On Sunday, Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham discussed the possibility of college football realigning to form Super Conferences and mentioned that he believes it will happen in the next two to four years.
The timeline received pushback from many in the college sports sphere, including from that of CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd.
Whittingham told John Canzano, “I think there is a major realignment coming, and it’ll be a big one. I think it will create even more of a divide and exclusivity for the teams that are on the right side of that line. 20 months to four years? How about that for a time frame? In my opinion, it’s going to look very much like an NFL minor league.”
Dodd responded to Whittingham’s recent interview, saying on X, “Someone better tell CBS, Fox, and ESPN to tear up their media rights contracts if this is going to happen in the next 20 months to 4 years. As I wrote at the time, the Super League is a great idea … for 2031. The current stakeholders—you know who they are—currently scoff at the prospect.”
The two to four-year timeline Dodd references came by word of Whittingham when he told John Canzano, “I think there is a major realignment coming, and it’ll be a big one. I think it will create even more of a divide and exclusivity for the teams that are on the right side of that line. 20 months to four years? How about that for a time frame? In my opinion, it’s going to look very much like an NFL minor league.”
In addition to his response on social media, Dodd linked an article he had previously written in April that pushed back on the accelerated timeline due to current and future contracts with media partners and select conference affiliations.
“The idea of creating a “super-league” format in college football is doable and brilliant … in 2031,” Dodd wrote. “That’s right in the timeframe where current media rights contracts for major conferences and the College Football Playoff will be expiring. It’s called ‘coterminous,’ which is derived from the Latin word for ‘sharing a common boundary.’ It would be the perfect time to restructure college football to where the sport is owned by the schools and their media rights partners. Now is just not even close to the right time to implement those changes.”
While contracts and legal obligations are definitely an important piece of the puzzle, conference realignment can happen quickly. Over the past two seasons, Big 12 fans have seen eight new teams join the league, and two key member institutions leave in Texas and Oklahoma departing for the SEC.
While the concept of realignment isn’t going away anytime soon, Big 12 fans will get their first taste of football action in less than three weeks time. Utah kicks off its first season as a member of the Big 12 Conference on Thursday, August 29th vs. Southern Utah.
