College Football’s Duopoly, Super Conferences, & a Shifting Landscape

The Big Ten and SEC are starting to look a lot more like the NFL, a change that is by design in the new and ever-changing world of college football

College football as we know it has forever changed. The sport was once reliant on regional matchups and rivalries over geography that spawned names and trophies for these games like Bedlam and the Paul Bunyan Trophy. Once upon a time, bowl games were must-see television in December. But those days are behind us now. As we enter an era of an expanded college football playoff system, NIL deals, de facto free agency via the transfer portal, and the erosion of the games middle class, the tenets of what the game was are a thing of the past.

This coming college football season will be the first to feature two super-conferences: the Big 10 and SEC. The Big Ten has added a west coast imprint with USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon. The SEC, meanwhile, has added Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12. The Big 10 now features eighteen teams in its membership while the SEC boasts sixteen teams. In the final top 25 of the season this past season, 14 of the teams that were ranked will play in one of the two conferences this coming season. It is becoming increasingly clear that these are the two entities that matter in college football, with the potential to become more like…