Chris Del Conte has long been the ringleader of a tight-knit circle of athletic director friends, if in volume of voice only. At one point, they were all upwardly mobile career climbers with ideas of how to reshape college athletics.
They’re aging into their 50s now having only enhanced their influence. Back in the day, the think tank of emerging thinkers consisted of seven current ADs and power brokers: Del Conte (Texas), Greg Byrne (Alabama), Scott Stricklin (Florida), Ross Bjork (Texas A&M), Whit Babcock (Virginia Tech), John Currie (Wake Forest) and Greg McGarity (Gator Bowl CEO). Others circulated in and out, but that only added to their vision of the future.
“Does the group have a name? I think Currie called it, ‘The Next Gen,'” Del Conte said this week as Texas prepares to face No. 1 Alabama. “Now, we’re the ‘middle-aged gen.’ Now, we’re getting close to the ‘older gen.’ Now, we’re damn near on the tail end of old bastards. But we started out as young bastards.”
If Del Conte wasn’t the most personable of the group, he certainly stands as its unofficial historian.
“Our group has come up with a lot of crazy ideas that have come to fruition right now,” Del Conte added. “We were a group of dudes. We just became pals.”
A few years ago, those “bastards” began to see the future. It included College Football Playoff expansion, realignment, guerilla marketing and mega-games, the shining example of which (Alabama vs. Texas) is in our midst this week.
It’s a direct extension of Texas and Oklahoma migrating out of the Big 12 and into the SEC in 2025 (at the latest). It is a tangential reaction to playoff expansion. It is a reason why we’ll see a lot more of these high-profile games. That was assured last week when the CFP Board of Managers (university presidents) approved a 12-team playoff as soon as 2024.
“Movements and playoffs and where we were going all came out of those same conversations,” Del Conte said. “Nobody knew exactly what would happen, but we were just trying to project what could happen and put ourselves in the very best position to be successful.”
Del Conte, 54, arrived at Texas from TCU in 2017. It occurred to him the Longhorns were either playing their traditional rivals at neutral sites or not at all. The Oklahoma game is in Dallas. Nebraska was long gone to the Big Ten (actually because of Texas). Texas A&M left for the SEC for the same reason, if…
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