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If you thought the summer was the one time that things would slow down in college athletics, you haven't been paying attention over the last couple of years.
Thursday, two traditional powerhouse programs, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles announced their intentions to leave the PAC-12 Conference and join the Big Ten Conference for the fall of 2024.
This sent shockwaves thru the college sports world, on the heels of last summer's news where two other blue bloods, Texas and Oklahoma left the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference.
The inevitable question myself, Mike McFeely and Jeff Kolpack received late last week: How does this affect NDSU and its potential move up to FBS?
The direct answer: It doesn't. Not yet. I spoke with multiple sources about this direct topic and the answer is still the same. Nothing has changed to open the door for North Dakota State to receive an invite to an FBS league.
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The better question going forward is what is FBS going to look like going forward?
With the SEC and Big Ten separating themselves from the other Power 5 conferences as the "go-to" leagues, there are other Power 5 schools potentially looking for new homes.
Oregon and Washington were immediately rumored to have interest as well in the Big Ten. ESPN's Pete Thamel reported Tuesday "why would UCLA and USC help those schools get into the Big Ten?"
Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah have been reported to have high interest in the Big 12 according to CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd. The Big 12 is already adding BYU, Central Florida, Houston and Cincinnati in 2023.
Realignment update: Notre Dame on deck; Pac-12, Big 12 could merge; SEC vs. Big Ten playoff? - https://t.co/Do0GY2YbwU https://t.co/QBB2j7POD6
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) July 3, 2022
The PAC-12 itself could be on life support. The Big Ten could potentially add Oregon and Washington or look at other like-minded academic institutions like California and Stanford.
NDSU fans have reached out to me asking "well if the PAC-12 wants to add schools, would they take Boise State and San Diego State and that would be our opening to the Mountain West?"
Thamel reported this pretty succinctly: "There isn't a strong appetite among the remaining 10 members to add a few Mountain West schools like San Diego State or Boise State or the WCC's Gonzaga in basketball and soldier on."
Here's a crazy though that one source told me on Tuesday: What if the Mountain West goes big game hunting itself and adds Washington State and Oregon State if the PAC-12 falls apart?
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The long winded answer to this question for Bison fans is a bigger one: What if these super-conferences do what we have long thought and break off and do their own thing?
That would mean the Group of 5 schools (the James Madison's, Georgia Southern's of the world) would form up with the top FCS schools and have a division of their own, with budgets that are remotely similar to one another?
It's a crazy time for college football and it seems there's no slowing down for how the carousel is moving.
