I started writing this thread a while ago and it would have been more timely then, but with all the realignment moves, I think it is still at least worth putting out there now.
What moves realignment? Presidents, conference commissioners, networks, boosters, grand visionaries? While all have a part, I think the best answer is none of them really decided the overall trajectory of the sport all that much (although specific moves they have influenced). What has moved the sport so much is that we created a strong incentive for consolidation around the 80s. There were powerful traditional aspects of the sport that were not easy or quick to overcome so its taken 4 decades for the sport to get this far, but everything that has happened has basically been because of the incentive to consolidate that was created by the 80s.
If we had different people running the show, some teams would be in different conferences, maybe some of the winning conferences would be different (Big 12 over the PAC-12 was a long shot, but it happened), and the timing might have been faster or slower, but the end result of getting more powerful teams in fewer conferences still would have happened.
I think all of realignment since the 1980s can explained by this:
Every school will make more in a conference with more powerful schools (in terms of markets, football name, etc) and less in one with fewer. While short term realities might not lead powerful schools to always pursue consolidation into fewer conferences, in the long term, there are always troubles which lead schools to accepting more money for consolidation.
That's a mouthful and not even that novel, but to me, it shows what people often miss in realignment. This is an incentive that is in the system because TV value is high and because conferences mostly control that. That incentive to consolidate wasn't something planned and the results largely weren't seen or wanted at the beginning, but that continuing incentive is all it took to completely uproot the sport.
Put another way, there are a few people with visions of the next steps, but there are no grand masters setting up the system to where we are now or where it is going. To the conferences, commissioners are pleasing current presidents who might all be replaced in a few years. For the networks, long term moves are mostly worthless as they raise prices for conferences and there is no guarantee you get them next time (Big Ten used to be mostly ESPN and now has no tie in; the SEC went from the most outside ESPN to completely inside it; next time they might both switch again, go a completely different route, or might cost so much to be a bad purchase).
In life, you get more of what you incentive whether you mean to or not (our politics and society are full of it), and we can see it play out over the past 4 decades and can predict the future to various degrees based on it.
Looking back before TV money was huge, we had travel expenses and local attendance being far bigger deals. This meant that regional conferences were the name of the game and we got football powers and rivalries develop in very regional ways. TV money was a nice add when it started, but not that huge a deal.
We saw money increasing in TV appearances in the 80s and also saw schools get rights from the NCAA for their TV inventory. This is when TV money started to be a real factor rather than just a tack on concern. The conferences were obviously better vehicles for negotiating these contracts (strength in numbers) as we saw everyone in a conference assign the rights to at least their top games to the conference. This reality was so evident that we saw virtually every independent join a conference (with the big exception of Notre Dame of course) in fairly short order. That was a lot of tradition gone in fairly short period of time and every school individually choose to follow that course.
From there, we saw the major conferences slowly expand to 12 for conference championship games (another money incentive). In virtually every case, we saw the 6 AQ/power conferences expand with either major powers (or as much as they could attract) or with new markets. They didn't have to be told by TV executives to do this (although they certainly consulted with them to see who was more valuable). They wanted more money and influence nationally and approached expansion as such.
After the race to 12 was mostly finished, we saw the conferences which were a little stronger than the others add from the strongest schools from their rivals. This was sometimes conference led, but probably even more often school led. If you are the SEC and Texas A&M calls or later Texas and Oklahoma, what are you supposed to say?; same with USC initiating contract with the Big Ten. Regardless of who initiated moves, there were incentives for schools who felt they weren't getting paid their true worth (generally powerful schools in conferences a little less secure) to move and this made the strongest even stronger and set the dominoes to where we things today.
Now we look at the world with 2 extremely powerful conferences and 2 smaller power conferences (possibly one mid tier one too in a new PAC). The same incentives which pushed us here haven't ended though and I would expect more changes in coming years. For as far as we have come, the existing powers would still probably make more with more consolidation and eventually tough times will push them to make moves that lead us further down that path.
Where do things end? I don't know, but we'll stop when the incentive stops or other long term factors start to outweigh it even in tough times. When it is no longer economically an advantage to put more and more powerful brands into fewer conferences, the pattern will stop. Maybe the damage done to the sport will start impacting bottom lines to the extent they feel something has to change. Maybe a group of schools will find they can't compete well in the new conferences and it slowly effects their bottom line too much which will encourage smaller conferences to form. Maybe TV money will start to dry up and regionalism will make more sense again.
Until and unless we hit those points though, it seems fair to assume realignment will continue in waves. Obviously the ACC powers are threats to leave when they can. The bigger question is between the Big Ten and SEC themselves. Will they make more money consolidating into a single conference or at least a single TV contract? Will some collection of schools be best to form their own mini-NFL where they control everything and have a single TV contract to sell? I don't know the answers to those questions, but until the advantages of consolidation on a financial level are countered by other factors, we should assume more changes are coming.
Regardless of how things end up, I think the whole example of college football realignment is a great example of how small incentives slowly change a system in ways no one initially would imagine or support. I don't think anyone in the 1980s imagined a world like this for college football, but we are here because of realities put in place then.
Note: As a final thought, what would college football look like today if the NCAA had kept the rights to TV revenue?
