Conference realignment is ruining college sports

I remember going to my grandparents’ house when I was about eight and — against my will, I’ll add — watching the Jewish classic “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971). I remember falling asleep during that first viewing, but I do recall the very catchy opening song, “Tradition.” And that’s all I can think about when thinking about what conference realignment is destroying: tradition.

It was all fun and games when Oklahoma and the University of Texas left for the SEC to start this avalanche of realignment, but somehow the Pac-12 could very well be left with just Oregon State and Washington State by this time next week.

The reason why myself and many other college sports fans love it so much is because of the traditions between the schools. With starters constantly changing every few years, it’s the storied rivalries that keep us tuned in. Yes, this realignment does keep together some teams’ rivalries, such as USC and UCLA, but it eliminates many other iconic matchups between the conferences, such as UCLA and Arizona.

In all honesty, I’m still upset that my beloved University of Maryland is no longer in the ACC with its rivals which is partially fueling this take. The Duke versus Maryland basketball matchups in the ’90s and 2000s were iconic, and helped fuel the battles between the teams every year before Maryland’s departure.

But that leads me to my next gripe with all the realignment. When reading a lot about it, I think people seem to forget these moves don’t just exist in a college football vacuum — this impacts every single sport. Conference schedules with teams like basketball, soccer, volleyball and baseball that play two away games or more in two days will be an absolute mess.

Imagine being an athlete for USC that is going to have to play two away games in a week at Maryland and then Rutgers. The flight from Los Angeles to Maryland is about five hours, but you lose three hours because of the time difference. Then, you play a high-intensity game, take a two-and-a-half-hour train ride to Newark, play your next game and then take another six hour flight back to L.A. Oh, and then prepare to go to class the very next day.

It’s not extraordinary to point out that these deals are all about the money and nothing else. And that’s the troubling thing. What stops these schools from just creating a European Super League-type conference with just the “best” 10 teams? I’m sure a network or streaming service would pay an obscene amount of money to have this come to fruition.

A team like Georgia will see the benefits of getting tens of millions more per year to play a team like Texas instead of a team like Vanderbilt every season. It will lead to just the best of the best playing week-in and week-out with no ability for “worse” teams to ever get the spotlight. There’s nothing stopping realignment from becoming this doomsday-like future for college sports.

It’s not my favorite idea, but insituting what the Atletics the proposed in a 60-team conference with 15 team divisions divided by geography at least keeps things intact. It can keep some of the necessary parity in college sports and help retain some of the tradition I think is needed too. We could even make it exclusively for college football, so the other sports don’t fall into the aforementioned mess.

I know that at the end of the day, only a few people with hundreds of millions more dollars than me will make the decisions for these schools. Those same people will reap the majority of the benefits, while fans are left hoping the product they have always loved will not lose its allure.

All I can hope is that those decision-makers choose to watch “Fiddler on the Roof” sometime soon so they can be reminded why myself and countless others love college sports so, so much.

Stefano Fendrich is a junior writing about his opinions on some of sport’s biggest debates in his column, “The Great Debate,” which runs every other Friday. He is also a sports editor at the Daily Trojan.