Another week, another edition of Football Thoughts.
The word of the day for this week’s article: chaos.
College football is chaos.
Around this time last summer, the landscape of college football changed forever when the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma announced they would be leaving the Big 12 and joining the SEC. Mark your calendars down for July 1st, 2025, folks. It will be a crazy day three years from now.
By 2025, the SEC will feature a super conference that includes the aforementioned bluebloods along with Alabama, Georgia, Auburn, Florida, Texas A&M, and others. With money-makers Texas and Oklahoma out, the Big 12 was able to secure an expansion, with Cincinnati, Central Florida, BYU, and Houston joining the conference next year.
The college football landscape was already changed forever last summer, adding more pushing for the College Football Playoff to be expanded now that the SEC was about to become a super-conference. On June 30th, 2022, college football was rocked again by another cataclysmic change to its landscape.
USC and UCLA: welcome to the Big 10.
This week’s Football Thoughts explores how the CFB landscape is changed forever, the expansion of the CFP, and some thoughts I have on Texas and Arch Manning.
USC and UCLA are Big 10 bound. What does this mean for CFB?
Everyone– and I mean everyone– was stunned at the announcement on Thursday that USC and UCLA would be leaving the Pac-12 in 2024 to form what will be considered a super-conference in the Big 10. With this move, other schools in the Pac-12 were rumored to be considering a move from the west coast-based conference, which would ultimately lead to the demise of the Pacific-12 Conference.
I’ll be honest: I love chaos in college football. No one has a clue what’s going on, how things will turn out, or what things will look like in a few years. This is absolutely glorious to see.
Geographically, it doesn’t make sense for USC and UCLA. However, it’s been reported that the two schools have researched the idea of moving to the Big 10. Of course, we saw it become reality Thursday evening.
A couple of things do make sense though: 1) adding the two blue-blooded southern Cali schools to form a super-conference in the Big 10 to compete with the best conference in the land, the SEC, is genius, and 2) FOX’s TV deal with the Big 10 and the Pac-12 had quite the influence, I believe. Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I know every nook and cranny of this TV deal. What I will tell you is that FOX loves USC and UCLA and that being able to secure them in the Big 10 is huge for the network. Money talks, right?
With the Big 10 and the SEC expanding within the next two to three years, what does this mean for the Big 12, the Pac-12, and most definitely the ACC?
Well, the Pac-12 is doomed, unless they act quickly. If they want to get with the program, maybe they can replace USC and UCLA with Boise State and either Nevada or San Diego State. While this may weaken the Mountain West, it allows either three of the teams mentioned above to join the Power 5 and an opportunity to compete for a bigger bowl game. So, there’s a chance that losing USC and UCLA won’t be as devastating. Again, the conference must act quickly and consider its options if they want to save themselves from destruction.
As mentioned before, the Big 12 is adding a few schools from the AAC plus independent BYU. Baylor, TCU, and Oklahoma State will still be competitive enough to make a run at being representatives of the Big 12 in the playoffs. Cincinnati just became the first Group of 5 program to reach the CFP, which will make this conference fun to watch in 2023 and beyond, especially if they can keep Luke Fickell in the mix through 2023.
As for the ACC, the conference has gotten a lot more competitive in recent years. While Clemson is still the king of the conference and will stay that way for a while, N.C. State, North Carolina, Miami, Wake Forest, and Pittsburgh are also recruiting better than they have in years past, making the Tigers path to the CFP not as easy as it once was. However, Clemson may be the only program in the conference to compete with the bigger schools in the expanding SEC and Big 10.
Could expansion bold well for the ACC? Possible. Though, only two schools come to mind here: Notre Dame…and Appalachian State. The Fighting Irish would be a no-brainer to add, but getting out of the NBC TV contract will be a pain in the butt since the ACC has an agreement with ESPN.
App State has been one of the most consistent programs in the country since joining the FBS 8 years ago. They’ve been the team to beat in the Sun Belt for a while…and it might be time to consider them as a candidate to join the ranks of the Power 5. Adding App State and Notre Dame would expand the ACC to 16 teams and would also make them another super-conference.
At this point, you might as well make Division 1 college football its league. However, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. With all of the expansions of conferences that are happening within the next few years, it’s time to ask another serious question: should the College Football Playoff be expanded?
The answer, in my opinion, is yes. Without a doubt. I’m fine with an 8 or 12-team playoff. With the rise in power of many college football teams, NIL, and the creation of super-conferences, it’s time to expand the field. It may not be until four or even five years from now that we get an expanded playoff, but it needs to be done to allow other teams down the road who may have the talent to win it all a chance to compete for the National Championship.
College football is changing, folks. You may hate it, but that’s how things are nowadays. Get used to it.
Let’s talk about Arch Manning and Texas…
Yes, let’s talk about the rising high-school senior with the famous last name. QB Arch Manning, the top recruit in the 2023 class, has committed to Texas. The nephew of Peyton and Eli will be playing for the Longhorns for at least three years following his senior year of high school. Manning, who scored a perfect composition rating via 247sports, joins 2021 top recruit Quinn Ewers, who also had a perfect rating.
Many have joked around that with Manning on the roster next year, this could lead to either quarterback transferring due to lack of playing time. However, in all seriousness, I don’t think this will be the case.
Arch Manning is very talented but will need time to develop into the player many believe he can be: a future top NFL Draft pick. Quinn Ewers, on the other hand, is expected to be the starter for at least 2 more seasons. I think both will start a couple of seasons during their time with the Longhorns.
The biggest question among the two is whether or not they can lead their team to a Big 12 (or soon-to-be SEC) title and a potential playoff berth. The recruiting from head coach Steve Sarkisian needs to be better in the trenches and defensively. If he’s able to tap those two areas, that’s huge for Texas and their hopes of them being #back.
Arch Manning may follow the path of either Uncle Payton, Uncle Eli, or grandpa Archie. We won’t know until he steps onto Joe Jamail Field as a starter for the first time.