When I was growing up, college football had a ‘clear’ hierarchy. The Southeastern Conference (SEC) was the bully on the block — feared, respected and virtually unchallenged. If you were a blue-chip recruit, you went South. If you wanted a national title or to play in the New Year’s Six, you had to go through the SEC.
The Big Ten? It was often viewed as the plodding, tradition-bound counterpart, sometimes overlooked in the conversation for the nation’s elite.
My, how times have changed.
The tectonic plates of college football have not just shifted — they have been decisively rearranged. The Big Ten Conference is no longer hunting the SEC. It has overtaken it, establishing itself as the sport’s undisputed financial, competitive and cultural powerhouse. This isn’t a forecast; it’s a present-day actuality, backed by revenue reports, trophy cases and a strategic vision that has left the SEC playing catch-up.
Let’s start with the most unemotional metric of all: the bottom line. Power in modern college athletics is measured in dollars, and the Big Ten is winning the arms race decisively. With a diversified media portfolio spanning Fox, CBS and NBC, the conference has executed a masterstroke in visibility, ‘owning the clock’ from noon to primetime every Saturday.
This stands in stark contrast to the SEC’s walled-garden deal with ESPN. The numbers don’t lie: the Big Ten is projecting revenues approaching $1.4 billion by the end of 2026, dwarfing the SEC’s estimates. The average school payout gap — over $10 million more per Big Ten institution — isn’t just a line item; it’s fuel for a sustained competitive advantage.
For years, the SEC’s ultimate retort was simple: “But we win the rings.” That argument has evaporated. The Big Ten has just secured its third consecutive national championship with its third different program — Michigan, Ohio State, and, in a story for the ages, the Indiana Hoosiers. For context, the Hoosiers were statistically one of the worst football programs in college football history, only to be surpassed by Northwestern in losses by the end of the 2025 season.
This reversal isn’t a fluke; it’s a testament to unprecedented depth. Furthermore, the Big Ten’s 8-2 head-to-head record against the SEC in recent bowl seasons signals a postseason hex that has broken the South’s mythical invincibility. Even the SEC’s most fervent voices have conceded the throne.
The expansion to the West Coast was a visionary move. It wasn’t just about adding brands like USC and Oregon, it was about claiming the Los Angeles and Pacific Northwest markets, transforming the Big Ten from a Midwest-centric league into an actual national entity. While the SEC remains a regional titan, the Big Ten now operates as a coast-to-coast super league, reflected in its towering attendance figures and expanded fan base.
Perhaps the most telling sign of the new era is the embrace of modern financial muscle. The Big Ten’s pending $2.4 billion private capital investment is a game-changer, providing each member school with a war chest to fund athlete revenue sharing directly (shout-out to the Mark Cubans of the world). This move treats the conference like the professional corporate entity it has become, while the SEC remains tethered to more traditional, ‘booster-dependent’ models. And no: not those types of boosters.
The transfer portal has been the great equalizer. The era when SEC powers could hoard five-star talent on the bench is over. Now that elite talent flows freely and increasingly finds homes — and immediate playing time — at Big Ten schools, surprises like Indiana’s title run are fueling the trend.
The wasteland I grew up with is gone. The dread of ‘SEC speed’ has been replaced by the formidable reality of ‘Big Ten business.’ The conference has built a more expansive, more prosperous and more in-depth model that is winning on the balance sheet and on the field. The SEC isn’t going away, but the crown has tilted and tumbled towards the turf, and the Big Ten Conference snuck their hands under the crown just in time.
Multimedia Reporter Noral Parham can be contacted at 317-762-7846 or by email at noralp@indyrecorder.com. Follow him on X @3Noral. For more sports, click here.
Noral Parham is the multi-media & senior sports reporter for the Indianapolis Recorder, one of the oldest Black publications in the country. Prior to joining the Recorder, Parham served as the community advocate of the MLK Center in Indianapolis and senior copywriter for an e-commerce and marketing firm in Denver.
