clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

The ACC/Big Ten/PAC-12 Alliance Is Almost Here

You might as well call it the anti-SEC alliance though

By JD King
NCAA Football: Duke at Syracuse
Oct 10, 2020; Syracuse, New York, USA; General view of a football on top of an end zone marker with the Atlantic Coast Conference logo displayed prior to the game against the Duke Blue Devils and the Syracuse Orange at the Carrier Dome.
Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports

When the SEC moved on Texas and Oklahoma, some people thought it was a prelude to moving to 20 teams and maybe that’s the plan.

The ACC, Big Ten and PAC-12 are working together to limit what the SEC can do though and are expected to announce an alliance next week.

Most interestingly, according to The Sporting News, if they work as a bloc they can effectively, well, block the SEC from a lot of things, not least of all expanding the NCAA Football playoffs to their own liking.

For instance, the CFP may expand to 12 teams with six automatic conference bids. The SEC can reasonably be expected to push for an amendment that would eliminate automatic conference bids and get more teams from the Situational Ethics Conference in the post-season. The Alliance would control that.

With three of the five power conferences working together, they can also block the SEC from enforcing its will on the rest (the Power Five have a certain level of autonomy from the rest of the NCAA and can write their own rules). So imagine the SEC pushing for, say, 20 more scholarships per team to lock up more talent.

The alliance can simply say: nope.

This is really an interesting development but not half as interesting as what the SEC’s counter attack will be.

More From Duke Basketball Report