2026-05-20T05:01:05Zhttps://keep.lib.asu.edu/oai/request

oai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-2002812025-04-15T22:40:03Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items

200281 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.200281 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 2025-05 76 pages Savage, Parker Jackson, Victoria Lopez, Rick Barrett, The Honors College Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business Unlike most professional sports, which have centralized league offices, college football has operated under a decentralized model that contains conferences that operate with significant autonomy. This conference autonomy created a situation where conferences sell their own media rights and compete with each other for power and influence over college football. The selling of these media rights to broadcast networks has motivated the expansion of the conferences’ geographic footprints and sparked large-scale conference realignment, with schools switching conferences. As of 2025, college football teams in the top division, the Football Bowl Subdivision (“FBS”), are organized into ten conferences across the United States. Four of these conferences, known as “power” conferences, are home to the country’s most competitive and well-resourced college football programs. In National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) terminology, these conferences are referred to as autonomy conferences, as they have had the authority since 2014 to adopt new rules and provide additional services and benefits to their athletes. A financial gulf has developed among these four dominant conferences. The Big Ten Conference (“Big Ten”) and Southeastern Conference (“SEC”) have agreed to new multibillion-dollar media rights deals beginning in 2023 and 2024, respectively. These new media rights deals will allow the two conferences to distribute nearly double the amount of media rights revenue to their member institutions annually compared to the two other conferences, the Big 12 Conference (“Big 12”) and the Atlantic Coast Conference (“ACC”). This discrepancy in media rights revenue could have far-reaching implications on future conference realignment, College Football Playoff (“CFP”) formats, football budgets, and, ultimately, on-field results. This analysis examines the agreements signed with media broadcast companies by the “Power Four” conferences, situates them in broader contexts, and forecasts how the agreements could affect future results on the field and also spur future conference realignment. The disparity in media rights revenue between the Big Ten’s and SEC’s new large contracts and the Big 12’s and ACC’s less lucrative contracts will create significant differences in football budgets, recruiting, coaching staffs, and ultimately on-field results within the autonomy group of conferences, potentially leading to further realignment as some ACC and Big 12 schools might become eager to leave their current situations for greener pastures, and greater payouts. These disparate media contracts create a power imbalance in college football as a whole, and even within the Power Four conferences. As a result of this power imbalance, the Big Ten and SEC will continue to be able to use their financial superiority to wield significant influence over college football’s future structure and direction. This analysis will review how the two richest conferences in college football are leveraging their financial power to influence policy and governance of big-time college athletics. If the Big Ten and SEC use this power to create the most beneficial football future for themselves without regard for college athletics as a whole, the other conferences and their members could face a reality in which they have diminished importance and relevance in the national college sports landscape due to their comparatively diminished resources and power. College Athletics College Football Media Rights college athletic conferences Power Four Big 12 Big Ten Sec ACC Money Over Policy: The Pursuit of Conference Media Rights Payouts and the Distortion of Priorities in Big-Time College Athletics