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Conference realignment ravaged tradition in both college football and basketball. The Big East had to reform under its Catholic Seven foundation, the AAC was born out of football greed, and we no longer have leagues abiding by logical regional standards.
All of that, it might be happening again.
In a column for CBS Sports — which you should read in full here — Dennis Dodd explains how tech giants like Google could make the shift happen… and soon.
“Everyone in college sports has made a trip to the West Coast to talk to them and others,” one TV industry source said to Dodd.
The “them” in question are those tech giants.
“I'm not going to get into who I've talked [to, but] you'd have trouble naming one I haven't talked to,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, one of the most aggressive college power brokers on the topic.
The Mountain West, a league already airing games on Facebook, is looking at what it does now has a trial run.
“It's like buying a car, and this gives us an opportunity to drive the car for a couple of years whether we want to buy it or not,” Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said.
Figuring out the technology is key.
“I think the board [of directors] would like me to be involved in the negotiations” with media partners, Bowlsby said. “We're all tracking on what the next wave of technology is going to do. I think the world will change significantly between now and then. It's changing at an astonishing rate.”
Anyway, as does most of this stuff, the fate of if tech giants get a piece of the pie rests in feedback.
“The real key for us is this gives us an experience to hear from fans, hear from coaches, hear from constituents,” Thompson said. “If it [works], it [still] has to be monetized.”
