Big Ten, SEC To Split? Bold Prediction From College Football Coach

Big Ten Conference and SEC to split? TCU Head Coach Sonny Dykes recently expressed his belief that a rift is coming between the Group of Five and Power Four in college football.

Liberty Flames running back Quinton Cooley (20) loses his helmet after being tackled by Oregon Ducks / Rob Schumacher/The Republic / USA TODAY

The Oregon Ducks football team is entering its inaugural season in the Big Ten Conference, which is expanding to include 18 total schools in 2024.

As the college football landscape continues to be in flux, one Power Four head coach offered a bold prediction about the future of the NCAA, specifically, how the powerhouse Big Ten and SEC may split.

Texas Christian University Head Coach Sonny Dykes recently stated in an interview with Texas Football that he believes the Group of Five and the Power Four conferences will likely split into separate divisions.

Liberty Flames running back Quinton Cooley (20) loses his helmet after being tackled by Oregon Ducks / Rob Schumacher/The Republic / USA TODAY

“There’s got to be a split eventually,” Dykes said. “There is such a big difference right now between the haves and the have-nots, and I think we’ll eventually split into two separate divisions. Alabama and Louisiana Tech aren’t playing the same sport.”

There is ample reason to believe Dykes is on the right track with this theory as the disparity in both talent and achievement on the field has become extremely wide in the last 30 years or so, especially in the SEC and Big Ten.

On the talent side, zero four-star or better football recruits signed with Group of Five schools in the 2024 recruiting cycle.

As for achievement on the field, a Group of Five team hasn’t won a national championship since Lafayette and Princeton split a national title in 1896.

It’s almost hard to read into this as the game was so wildly different at that point than today that there’s no real way to compare the two achievements. Recruiting was much less of a factor, the vast majority of athletes weren’t on scholarship, and there wasn’t even a national title game played. In this time period, the “national champion” was decided exclusively by voters and fans were left to themselves to determine who the real best team was.

There also exists a massive gap in drafted talent between the two levels of FBS college football, as Toledo’s Quinyon Mitchell was the only Group of Five player taken in the first round of this year’s National Football League Draft.

Some cite the Group of Five’s inclusion in the redesigned College Football Playoff as reason for optimism, but it seems unlikely that a team from this level will be able to compete with the Alabamas, Oregons, and Georgias of the world to the extent needed to win the playoff.

Adding to this, name, image, and likeness rules have now made it so that well-funded programs can essentially bring any talent they deem viable to their rosters through endorsements sponsored by their NIL collectives. Another wrinkle is the transfer portal where we’ve seen countless quality Group of Five players poached by their Power Four counterparts.

When a coach with the experience level of TCU’s Sonny Dykes says something like he did, people listen. Fans can only sit and wait to see if this split is inevitable or merely a matter of conjecture.