The moves we’ve talked about for so long as part of a power struggle, of some abstract future, are now concrete. This week, almost three years after it was officially announced, Oklahoma and Texas officially became members of the Southeastern Conference. In another month, the rest of the seismic recent conference realignment moves — Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington to the Big Ten; Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah to the Big 12; Cal, Stanford and SMU to the ACC — will also become official. The future is now, whether or not it makes any sense.
We’ll still have plenty of jarring moments of realization this fall — when UCLA visits Rutgers in mid-October, for instance, or when Cal visits Wake Forest in early November (or when we get to the end of the season and Oklahoma didn’t play Oklahoma State — but for all of the unique matchups to come, how are these teams going to actually fare? How would they have fared last season? And how do things normally work when a team changes conferences? Let’s look into it.
Where teams would have ranked in their new conferences last season
Using 2023’s SP+ rankings, let’s set the table by first looking at how the hierarchy would have taken shape for each conference with its new members. (New members for 2024 in bold.)
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