Change is good.
Without change, the population of the world would still be living in the Stone Age.
But for some reason, whenever anyone mentions conference realignment, it is regarded as a dirty thing.
At the core is the reason for the change: money. College football should be about tradition and the game. Cash should never be a factor.
Sorry guys, but that ship sailed the second boosters started donating to their alma maters.
Everything in sports is about money. Arizona has a baseball team because a group of investors thought they could earn money with a team in Phoenix. The big argument was that the bloated league could not support another team.
But nobody was complaining about change when Diamondbacks won the 2001 Worlds Series.
The NHL changed rules across the board after the 2004 lockout. The move was designed to make the game higher scoring, attract more fans and make more money.
There were complaints at first, but once players like Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby took off — and started scoring tons of goals — fans soon forgot about the change.
The point is these changes were made with money interests at heart. But they worked, and soon people accepted the new ways and moved on.
The same thing should apply to conference realignment.
It is nothing new. Our own Pac-12 was originally the Pacific Coast Conference but then became the Athletic Association of Western Universities when a pay-for-play scandal broke up the PCC and six teams decided to make their own super conference.
I guarantee you they didn’t do it because they liked each other.
Every addition to the conference since then has been made with the goal of making the conference more prominent and expanding the Pac-12’s reach. And all of that is designed to make the conference more money. ASU ultimately owes its rivalry with USC to the conference and its desire to earn cash.
Of course, the fact that all these big schools are making tons of money while their players scrape by on a scholarship will always be a sore point. But at the same time, every other student has to pay to attend school.
How would it feel to take a class with a football player knowing that he is getting paid thousands to sit and listen to the same professor you are? Pay-for-play just wouldn’t work.
So when Texas A&M finally decides to leave the Big 12 —a conference that really does need to change its name — let them go. The Big 12 is failing. It already lost a powerhouse in Nebraska, and TV networks are afraid to sign a multi-year contract with a conference that may not be around very much longer.
On the other hand, the SEC has been immensely successful for years, and keeps getting stronger. It has an extremely lucrative television contract with CBS and will be a national power for years to come.
Realignment isn’t going away. Even though it will be sad when conferences like the Big 12 break up and old rivalries are lost, new ones will be forged, new matchups will become fixtures and fans will ultimately still follow their teams with the same feverish passion that defines college football.
However, Texas A&M better make sure that it is moving for the money and not as a way to get out of Texas’ shadow. That won’t happen with the likes of Florida and Alabama around.
Reach the columnist at egrasser@asu.edu