiting for more clarity at the larger school level. But there’s another big reason for smaller leagues to play it slow when it comes to membership changes.

I’m hearing the House case has changed timetables across the country

Smaller conferences typically don’t expand in an attempt to optimize broadcast revenue…there’s not enough out there to make it worth it. Generally, FCS/IAAA leagues expand to improve postseason access (with better NET ratings, RPIs, etc), to save money on travel, and to improve competition in key sports.

With the House settlement, leagues now need to figure out exactly what those key sports are, what new standards all league members should hit (budget, scholarships, revenue sharing, etc), and where they’re prepared to make cuts or budget reallocations.

But since the settlement isn’t even approved yet, and with so many nuts-and-bolts details still up in the air, few schools or leagues have made those completely concrete decisions yet. Without that information, extending membership invitations typically becomes a lower priority.

That’s why you shouldn't be surprised if say, the Missouri Valley takes a while before extending any membership invites to replace Missouri State…it’s probably too early for any potential member to know if they can meet the right financial commitments (and FWIW, while they don’t get a vote, multiple ADs in that league have told me they’re pretty lukewarm on expanding in general). It’s why you shouldn’t be surprised to see more D-II schools opt to wait on potential reclassification decisions until they have substantially more information. And it’s why I suspect many of the other leagues that have been tied to potential membership changes, like the A10, CAA or ASUN, will elect to wait and see, rather than push to solidify anything in the immediate future.

That’s not to say expansion is impossible. For the right school at the right time, presidents can be convinced to act without complete and full knowledge. Sometimes, desperation can push entities to move before they’re completely ready as well. And Lord knows typing “I don’t think realignment is coming in the near future” is a great way to look very stupid in a few weeks.

But I’m going to do it anyway. If you don’t hear about anything, that doesn’t mean conversations aren’t happening, consultants aren’t working or presidents and commissioners aren’t gossiping. Those things are all still happening. But without more legal certainty, I’m not expecting major moves anywhere in D-I in the immediate future.

At the start of the fall athletic season, the focus might just be on the actual sports themselves. What a novel idea, right?