North Carolina HC Mark Brown brushes off 50-team Big Ten Super Conference proposal amid the ongoing realignment drama: Reports
The college football realignment keeps redrawing the known boundaries of the NCAA. With the Big Ten growing to 18 teams and the Southeastern Conference and the Big 12 to 16, the term super conferences has begun to be thrown around.
Not to mention the fact, that if Stanford, Cal, and SMU do enter the ACC, that conference would grow to 18 teams from the current 15.
All this growth seems to be at the expense of the Pac-12, which currently has only four teams committed for next season. What started with last year's announcement from USC and UCLA that they were leaving for the Big Ten, has turned into an exodus.
If the ACC expansion is confirmed, it could wind up with only Oregon State and Washington State.
Many have had their say on the size increases of the Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC, but today we are taking a look at the opinion of North Carolina's HC Mack Brown.
Mack Brown on the Big Ten and SEC Super Conferences
When asked about how he thought the realignment could affect North Carolina, he first spoke about his experience with a similar issue while he was with the Longhorns:
“When I was at Texas, I was asked about whether we should go to the Pac-12 or not. We looked at recruiting areas, travel and scheduling. We looked at everything, and then one day after a year-and-a-half, it popped up and they said we're staying."
Following those remarks, he stated that he trusts the university's Chancellor and his team to do what's for the school. He also ventured that if ever the Tar Heels required a new home outside the SEC, they could easily find one:
"I wasted so much time and energy worrying on something that never happened, so I'm letting our chancellor and athletics director deal with all that stuff (now). If they ask my opinion, I'm gonna give it to them, but I'm really not concerned about it because North Carolina is going to be one of those schools that if something happened, we would be very valuable to other people."
Finally when asked about what a super-sized Big Ten or SEC would mean for college football, coach Brown had this to say:
"I've always gone in what's best for college football because that's the masses, and it's the game that we love. I don't think it's best for college football to have two mega-conferences with 50 teams (total) because there's so many great programs that will not be able to compete at the same level they are now. When that happens, their fans are going to be really disappointed, and they're going to lose revenue. It will hurt football all the way down to FCS and Division II and III."
The consequences of SEC expansion
Sadly for Coach Brown, the college realignment seems to be going in the exact opposite direction.
While no conference has yet reached anywhere near the outrageous number of 50 schools, the increase in the number of member schools seems to be the trend. The Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC are all growing, with the ACC probably following suit.
In the particular case of the SEC, schools like North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State, or South Carolina could be affected by the arrivals of heavyweights Texas and Oklahoma.
A big selling point for these middle-of-the-pack schools while recruiting has been that those players would get the chance to showcase in the SEC.
With the arrival of Texas and Oklahoma, high-caliber recruits might opt to go to these more storied programs while also playing SEC football. The same would happen with teams like Nebraska, Illinois, or Wisconsin in the Big Ten, now competing with USC.