Why TCU football will be the key to school’s conference realignment future
The chaos of realignment in college athletics has calmed, but every athletic director across the country is preparing for the next round of movement.
That includes new TCU athletic director Mike Buddie, who has plenty of experience with realignment after he led the efforts to get Army West Point into the American Athletic Conference.
With all the talk of potential super conferences and the SEC and Big 10 commanding more power in the College Football Playoff, it’s Buddie’s desire to have TCU in the best possible position whenever conferences like the Big Ten are ready to expand again.
“(TCU) is unique,” Buddie said. “Because it’s in a destination city, because we’re playing at a Power Four level, how do we set ourselves apart from everybody else in our league so when the next iteration of college football armageddon we have a chair when the music stops?”
Buddie doesn’t just want TCU to have a safe landing spot when the next wave of realignment hits, he also wants the Horned Frogs to be in a position of power.
“We want a chair with Ohio State, we want a chair with Alabama,” Buddie said. “Nobody knows what that looks like. From our standpoint we’re rallying the troops, we’re getting our donors together, we’re getting our loyal supporters together.”
An all-in approach is necessary as the Horned Frogs could easily find themselves battling some of their in-state rivals if a spot in the Big Ten ever comes available.
As for why TCU would be interested in making a potential move, it’s simple in Buddie’s eyes.
“I think we owe it to our kids to compete at the highest level,” Buddie said. “Right now we are at the highest level, but as the Big Ten and SEC start to creep further away, we want to lasso them. That revenue gap continues to grow and that’s an opportunity we want to be a part of.”
TCU will be able to sell its premiere location in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, but it’ll take more than location and money to put the Horned Frogs in the best position for the future.
“What I do know is Cincinnati and UCF, anybody who has made the jump to this league didn’t make it because they have a treasure chest of money,” Buddie said. “They made it because they were good at football. So when this next iteration happens we need to make sure we’re really good at football.
“That’s how you get to where you wanna go. That may be 20 years from now, that may be a week from Tuesday. We don’t know, but we do know we need to be ready when it happens.”
The Horned Frogs have won 27 games in the first three seasons under Sonny Dykes with a national championship appearance in 2022 and a 9-4 season last year.
Expectations will be high for the Horned Frogs with the return of stars like Josh Hoover and Bud Clark and Buddie is eager to see how the season unfolds.
“What I believe is, with what we have here and what we invest we should compete for Big 12 championships across the board,” Buddie said. “If you’re competing for a Big 12 championship, then you’ll be in the discussion for a national championship.
What I saw last year on a 9-4 team that played really well in the bowl with a Heisman trophy candidate at quarterback, I think we should compete for a Big 12 championship. I expect us to make a run at the CFP.”
With a top notch roster, the Horned Frogs have ambitions of making a run to the Big 12 title game as programs in the league still battle to take over the spots left by Oklahoma and Texas.
TCU wants to fill that power gap and it could be the key to getting to a bigger and better league in the future.
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
