Reading about Texas Tech scrambling to fill a 2027 schedule because of our conference’s changes just makes me sigh. It’s the perfect, depressing snapshot of what we’ve become. We used to build schedules a decade out, with traditional matchups that fans could circle and plan trips around. Now, it’s all just a chaotic mess of cancellations and desperate calls because the league office is too busy chasing television dollars to care about the fabric of the sport. I remember when playing a team like Texas Tech in a non-conference game meant something, a solid intersectional test. Now it’s just another line item to be jettisoned when the suits in Greensboro get a better offer from some streaming service.
This constant shuffling is a direct insult to what the ACC was built on. The league was founded on regional pride and sensible geography. You could drive to most away games. The rivalries had decades of history, not just television ratings. Now, with the additions and the constant threat of more schools leaving, nothing is stable. How can you build a program, a true cluture, when the entire conference map is being redrawn every five years? It reminds me of the late 80s, when we finally found our footing under George Welsh. That consistency, that identity, is impossible to forge in this environment. You’re just building on quicksand.
And don’t get me started on the arms race this fuels. I see Nebraska is proposing a six hundred million dollar stadium renovation. Six hundred million! For what? So they can keep up in a league that doesn’t even resemble the Big Eight we used to watch on Thanksgiving? It’s a vicious year. Conferences get bigger and more unstable, which forces schools to spend insane money on facilities to attract transient portal players, which further erodes any sense of place or tradition. We’re at Scott Stadium, and while it’s a beautiful place, the pressure to turn it into some glass-and-steel spaceship just to compete for a recruit who will be here for twelve months is soul-crushing.
The worst part is what it does to the players, or the few who might actually want to be here for a career. They commit to a conference and a set of rivals, and by their junior year, half the league is different. The schedule they signed up for is gone. The trophy games might be discontinued. It’s all transactional, and it teaches them that nothing is permanent, that loyalty is for fools. That’s the opposite of what this university, what this program under the greats, stood for. We used to take pride in being the steady, tough out in a tough league. Now the league itself isn’t even a coherent entity anymore. It’s just a collection of brands waiting for the next television contract to expire so they can jump ship again.