There has been a lot of change in college football, and college sports, over the last few years. While all sports teams are involved, the massive conference realignment we’ve seen recently has been fueled by football programs – the main sports moneymaker for most Division I schools in America.

It all started when Texas and Oklahoma made the bombshell announcement they’d be leaving the Big 12 after accepting an invitation to join the SEC in July 2021. A year later, USC and UCLA announced they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten.

Money was behind these moves. The SEC and Big Ten have the largest media rights deals in collegiate sports. Schools belonging to these conferences get a lot of money for just being a member thanks to those media rights deals.

Media rights issues led to the near dissolvement of the Pac-12 last year. After USC and UCLA left the conference, eight more schools followed suit as the conference’s media rights deal was set to expire and no new deal worth enough money seemed to be on the horizon. Oregon and Washington joined the Big Ten. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah accepted invitations to the Big 12. Cal and Stanford left for the ACC.

But now, the Pac-12 is making a comeback. In the latest news to come out of conference realignment, the conference recently added four new schools to its ranks. Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, and San Diego State – all current members of the Mountain West – will be joining the Pac-12, which currently consists of just two schools in Oregon State and Washington State, in July 2026. The conference still needs to add two more schools in order to meet the minimum requirement set by the NCAA to compete in the NCAA championships and the College Football Playoff.

Needing two more teams means the Pac-12 will continue to add more schools. Inviting at least two more schools means other conferences will be impacted, making room for even more realignment in those other conferences.

While conference realignment has been a massive change in recent years, there are other changes coming to collegiate athletics. More precisely, ticket prices are changing. And in Tennessee, they’re changing in an interesting way.

On Sept. 17, the University of Tennessee let season ticket holders know the prices of tickets would be increasing by an average of 10% for all sports. The average increase for football tickets would be that 10% plus another 4.5%. The 10% increase is being labeled by the school as a “talent fee”. The fee will help the school pay its athletes, which all schools will likely be able to do starting next summer. 

Nothing is official yet, but it’s likely revenue-sharing is coming to college sports in 2025. College athletes have been able to make money off their name, image, and likeness, or NIL, since 2021. But schools weren’t allowed to be the ones paying student-athletes. That money had to come from outside third parties. With a revenue-sharing system, schools will be allowed to directly give money to student-athletes.

Since schools should soon be able to share revenue with their athletes, Tennessee has decided to make sure they add to their revenue stream to help with that. The expectation is that Tennessee’s new ticket fees will inspire other schools to do the same, continuing to add to the evolution of all things college football, and college sports altogether.

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