If college football is as American as apple pie, then conference realignment driven by profiteering network executives is as American as Apple computers. In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma that the National Collegiate Athletic Association could not forbid universities to sell their own media rights. Schools banded together with their conferences, and most conferences banded together with one another, forming a cross-conference alliance that sold college football as a package to CBS and ABC.
