How Texas and Washington changed the college football map

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NEW ORLEANS, La. — Chris Del Conte’s white cap is pulled low, partially obscuring his face, perhaps an intent to avoid encumbrances while walking through a hotel lobby teeming with Texas fans.

Scrawled across Del Conte’s hat is a single Spanish word inscribed in burnt orange letters: mañana.

Its meaning — tomorrow — is apropos resting atop the head of a man whose athletic department, the richest in all of college athletics, is soon to grow even more prosperous with an impending move. To Del Conte, tomorrow means the next challenge, the next adventure, the next opportunity or, maybe in this case, the next conference.

Today: the Big 12.

Mañana: the SEC.

For so many across college athletics, Del Conte is the face of the bad guy, the man who made a decision that sparked the most significant and, some say, catastrophic conference realignment wave in the industry’s more than a century of history.

He disagrees with that assessment. But his team’s matchup against Washington on Monday night in the Sugar Bowl is, indeed, a fitting collision of two programs not only both bidding adieu to their current conference but partially responsible for the landscape shift itself. The Superdome offers the stage for a football swan song to their leagues, a teary-eyed but, they say, necessary goodbye.

From both conference realignment and postseason perspectives, the matchup — the Realignment Bowl, you might call it — is a last-of-its-kind showdown, a duel between two of the most storied brands in college athletics competing in what will be the final CFP semifinal game played in the four-team playoff era.

It’s epic. It’s historic.

It’s the final episode of an era of college football.

“It’s a little nostalgic,” said former Washington coach and current CBS analyst Rick Neuheisel. “Both teams are off to what they think…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/realignment-bowl-how-texas-and-washington-changed-the-college-football-map-193839479.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2023-12-31 19:38:39

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