College sports as a whole is one of the most popular and entertaining things in the sports realm and with the recent change, It may ruin and taint one of the most beloved groups of sports out there. The most notable development has been the widespread realignment of college conferences with 10 of the 12 PAC-12 teams, such as Stanford, Oregon, Washington, Cal berkeley, UCLA, USC, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, and Colorado all leaving the conference and heading to different conferences like the BIG12, BIG10, and ACC.

Schools across the country have always sought to align themselves with more lucrative television contracts, which implies the biggest motive for the schools in the PAC-12 switching conferences, to gain access to larger markets and higher revenue-sharing opportunities. While this benefits the school, it is not taking into account the pros and cons for the athletes.

For example, a big con is that the alignment makes zero sense geographically. Schools like USC and UCLA for example, 2 schools located in Los Angeles, will now be traveling to areas like Iowa, New Jersey, Michigan, Nebraska, and schools in the Midwest/east coast area just to play in conference games. This travel will only hurt the athletes as it will lead to less recovery time and more stress because you miss more and more classes.

Now there are some workarounds, as you could take all of your courses online, however, can all student athletes who are on a scholarships be given this opportunity or is it only the student athletes playing bigger and more popular sports that bring in the more profit and revenue for the school?

Another result of conference realignments involve the traditional rivalries being disrupted and new regional matchups emerging. While these changes have positive gain, as it will have the potential to boost the financial standing of many institutions, and some athletes can have access to larger NIL deals, it has also sparked debates about the integrity of collegiate athletics and whether the focus on revenue generation is overshadowing the original purpose of college sports.