By RALPH D. RUSSO AP College Football Writer, and staff
COLUMBUS – The Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference and Pac-12 are forming an alliance to work together on the future of college athletics and scheduling.
Conference officials have been discussing the idea for weeks and hope the alliance of 41 schools that span from Miami to Seattle, including Ohio State, leads to stability at the top of big-time college sports.
“There’s turbulence right now in college athletics, there are things that we need to address,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said during a televised joint news conference Tuesday.
The move comes amid seismic changes that have shaken the world of college sports, including the Southeastern Conference’s invitation to Texas and Oklahoma to join and create a 16-school league by 2025.
“Through this alliance, we furthered our commitment to our student-athletes by prioritizing our academics and athletics value systems,” Warren said.
Collegiate athletics has also had to deal with the end of an NCAA ban on athletes earning money from their fame and accomplishments, as well as discussions about expanding the national football championship playoffs.
The three conference heads say a scheduling piece in the new agreement could lead to multiple nonconference football and basketball games per season between the league members and they hint it could results in the creation of new inter-league rivalries.
A working group comprised of athletic directors will begin working out the scheduling of future games while honoring current contracts. The leagues and their member schools say scheduling decisions will be “an evolutionary process” given current scheduling commitments.
The conferences will also explore opportunities to compete more frequently in Olympic sports, such as track and swimming. Current and former athletes from the member schools won 194 medals at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Toky this year.