If you pay attention to college sports, you probably heard the exciting news that the University of Southern California and UCLA will be joining the Big 10. If you’re not a sports fan, the Big 10 is a conference based in Chicago. It used to stretch from Ohio State to Iowa, but in the mid-’90s it added Penn State, and since then has sprawled in many directions – like all the other conferences in college football’s so-called power 5 – the Big 12, Pac-12, SEC and ACC.
Many experts think this move will mean the end of the power 5 – that in the future only 2 conferences will matter: the Big 10 and SEC. Since the creation of the 4-team College Football Playoff that decides the national champion, SEC teams have dominated: in many years SEC teams have gotten 2 of the 4 Playoff berths, and they’ve won most of the titles. Meanwhile, the newly expanded Big 10 will stretch from coast to coast, it will have teams in or near America’s 3 biggest cities, and will be awash in money from TV broadcast fees.
But I teach Cold War history, and when I look at conference realignments I’m reminded of the Brezhnev Doctrine, the explanation the Soviet dictator gave for his invasion of Czechoslovakia. Leonid Brezhnev was afraid Czechoslovakia was moving away from Communism. And once a country was in the Communist fold, he believed, it could never leave. One wit summarized the Brezhnev Doctrine as: What’s mine is mine – what’s yours is negotiable. If you don’t know your Cold War history: the Brezhnev Doctrine held for a while, but in the end, Soviet leaders could not keep Eastern Europe – could not even keep their own country – in the Communist fold.
Similarly, college football’s power conferences act as though they are eternal, their
members can never leave, and they can pluck schools from other conferences whenever it suits them. As was the case with Communists late in the Cold War, they’re often disappointed.
The Big East raided other leagues to become a power conference in football. Then the ACC plundered it, and the Big East got out of football altogether. Before long, though, the ACC lost one of its founding members to the Big 10.
Meanwhile, the Big 12 – which took the place of the old Big 8, and triggered the collapse of the Southwest Conference – often acted like Texas was its only member that mattered. Which led a number of schools to abandon the league. But, despite being the obvious belle of the Big 12 ball, Texas eventually decided to bolt to the SEC – with powerhouse Oklahoma going, too.
That left the SEC looking like it might be the college football equivalent of a James Bond villain trying to take over the world. To stop this, the Big Ten formed an alliance with the ACC and Pac-12. Then – in a plot twist as dramatic as Brutus knifing Julius Caesar – the Big 10 announced its theft of the Pac-12’s most important teams.
Big 10 officials might expect this move guarantees their place at the pinnacle of college football. But while television money is important, the College Football Playoff matters, too. And since its creation, Ohio State is the only Big Ten team to win a national championship – or prove it belongs with the best of the SEC. If the SEC could lure Ohio State from the Big Ten, and Clemson from the ACC, it might guarantee that it and it alone dominated college football. It might make the Big 10 the same kind of afterthought the Pac-12 looks likely to become without USC and UCLA.
Big 10 leaders might figure this will never happen. That history, tradition, geography, long-standing rivalries, and plain common sense, would all work to keep the Buckeyes in the Big 10, no matter what inducements the SEC might offer.
But as the move of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten demonstrates, history, tradition, geography, long-standing rivalries, and plain common sense count for little in college football today. If that’s what the Big 10 is banking on, its leaders may find themselves bitterly disappointed.
Music: USC Trojans fight song "Fight On!"
