Kyle Whittingham‘s recent comments to John Canzano made ways across all of college football this week. But frankly, there was no reason for it to get as much blowback as it did.
Whittingham told Canzano, “I think there is a major realignment coming, and it’ll be a big one. I think it will create even more of a divide and exclusivity for the teams that are on the right side of that line. 20 months to four years? How about that for a time frame? In my opinion, it’s going to look very much like an NFL minor league.”
Big 12 fans took umbrage, thinking it was a shot at the league the Utah Utes had just joined.
But I didn’t take it that way at all.
Instead, it was just Whittingham answering a question and giving a reasonable perspective, which based on the trends that have been taking place across the sport of college football for the last decade, are far from being a “hot take”.
Super Conferences Trend
There’s been a clear and obvious trend towards Super Conferences in college football, and it may be sooner rather than later before that comes to fruition. Now maybe Whittingham is off on his timeline of 20 months to four years, but how egregious is that prediction really?
CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd brought that point up in his criticism of Whittingham’s comments on X, saying, “Someone better tell CBS, Fox, ESPN to tear up their media rights contracts if this is going to happen in the next 20 months to 4 years. As I wrote at the time, the Super League is a great idea … for 2031.”
Maybe 20 months is aggressive, but four years from now is 2028 when many of these conference contracts are going to begin to get re-negotiated. So is that timeline really all that unreasonable from Kyle Whittingham? I don’t think so.
No Big 12 Shot
And while Big 12 fans are naturally on edge, and might get bothered when a coach who has been here for a cup of coffee starts whispering the words “conference realignment”, but this was a harmless comment from a coach who was asked a question by a media member. He wasn’t going out of his way to discuss the issue, and when he talked about it further, there was no mention of the Big 12.
“I see an expansion of the playoff with that to 16 teams,” Whittingham continued. “The short version is Super Conferences. I think it’s going to boil down to 40-60, maybe teams in the Super Conference. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t play anybody but other Super Conference teams. Make that a division as far as who you play. Like I said, a full-blown playoff. Whether or not the players will be employees, officially, remains to be seen, but I think that’s very likely. I think that’s where it’s heading.”
You can actually argue that the Super Conferences would be the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12, with each having 16-20 teams. There’s a case to be made that the trend that’s underway is a positive for the Big 12, especially given the legal battles playing out in the ACC with Florida State and Clemson.
So when all is said and done, Whittingham was not doing his best Skip Bayless impression. In fact, we may look back on these comments and wonder, “What did Kyle Whittingham know that we didn’t?”
And the reality will be he was just seeing and sensing the trends that have been obvious across the sport for several years.
