The State of The PAC-12

The State of The PAC-12 and how this will affect college tennis

I would like to talk today about an interesting concept in College Sports, and it is: Conference Realignment. Conference realignment is when team(s) from college conferences, such as BIG 10 and SEC, leave their original conference to another new conference. These movements are typically motivated by money and TV deals. An ongoing example of Conference Realignment is the PAC 12. After this 2023-2024 season, the PAC-12 will transform into the PAC-2 and will merge with the Mountain West conference for the upcoming football season. You’re probably wondering, “Why talk about football if this is a blog about college tennis?” the short answer is this: “Because, football makes the most amount of money in college sports, and dictates conference realignment”. In 2021 alone, college football generated approximately 31.9 million dollars for each Power 5 conference football team. Additionally, football significantly influences the teams that are in each conference and the admittance of teams because of their performance in football. In this case, teams such as Washington and Oregon, which are in the top 10 for football this year, are making a lot of money and are leaving for the BIG 10. This will give the BIG 10 a great conference next year with four top 10 teams in football and an increase in revenue. However, these movements and additions to the BIG 10 are not particularly meaningful for tennis. So, do you see my point now? Despite their rankings in tennis, football ultimately dictates the team’s trajectory in each conference. While football is very marketable and easily profitable, tennis does not share that same financial appeal as football and might be losing money within these programs. With conference realignment coming this next season, teams that are not in Power Five conferences may have to remove their tennis teams and probably be the end of some mid-major programs. The pressing question emerges: “Will college tennis survive these changes?”, and my honest answer is: “I don’t know”.

Let’s look at the moves and shake-ups. In this 2023-2024 season the PAC-12 tennis teams look like this (in alphabetical order):

1. Arizona

2. Arizona State

3. California

4. Oregon

5. Stanford

6. UCLA

7. USC

8. Utah 

9. Washington

*Colorado, Washington State and Oregon State do not have a tennis program. Colorado is leaving to the BIG 12. Although this doesn’t seem like much, this is how it will look next season:

Notice here the empty space… Nada

Exactly, there is no one in the PAC-12 men’s tennis rankings in the 2023-2024 season who will play in the PAC-12.

The teams in these years rankings will go to:

1. BIG 10: Oregon, USC, UCLA, Washington

2. BIG 12: Arizona State, Arizona, Utah

3. ACC: California, Stanford

The only teams left in the PAC-12 next year are Oregon State and Washington State. Those two universities do not have a men’s tennis program, but Washington State has a women’s team. Are considering a merger with the Mountain West conference where they would either join or be unofficial members? Perhaps the teams in the Mountain West will play at least 1 game a season with them. This would cause Washington State in this case to be the official PAC-12 champions every year, and this would cause them to maybe have an at-large bid, but the NCAA will probably revoke that state for a one-team conference.

What Will This Cause?

The short answer is this: We do not know, but we are expecting a very turbulent ride. If you just think about the possible matchups for the ACC, BIG 10, and BIG 12 it is very concerning logistically. For any school in the West, going to play in the East is extremely tiring. Playing in the Northwest and the Midwest disrupts sleep schdeules and leads to missing school days. Although this is totally fine and cost-effective for football, it is not for tennis because unfortunately, no one is going to watch a Michigan versus USC on a Thursday at three on the TV. This does not work for any team, one because you are losing a lot of money just going to Ann Arbor, and two because all your players are going to very prestigious universities and are missing critical class time. These student-athletes are trying to excel academically, so they can earn their living in that specific field and live a comfortable life when their college sports career ends (upon graduation). The main cause of this big conference realignment is the removal of some college sports that do not make enough revenue. Hopefully, tennis is not one of those sports, but I do think that tennis is walking on very thin ice.

Possible Matchups next year for PAC-12

On paper, these matchups look amazing and I would go to most of these matches, but the travel time for the visiting team is extremely crazy. These could be some of the matchups:

1. ACC: Stanford vs. Wake Forest and Stanford vs North Carolina. If Stanford were to play at Wake Forest, they would have to travel 8 hours and cross through 3 time zones (Mountain, Central, and Eastern). Stanford would later have to travel 30 mins to Raleigh to go to a hotel, sleep for 8 hours and then play a match against Wake Forest. After Wake Forest, Stanford would probably also travel to North Carolina, which is about an hour and a half car ride. Overall the students at Stanford would probably miss five days of school, and Stanford would be $6,000 deep.

This is how the trip would look like:

2. ACC: California vs Boston College. Again, it is another ACC matchup, but this time it is the other ACC team in California. The logistics of this are a little bit easier than the first matchup, but it will still ring you up about $2,000 dollars and probably a lot of fatigue afterwards. This is how it would work: The California tennis team would leave the San Francisco International Airport to the Boston Logan International Airport. From there, they would have to get a rental sprinter van and go to a hotel near the Boston College Tennis courts, the team would get about 8 hours of sleep and would go play the match. This is how the trip would look like:

This shows the pretty broken schedule the NPAC-10 teams will have (The teams that left the PAC-12) and how hard it will be the first 2 or 3 years after this year. These tennis teams will take a decrease in their budgets due to their extremely weird travel schedule and will probably see a drop in GPA due to the players traveling so much and also having to balance school, traveling and exhaustion. Although the travel schedule is very messed up for some teams, this will make college tennis more exciting as we will see very interesting and competitive matchups among elite teams, which will make college tennis fans more excited these years to come.

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Thanks,

EVI