The Alliance sounds more like a separation and eventual divorce.
Remember the old bowl alliance in the 1990s, when the late ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan and his sidekick Tom Mickle sketched out how it would work on a restaurant napkin?
It was an agreement among the major bowl games for the purpose of matching the top two college teams in a championship bowl, which rotated between Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and later the Rose (the last to give up its historic Big 10-Pac 10 pairing).
And there wasn’t a playoff at the end, just the conference champions going to big bowl games and the top-two rated teams playing in the New Year’s Day Bowl designated as the national championship game. It was more satisfying than the Bowl Coalition it replaced and resulted in more TV money of 8.5 million for the title match.
The Southeastern Conference, of course, liked neither because it lessened the chances of two SEC teams playing in the final game.
Does what happened over the last few weeks seem like a cooperative effort involving the SEC, which goes to 16 schools if Texas and Oklahoma bolt from the Big 12 for more dough?
And does the “new” Alliance between the ACC, Big Ten and Pac 12 seem like an effort to bring college athletics together or divide it between the haves and the have-nots.
The SEC qualifies for both, since that powerhouse league would have up to a half-dozen of the best football schools in the country but wouldn’t have broad-based programs and care much for academics.
Most of the new alliance schools now offer more than 20 intercollegiate sports while most of the SEC schools have less. That means fewer scholarships to fund and more money for coaching salaries, recruiting budgets and monolithic facilities.
Would the Super SEC and the Alliance even want to play each other in football when they could have 12-game schedules with divisions and maybe stage their own post-season playoffs?
Sounds like the old AFL and NFL before the first Super Bowl.
(featured image via the Big 10)
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