Column: Realignments hurt non-revenue sports

There are 12 schools in the Big Ten and 10 schools in the Big 12. The ACC includes teams from the entire Atlantic coast, from Syracuse to Miami. By the end of the year, there could be up to 12 football schools in the Big East.

In what might be the most exciting two years in conference realignments, the Big East is finally making its long-talked-about move.

It’s extending invitations to expand its conference to make up for the loss of Pittsburgh, Syracuse and West Virginia.

Although it is not clear yet who is invited, the targets in the last few months have been Boise State, Navy and Air Force for football only and Southern Methodist University, Houston and University Central Florida for all sports.

The Big East is reeling after the loss of high-profile schools in the realignment craziness, but I can’t possibly be the only one to think it’s ridiculous to have a conference with teams spread across almost the entire country.

Sure, it might be great to try and build these super-conferences for TV ratings in football and basketball. Great potential matchups will result from that, but what about all the other non-revenue sports that are still vital pieces of these athletic departments?

IU Athletics Director Fred Glass said the addition of Nebraska to the conference has already caused a severe increase in travel expenses for non-revenue sports. That will be no different for other schools shifting conferences. Flying the women’s tennis team from Syracuse to Miami for a one-day match will take a toll on budgets.

It does not seem fair to the potentially 20-plus other sports in the colleges’ and universities’ athletic departments.

They are going to have to start making bigger sacrifices than they probably already have to make. The obvious argument will be that it doesn’t matter because football and basketball make the money for those sports anyway, so they should just be happy. That cannot and should not be the only or correct answer.

Every team, whether it is volleyball, baseball, field hockey, etc., makes up the athletic departments. They all deserve to be treated fairly.

The true idea of a super-conference will never totally be brought to fruition. There are a bunch of reasons for that. Once the conferences get bigger, they will just continue to be broken down into sub-conferences that no one cares about (I’m talking about you, “Legends” and “Leaders”).

The point of making conferences bigger could be that all the schools get to play each other. If each year teams are stuck playing the same five teams and then a matchup game, some players will go an entire career without facing a team in their own conference. That just doesn’t seem right.

Whole conferences should not be dismantled and recreated so that good football matchups come from them. There needs to be a more over-arching balance when the conference officials make these decisions.

It can’t just be about football. It can’t just be about basketball. It needs to be about all student athletes in the various programs. Right now, no one is looking out for them, and that is wrong. 


­— cursini@indiana.edu