Greetings from the sports desk located somewhere below the decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState. Sammy the Shark is currently pouring over 2024 NHL draft prospects stories, as he is a realistic albeit ever hopeful tiburones. At the same time, Karl the Kraken’s preoccupied with dusting his Matty Beniers bobblehead, so I’m flying solo once again.

Those of you who have been regular RedState readers, for which we genuinely thank you and urge you, if you’re not already a VIP member, to please consider signing up so we can continue to bring you the real news and honest opinions Big Media and Big Tech loathe, know we are not exactly enthralled with the state of higher education in these fifty states we call home. The reasons are well-known. Here’s a quick refresher course of recent posts detailing various aspects of collegiate and university madness:

• University: LGBT Students Should Give Doctors Sexual Business Cards Revealing Their Pants-Pertaining Particulars

• Professor Offers a Summer Writing Program — but Not if You’re White, and Only if You ‘Honor’ Trans People

• State University Issues ‘Inclusive’ Language Guide That Excludes ‘Mother’ and ‘Man’

• White Dem Thinks a College’s Cartoon Tree Looks Like a Threatening Minority, Accuses the School of Racism

• Wokeness for the Win: Colleges Celebrate ‘Womxn’s History Month’

There’s unsurprisingly plenty more.

How does this relate to sports? Other than insulting our collective and individual intelligence episodes by slandering courageous truth-tellers such as Riley Gaines, as of late the higher education industry has demonstrated it is very high on its own severely diseased supply by tossing aside all regional and logistical considerations as it pursues the almighty television dollar. We briefly mentioned this in an earlier report. Let’s take a deeper dive into the silliness.

In 2024, the Power 5 conferences, i.e., the high rollers of collegiate athletics, will be as follows. At least for now.

Atlantic Coast Conference

One tends to think of basketball more than football with this conference, although Clemson is usually a powerhouse, with Florida State and Pitt the other programs of note. Worth noting is that all the schools are in reasonable proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and each other. Obviously, they’re doing it wrong.

Big 12

Let the silliness begin!

First, there are (or more accurately, will be) 14 schools in the Big 12. Second, what connection is there between the University of Central Florida, the University of West Virginia, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Arizona? These are rival institutions? Really?

We move on.

Big Ten

The legendary Rutgers-UCLA rivalry rekindled!

This has so many things wrong it’s difficult to know where to start. 18 teams in one conference? Everybody plays everyone else once every two years at best. You also have a conference literally stretching from coast to coast, which will be brutal beyond words on every sport save football. This is the ultimate example of television money greed run amok.

Pac-12

I preface this by stating I am an unashamed Cal fan. Don’t @ me.

Guys, seriously. Stop flirting with the ACC or the AAC. Call the Mountain West people and merge the two conferences. Call it the PAC-14. It makes way more sense for Cal and Stanford to play San Jose State, Fresno State, and San Diego State every year than fly to the East Coast week after week.

And last but definitely not least …

SEC

This conference makes sense other than Missouri, which realistically should be in the Big 12. Not to mention how the SEC sits high, wide, and handsome as it rules the college football roost.

Let’s get the season started.