Conference Realignment Worst Case for College Football #collegefootball #sec #football #nfl #acc

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]These are conference realignment worst-case scenarios for college football. Starting with the SEC leaving the NCAA completely and competing as an individual conference in all sports.

[00:00:10]Kirby Smart was talking about this at the SEC spring meetings saying that essentially if the rest of the country cannot follow the rules, specifically in regards to NIL and revenue sharing, that the SEC would be better off to break off from the rest of the country and compete as its own individual conference. I don't see this as a highly likely scenario. I see it as very unlikely, but if the head coach of the back-to-back conference champions in the SEC is talking about this kind of thing, it's definitely something to keep on your radar. Next is the Pac-12 and the American merging into one G6 super conference becoming a new power conference. Now, this might seem like a good idea to balance things out for the CFP, but I think that this starts a chain reaction in which the rest of the G6 is essentially left behind with no reason to ever include them in anything in a national conversation. The Pac-12 and the American essentially wield all the power in the G6 right now, and if they were to combine, it would really change the dynamics that we have between the power conferences in the G6, which really the G6 has very little power to begin with. So, it would be a devastating blow for probably 50 to 60 schools that currently compete in FBS.

[00:01:23]Finally, Michigan leaving the Big Ten to go independent. They kind of threatened this last year when the Big Ten tried to introduce private equity to the conference. Both Michigan and USC fought back against it, but specifically Michigan talked about going independent and leaving the conference. If they were to do this, it would start a chain reaction in which some of the biggest schools across the country would look at their conference setup and say, "Hey, could we go out and get more money as an individual team and still have the same kind of protections because we are going to be regularly in the CFP and regularly in March Madness." Again, I don't see this as a highly likely scenario, but there is definitely a path in which this could happen and it would be devastating for college football. For more conference realignment talk, subscribe to Bucky Barracks.