College conferences once grouped schools that were close enough to bus to. Today membership follows television money, and the contract calendar explains why realignment arrives in waves rather than steadily.
Conferences sell media rights collectively
Individual schools do not negotiate football broadcast deals on their own. The conference bundles its members' inventory and sells it as a package to networks and streaming services.
Revenue from that package is then distributed among members, often in equal shares. A school's athletic budget therefore depends heavily on which bundle it belongs to.
Because the bundle's value rises with the size and drawing power of its membership, conferences have a direct incentive to recruit schools that add audience.
Contract expiration dates set the timing
Media agreements run for fixed multi-year terms, and a conference negotiating a renewal wants its strongest possible roster in place before it goes to market.
That creates pressure to add members in the window before negotiations open, and it creates a matching incentive for schools to move before their own conference's deal locks them in.
When several major contracts approach expiration around the same period, the incentives align across the sport at once, which is why moves cluster.
Exit fees and grants of rights raise the cost of leaving
Conferences protect themselves with grant of rights agreements, under which a member assigns its media rights to the conference for the length of the deal even if it departs.
A school that leaves early may find its home games still contractually belong to the conference it left, which makes it far less valuable to a new one.
Combined with notice periods and exit payments, these terms mean realignment is usually negotiated rather than unilateral, and often announced well before it takes effect.
Football economics drive decisions for every sport
Football generates the large majority of media value at schools that play it at the highest level, so football considerations dominate conference strategy.
Other sports move as a consequence. A basketball, swimming or softball program inherits the travel map that football's economics produced, without having influenced it.
The result is conferences that span multiple time zones, with athletes in non-revenue sports absorbing travel burdens that no one designed for them specifically.
Scheduling and rivalries adjust downstream
Conference membership determines who a team must play, so realignment rewrites schedules that had been stable for decades and can end long-running annual matchups.
Some rivalries survive as non-conference games, arranged separately between athletic departments. Others lapse because neither school can spare a date.
Championship formats also change, since a larger conference may abandon divisions or add rounds, which alters what a regular season game is worth in the standings.