College football conference realignment history: Which schools have changed leagues since 2010?

Posted by author September 7, 2024 Football

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On Saturday night, and in front of what will undoubtedly be the program’s 398th consecutive sellout crowd, Nebraska will host Colorado in what will be one of the most hotly anticipated matchups of Week 2 of the 2024 college football season.

To say the Cornhuskers and Buffaloes have a notable and heated history is an understatement.

The programs from bordering states were national powers who regularly competed against one another in the old Big Eight Conference. From the late 1980s through the early 2000s, as Nebraska remained a juggernaut and Colorado rose to become a consistent national title contender, the two sides squared off in a series of high-profile matchups, with the result of the game having a sizable say in both the conference and national championship races.

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Though neither the Huskers nor the Buffs figure to be threats to make the College Football Playoff this season, their meeting Saturday at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska won’t suffer from a shortage of intrigue. With two of the sport’s best players in Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, and with Deion Sanders roaming the sideline, Colorado will continue to be one of the most closely watched teams in college football this season. Nebraska, meanwhile, is in a pivotal second season under coach Matt Rhule, who has previously rebuilt the programs at Temple and Baylor and will look to do the same for the Huskers, alongside five-star freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola.

Nebraska and Colorado share something beyond a rivalry, too — they were among the most important forces in setting off what has felt like a perpetual cycle of conference realignment over the past 15 years.

In a period of just a few days in 2010, the Huskers and Buffs left their longtime home in the Big 12 for the Big Ten and Pac-12, respectively, setting off a chain reaction of similar moves over the next several years that made the conference landscape unrecognizable from what it had been for decades. After eight years of relative calm, another round of realignment began three years ago, one that eventually led the Buffs back to the Big 12.

As Nebraska and Colorado prepare to square off for the 73^rd time, here’s what you need to know about their departures from the Big 12 in 2010 and the game of musical chairs that followed it:

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College football conference realignment history

Here’s a look at the moves that have affected college football’s major conferences since 2010:

Colorado and Nebraska leave the Big 12

After the ACC plucked Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College from the Big East in the early 2000s — and the Big East turned around and added Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida — college football’s major conferences remained set and stable for the next five years.

That changed in December 2009, when the Big Ten announced that the “timing is right” to explore expansion beyond its current 11 teams. After months of frenzied reporting and speculation over who that target would be, Nebraska officially accepted an offer from the league on June 12, 2010. At the time, the Huskers were just nine years removed from an appearance in the national championship game and had gone 19-8 in their first two seasons under coach Bo Pelini.

Nebraska wasn’t even the first team to leave the Big 12. Earlier that month, reports emerged that then-Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott was looking to add six teams from the Big 12 — Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado, which accounted for half the league’s membership. On June 10, Colorado accepted an invitation and became the 11^th team in the conference. Once the five other Big 12 schools opted to stay put, Scott brought in Utah from the Mountain West to bring his league to an even 12 teams.

Pitt and Syracuse leave the Big East for the ACC

As it turned out, the ACC wasn’t done raiding the Big East.

On Sept. 18, 2011, the conference added Pitt and Syracuse to its ranks. The Panthers and Orange had been in the league for decades, with Syracuse being one of the Big East’s seven charter members going back to its inception in 1979.

Almost exactly one year later, Notre Dame became a non-football member of the ACC after being in a similar arrangement with the Big East since 1995 (the football program retained its independence).

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Texas A&M and Missouri leave the Big 12 for the SEC

After already losing Nebraska and Colorado, the Big 12 continued to get picked over. In August 2011, the SEC expanded west and added Texas A&M, a move the school’s then-president R. Bowen Loftin described as a “100-year decision.” The Aggies became the lone Texas-based member of college football’s top conference and got out from under what had become the onerous shadow of rival Texas.

About two months later, Missouri also jumped from the Big 12 to the SEC. The Tigers had been in the Big 12’s forebearer, the Big Eight, since 1907.

West Virginia and TCU join the Big 12

Looking to fortify its standing following the departures of Nebraska, Colorado, Texas A&M and Missouri, and hoping to keep its membership together, the Big 12 adds TCU and West Virginia in an 18-day stretch in October 2011.

The move hurts the Big East on multiple fronts. The Mountaineers had been in the conference for football since 1991 and had been its most consistently successful football program since losing Miami and Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, the Horned Frogs had agreed to join the league just 11 months earlier, in November 2010, before ultimately reneging.

The Big Ten adds Maryland and Rutgers

Just two years after bringing Nebraska aboard, the Big Ten made an even more stunning move in November 2012 with the additions of Maryland and Rutgers.

While the Huskers broadly fit into the league’s identity as a midwestern entity, the Terrapins and Scarlet Knights represented an inroad into the northeast. To that point, Penn State had been the conference’s eastern-most member. At a time when increasing the subscriber base for nascent conference television networks was the primary driving force of realignment, having Rutgers and Maryland got the Big Ten into the New York City and Washington, D.C. markets and put the Big Ten Network on millions of cable bundles in those areas.

“We came to the conclusion there was more risk sitting still than there was in exploring other opportunities,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said at the time.

Louisville joins the ACC

Within weeks of charter member Maryland leaving, the ACC acted decisively and brought on Louisville to fill the Terrapins’ void. Shortly after the Cardinals’ announced move, the Big East’s seven non-football members revealed they would be breaking away to form their own conference. With that, Big East football ceased to exist after the 2012 season, with its remaining FBS schools forming what became the American Athletic Conference.

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Texas and Oklahoma head to the SEC

Following the Big East’s disintegration, the gears of conference realignment came to a halt for nearly a decade. Once they began churning again, they made quite a bit of noise.

On July 29, 2021, the presidents and chancellors of the SEC’s 14 member institutions voted unanimously to invite Texas and Oklahoma to join the league beginning in 2025. The two schools eventually reached a buyout agreement with the Big 12 to push that up by a year.

For all it had endured since Nebraska left in 2010, this was the biggest gut punch the Big 12 had suffered, with its two most decorated and profitable members deciding to bolt for the riches of a bigger conference. With its membership down to eight schools, the Big 12 successfully pivoted and added perhaps the four most enticing expansion possibilities outside of the Power Five conferences — Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and BYU.

USC and UCLA make a shocking move east

As seismic as Texas and Oklahoma’s move to the SEC felt, the schools made at least some geographic sense for the conference, with both states bordering existing member Arkansas.

One year later, something much more stunning was in store. On June 30, 2022, the Big Ten voted unanimously to admit USC and UCLA, two Los Angeles-based schools more than 2,000 miles away from the league’s Chicago headquarters and 1,500 miles away from its previously western-most member, Nebraska.

A conference landscape once defined by a sense of regionalism now had a league that stretched from one coast to another.

The Pac-12 dissolves

If the Pac-12 was wobbling after losing USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, it was delivered a knockout blow a year later.

With the conference unable to secure a new media rights deal to the liking of its 10 remaining members, those anxious eyes turned to greener, more lucrative pastures. Colorado was the first domino to fall, with the Buffs announcing on July 27, 2023 that they would be returning to the Big 12 after a 13-year absence. The following month, Washington and Oregon followed USC and UCLA to the Big Ten while Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joined Colorado in the Big 12. On Sept. 1, Stanford and Cal were formally approved as members of the ACC, leaving only Oregon State and Washington State behind in the Pac-12.

In a handful of weeks, a 108-year-old conference effectively ceased to exist.