Realignment Re-Routed: Inside the 11-Month Sprint That Reshaped College Football - Again
Forty-eight hours after Week 1, the DOJ-brokered Working Group—commissioners from the Pac-12, Mountain West, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten, network VPs, CFP staffers—opened its first Tuesday Zoom. Every Tuesday at 9 a.m. ET for six months they argued over airline miles, Nielsen curves and exit-fee spreadsheets; every Thursday their AD subcommittee traced bus routes for Olympic sports.
Nov. 15 ’26 – The “Stipulated Map” Vote
After ten rounds of edits the presidents flew to Chicago, donned their university crests and—by a combined 55-5 count—signed the consent decree the DOJ demanded. Attachments A and B: brand-new bylaws and the membership grids that would reshape college-sports west of the Mississippi.
Jan. 15 ’27 – Matrix Day
At 4:48 p.m. CT league counsels hit “Send” on the 2027 football scheduling matrices, beating the federal deadline by 72 minutes. Networks exhaled; the nine-month runway to build TV windows matched the SEC’s 2024 expansion to the day.
Feb. 14 ’27 – Championship Week Summit
With maps locked, commissioners huddled in Phoenix to auction off neutral-site title games. Five NFL owners won the sweepstakes, turning the first weekend of December into a cross-country showcase (details below).
Mar. 1 ’27 – Contract Ink
ESPN and NBC signed addenda activating the $90 million regionalization bonus pool. Bottom line: USC and UCLA will save roughly $6 million versus their FY-26 Big Ten travel budgets while still clearing north of $60 million in media revenue.
New Landscape - Old Rivalries
PAC-12 (12 teams)
Boise St. • Cal • Colorado • Fresno St. • Oregon • Oregon St. • Stanford • UCLA • UNLV • USC • Washington • Washington St.
MOUNTAIN WEST (10 teams)
Air Force • Colorado St. • Hawai‘i • Nevada • New Mexico • New Mexico St. • San Diego St. • San José St. • Utah St. • Wyoming
ONE-OFF RETURNS
• West Virginia back to the ACC after 13 seasons on the Big 12’s eastern island
• SMU slides home to the Big 12, reuniting the Metroplex quartet (Baylor, TCU, Houston, SMU)
Title Game Makeover
American - MetLife Stadium, New York
Conference USA - NRG Stadium, Houston
Mountain West - SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles
Pac-12 - Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas (Extended)
Sun Belt - Nissan Stadium, Nashville
The Numbers That "Saved" College Football
The Spreadsheet That Saved Fresno
Week 6 slide deck: adding Boise, Fresno and UNLV (while returning USC & UCLA) cut Olympic-sport air miles by 32 percent versus the 2025 Big Ten-plus-Pac mash-up—without denting primetime football inventory. One network exec called it “the tipping-point chart.”
Exit Fees, Re-Priced
Consent-decree cap: withdrawal charges max at 200 percent of a league’s prior-year payout. That chopped ~$35 million off the bills USC & UCLA owed the Big Ten and pared West Virginia’s Big 12 tab to a mid-eight-figure bite.
The Broadcast Bluff
Networks imposed a hard Jan 15 matrix deadline—miss it and the $90 million bonus disappears. Paired with DOJ treble-damage threats, the bluff kept presidents and lawyers at the table.
After a decade of sprawl, college football has snapped back to drivable rivalries—capped by five neutral-site finales big enough for the NFL. Watch this space: for a sport addicted to realignment drama, stability suddenly looks like the newest storyline.
Viewable Conference Map
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewe ... 877599&z=5
Original Conference Realignment Fiscal Report
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Realignment Timeout: Why College Football Pressed Pause On Its Coast To Coast Experiment
By ESPN - May 2025[/center]
The Pac‑12 thought it had found salvation by inviting five Mountain West schools. USC and UCLA imagined Big Ten riches would erase the pain of red‑eye flights. Then the bills came due, the ratings tanked, and the Department of Justice started asking very direct questions.
Late Thursday the Pac‑12, Mountain West, Big Ten and the DOJ signed a one‑year “cease‑fire.” Everyone stays put for the 2026 season, a working group will re‑draw the college‑sports map this fall, and a more sensible, region‑first set‑up is expected to launch in 2027. Here’s why that about‑face happened and what it means.
The Money Bomb: Paying Players Changes Every Spreadsheet
On January 12 university accountants closed the books for fiscal 2025 and, for the first time, plugged in the House v. NCAA settlement. The ruling forces every Division I school to set aside up to $20.5 million a year so athletes can share in TV money.
That new expense swallowed half the revenue boost schools expected from jumping leagues. The five Mountain West programs eyeing the Pac‑12 discovered they would run $8‑12 million deficits once exit fees and charter flights to the Pacific coast were added. USC and UCLA saw the same logic in reverse: Big Ten paydays remain huge, but shuttling volleyball teams to Rutgers and Penn State would wipe out much of the bonus.
Bottom line: paying athletes turned long‑distance marriages from “profitable” to “painful” almost overnight.
Fans Changed the Channel, and Networks Noticed
It wasn’t just the books—eyeballs told the same story. Final 2025 Nielsen data showed Rutgers‑UCLA on FS1 drew only 426,000 viewers, the worst prime‑time Big Ten number of Week 8. Fans in Los Angeles simply didn’t put aside Saturday night for Rutgers, and Scarlet Knight die‑hards had little reason to stay up past midnight Eastern.
Faced with slumping ratings and empty visitor sections, ESPN, FOX and NBC dangled a new carrot: starting with the 2027 schedule, any league that stages 80 percent of its games within an 800‑mile radius taps into a $90 million bonus pool. The networks want packed stadiums and revived rivalries—and they’re willing to pay for them.
Translation: TV money is still king, but the king now prefers short road trips and loud crowds.
When Exit Fees Look Like a “No‑Poach” Cartel
A $55 million lawsuit between the Pac‑12 and Mountain West over withdrawal penalties landed in federal court this spring. During discovery, attorneys produced e‑mails that sounded a lot like “you stay out of our backyard and we’ll stay out of yours.” That phrase is kryptonite to antitrust lawyers.
The DOJ subpoenaed both conferences—and the Big Ten—on June 12. Rather than risk treble damages that could triple any verdict, the leagues negotiated a provisional consent decree:
Exit fees capped at twice a league’s annual revenue share.
New “geography‑first” conference maps must be filed by January 15, 2027.
In return, the DOJ pauses its probe.
In plain terms: the federal government told conferences to stop using massive penalties to lock schools in place—or face a lawsuit they might lose badly.
The August 1st Pivot: Everyone Hunkers Down for One More Year
With budgets bleeding, ratings sagging and the DOJ circling, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State pulled the rip cord on August 1. Citing a “material‑adverse” clause, they rescinded their Pac‑12 moves and will play 2026 back in the Mountain West.
USC and UCLA will spend one final year in the Big Ten; as part of the consent decree, the league agreed to waive roughly 70 percent of its usual exit fee if the Trojans and Bruins join a DOJ‑approved, region‑heavy league for 2027. The Pac‑12, still at two members for now, will survive 2026 through creative scheduling before re-stocking to the minimum requirement for the 2027 season.
So What Happens Next?
August 18: Commissioners, DOJ staff and network execs start meeting every other week to sketch 2027 maps.
November 15: School presidents are expected to vote on new conference constitutions, revenue splits and travel rules.
January 15, 2027: Final 2027 football schedules must land on the College Football Playoff desk.
July 1, 2027: Banners change, Olympic sports report to new leagues, and football camps open weeks later.
Early models point to a Pacific‑10 featuring USC, UCLA, the four Northwest schools, Cal, Stanford, plus San Diego State and Fresno State. The Mountain West would re‑brand as the Big Mountain, and the Big 12 keeps its Four Corners quartet—creating three leagues that finally make geographic sense.
Why Fans Should Care
If the plan holds, 2026 will be the last season of awkward cross‑country detours. By 2027, Trojan fans can drive to Oregon again, and Boise State loyalists won’t need three connecting flights to watch a conference road game. Networks get better ratings, athletes spend less time in airports, and athletic departments stop hemorrhaging red ink.
In other words, college football’s wild realignment ride may be steering back toward the one thing that made the sport magical in the first place: neighbors playing neighbors on autumn Saturdays.
Stay with ESPN for every twist as the game redraws its borders—again.
did you research all the amounts or make them up?
