There has been plenty of pushback against conference realignment, where regionality and tradition has been steamrolled for bigger and bigger leagues and richer and richer television deals.
Yet even the biggest critic can understand the underlying logic when it comes to football — media executives will pay for the highest viewership possible.
As such, in football, which is the primary, if not exclusive, driver of revenue for all of college athletics, here comes USC-Ohio State, Oregon-Michigan and Texas-Florida.
No one in college athletics, however, even bothers to justify having softball and soccer and gymnastics teams travel coast to coast to compete — especially when, unlike football, the games aren’t exclusively on Saturdays, don’t involve chartered flights and often generate less fan interest than if they played a local rival.