Why Oregon vs. Ohio State marks the beginning of college football's superconference era

On the last day of June, rapper Pitbull took the stage at the University of Texas wearing a football jersey in the school's burnt orange color. Spring classes had been canceled for weeks, but his concert capped an all-day party that had taken over the Austin campus.

The occasion was the Longhorns' official entry into the Southeastern Conference. The blue and yellow logo was featured on tents and tables, and a sculpture of the slogan “It Just Means More” stood next to a reflecting pool as fans took turns taking photos. A few hours north, a similar celebration took place at the University of Oklahoma, which joined Texas in its conference jump. As dusk fell and the Austin concert ended, fireworks were launched from the top of the university's tallest tower. At midnight, as the calendar turned to July 1 and two of the country's richest athletic departments joined its dominant league, college football had officially entered the superconference era.

More than three months later and nearly 1,700 miles west of Texas, the first lingering effects of this new era will be truly felt for the first time Saturday when third-seeded Oregon (5-0) hosts second-seeded Ohio State (5-0).

There are, of course, football reasons to focus on the game at Autzen Stadium in Eugene (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC/Peacock). By almost any measure, Ohio State coach Ryan Day has been remarkably successful, going 41-3 against conference opponents since 2019 – but with all three losses coming to rival Michigan, he's finally facing pressure and unrest within his own fan base win a national championship. Oregon is undefeated but somewhat unremarkable this season, meanwhile trying to return to the College Football Playoff for the first time in a decade.

Because of everything that happens outside the white lines, the game marks a shift in the sport's era. Until kickoff in Eugene, all of this season's major games will be played between teams that would have met in previous years when the conference geography was still regional. The Sept. 28 showdown between Alabama and Georgia was a repeat of previous SEC title games. Although Texas and Oklahoma will meet for the first time as SEC rivals on Saturday morning in Dallas, they have been playing each other since 1900.

But Ohio State versus Oregon in a game that doesn't count as a non-conference game or as a Rose Bowl matchup on New Year's Day, but in the Big Ten standings? For the first time since the five strongest conferences shrank to four last year following the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference, the new reality of the bicoastal conferences will significantly impact college football's playoff race in the form of a supersized conference game, a one-off Pairing would have been hard to imagine.

Oregon, Washington, UCLA and Southern Cal didn't leave the Pac-12 because they thought a conference called the Big Ten and counting 18 members made sense, or because they shared a history with schools like Rutgers, Illinois or Nebraska saw. Their move was prompted because, amid upheaval surrounding the structure and governance of the NCAA, the Big Ten's lucrative media rights deal offered a safe haven — as did the SEC's large annual payouts to Texas and Oklahoma.