At this point, I'd almost pay them to go away and be someone else's problem. Maybe that is their plan.

conference realignment is going to consolidation of powers in a new conference or conferences, leaving the chaff behind. Mark my words.

Just another reason to have merit-based (read: wins) relegation and promotion in the sport. No can rest on their laurels and no one can ever be counted out.

are 100% wrong when it comes to what they want to put on TV. They consider Indiana chaff. While they will begrudgingly push a good underdog angle if they can't go with anything else, nothing would infuriate Fox and Disney more than Indiana being good and taking up spots in big postseason contests, because Indiana is a basketball school, and nobody outside the state of Indiana cares that Indiana is winning football games. They have no football fanbase. Fox/Disney want Alabama vs. Texas and Ohio State vs. USC, every single game, all season long, and when the postseason gets here, they want Alabama vs. Ohio State. That's what they will pay good money for. They will never pay top dollar to broadcast Indiana. The bottom dollar is the only thing that matters to Fox/Disney. They don't give a single **** about anything else - history, rivalry, tradition, nothing. I don't agree with it, you don't agree with it, but they're the ones willing to spend money rearranging the table, and until someone else with either money or political power that cares about something besides the absolute bottom dollar is willing to step in, consolidation of football brands will continue to be the trend. I imagine first they will consolidate everything of value left in the Big 12/ACC into one group so they don't have to pay Wake Forest and Kansas football prices for their media rights anymore, then eventually they will start consolidating the SEC and Big 10, and so on, and so forth, and the grain mill wheel will continue to turn and turn until what we end up with is a bush league NFL that looks like the old BCS every single week of the regular season, capped off with the bush league NFL playoffs and the bush league Superbowl, and everyone not in the bush league NFL will be buried 15 layers deep in a streaming app and getting paid less than peanuts for their media rights. ** Edited by Baltimore_Hokie at 4/23/2026, 10:03:10 AM

throw a bone to the conference realignment YouTubers, all of whom you can bet will be doing a "bombshell" video on the comment. Something will happen eventually of course. But it's almost like their insecure fan base needs daily assurance that the status quo will somehow change soon.

So yeah. I think it's pandering to the base. This really isn't news IMO. FSU is outspoken because they can be. UNC and NC State, and UVa and VT can't do this because they have in-state public school concerns that prevent it. There is nothing wrong with what he said, it's just not the headline story some are making it out to be. And yeah, I'm sure that those schools that are more silent are also working back channels at present and also planning for things to go down in the next two years (even of they don't). FSU appears to have real options. But I think that they don't know for sure, lends to their insecurity. Did you ever hear FSU people talking about getting an AAU invite? They talk about it as a 15-year old does about getting his driver's licence. "Yeah, I gotta take the written test. Then after that I'll set up my appointment for the road test. I'll have it by this time next year." ** Edited by Maroon Baboon at 4/21/2026, 11:55:04 PM