ACC talking with Big Ten and Pac-12 about an alliance of some kind

The ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 have had discussions about forging an alliance that could lead to cooperation in football scheduling, among other things, per a report from The Athletic. More broadly this appears to be an effort to establish a political bloc that would prevent the SEC from carrying the discussion on, say, the College Football Playoff expansion or other major issues.

I can’t imagine there would be major ramifications on the field at least in the near term, considering that most P5 schools have their non-conference football schedules set for the next half decade or more. NC State has its P5 opponent set for the next 11 years.

If these three leagues hypothetically wanted to rework those schedules so that they were only playing each other in those games, it’d require them to tear up a whole bunch of contracts. No, this is more about voting leverage, and maybe we’ll also get some added scheduling tweaks for basketball and baseball, where things are more flexible, as a bonus.

This is not a merger, and these leagues sure as heck won’t be pooling revenue. Perhaps most importantly, members of the alliance each receive a special alliance ring, and only alliance members will receive the password that gets them into the Friday night sleepovers at the Big Ten’s lake house.