FORT WORTH, Texas — No. 13 TCU’s game against No. 8 Oklahoma State is the future of the Big 12 Conference, but even this future is somehow tied to Notre Dame.
Because everything in college football leads to South Bend, Ind.
The future of the Big 12 Conference currently depends on the next step taken by the Big Ten, and that depends on the most powerful private school in major college sports.
Notre Dame is currently playing a game only Notre Dame can, and it’s in zero rush to do a thing. Because it doesn’t have to do a thing.
No one ever suggested Fighting Irish fight fair.
According to multiple college athletics sources, since the Big Ten announced that both USC and UCLA will leave the Pac 12 Conference to join the Chicago-based league beginning in 2024, the Big Ten has reached out to Notre Dame multiple times about joining.
Industry sources said the Big Ten is growing tired of Notre Dame’s decision to be indecisive.
Bolstered by the additions of UCLA and USC, in August the Big 10 announced a seven-year, $7 billion media rights contract with various outlets, including Fox and CBS. The agreement includes language for expansion.
If the Big Ten adds another school or two, the deal increases.
As one of college sports’ premier brands, Notre Dame is the Big Ten Conference’s priority, but it has eyes on two other candidates out West. Predictably, sources said those candidates are the University of Oregon and the University of Washington.
The way multiple sources described these ongoing conversations, which are mostly in the informal phase, the Big Ten will not wait on Notre Dame for years to make a decision. It sounds more like about a year.
Although Notre Dame has a contract to have a loose affiliation with the ACC, the school remains fiercely independent, even if it means passing up a potentially more lucrative media-rights deals.
Neither the ACC nor the Big Ten has any sort of leverage, or inside track, to land Notre Dame.
Notre Dame is going to Notre Dame, and the rest of the world will just have to deal with it.
One source said the Big 10 currently has no interest in trying to poach a school from the Big 12. Some TCU and Baylor officials crossed their fingers in hopes that maybe the Big Ten would give them a call, but the conference remains mostly interested in large, state schools, and Notre Dame.
Nervously watching all of this are the remaining schools in the Big 12, Pac-12 and, to a lesser degree, the ACC.
This week, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren told Michael DeCourcy of The Sporting News that expansion is “not something we’re aggressively doing right now. Do I think certain conferences may grow through natural evolution to 18 or 20 schools? I do. Now over what period is critical question. I don’t know if that’s within a year, five or seven years.”
“Aggressively doing right now” is semantics.
If Notre Dame called Warren today and said “Yes, yes, we will marry you” the wedding invitations would be sent 20 minutes later.
Washington and Oregon want to be invited, but there is nothing either school can do but wait.
The expansion of the college football playoff field from four teams to 12 teams for 2026 does change the landscape, and the perceived need, for more realignment.
It’s still coming.
Watching all of this are schools like TCU, Oklahoma State and the rest of the Big 12 and Pac-12.
These schools will ultimately “probably” be OK. They’re just not sure what “OK” looks like.
New Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark has made it zero secret in his interest to expand. Since the announcement of college football playoff field expanding, he has turned down the volume on such rhetoric by a degree or two.
“Is there a mandate (to expand)? No, there’s no mandate for us,” Yormark told The Cover 3 Podcast this week. “But if it’s additive, if it creates value, the right cultural fit, the right competitive fit, we’ll pursue it. Right now, we’re vetting every and all possibilities.”
Sources said if the Pac-12 loses Washington and Oregon to the Big Ten, the Big 12 will immediately reach out and extend invitations to Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
These casual conversations have already taken place, but as of today the Pac-12’s remaining members are committed to that league.
The league that is mostly quiet remains the ACC, thanks a contract that was once thought to be dated but now may preserve the conference.
The ACC signed a lucrative grant of rights deal in 2013 that has been extended through 2036. The way the contract is structured makes it so a departing school would lose hundreds of millions of dollars before the agreement ends.
Another wrinkle to this realignment process, which will serve only as a delay, is that Texas and Oklahoma will likely have to remain in the Big 12 for the 2023-’24 seasons before moving to the SEC.
It’s all interesting, often times more than the actual games, and more moves are coming, but Notre Dame is the holdup.
