The Conference Realignment Scenario Nobody is Talking About
The Air Jordan Athletic Conference
Like a severe and dangerous storm, conference realignment is once again sweeping the nation. As it surges across the county, it forces chaos and leaves destruction and confusion in its wake. As schools sever ties to old conference rivals and pledge allegiance to new ones, desperately trying to create alliances with like-minded teams, they search diligently for mutually beneficial relationships. In their search for powerful allies, it can be difficult to discern the strong from the weak but there is one similarity that unifies some of the strongest teams in the nation. It is not a secret club nor a hidden trait. In fact, those that possess this mark of superiority wear it proudly on clothing, shoes, accessories...
The Jumpman logo is the single surest determinant of a school's favorable standing at the top of the food chain. Perhaps it's time for these schools to unite as a conference.
Because of Jordan’s extensive vetting process, the Jordan Brand’s lineup of schools is already top-notch.
The Jordan logo isn’t just a logo, it's a source of validation. Because it is so cautiously distributed, It gives credibility to
Deliberately
Jordan didn't just build a powerhouse roster of schools, It has created a club more exclusive than the Ivy League.
Air Jordan, a subsidiary of the shoe and apparel titan, Nike, is
The Jordan Brand fully sponsors seven schools. Florida, Houston, Howard, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and UCLA are all full members of the Jordan Family. Cincinnati, which was one of the original Jordan schools in 1997, along with North Carolina A&T and St John’s, will return to the brand in 2024.
Additionally, the Jordan Brand has a partial deal with Georgetown, Marquette, and San Diego State. These three schools wear Jordan basketball jerseys, while the rest of their respective athletic programs where Nike.
There are a few iterations of an Air Jordan conference that could exist.
The full-Jordan schools could create a hyper-exclusive micro-conference of just eight teams.
The conference could only include only the actual teams that wear Jordan, meaning Georgetown, Marquette, and San Diego State would be basketball-only members.
The conference could be extended to all schools with any relationship with the company. Full membership for each of the 11 teams, with the exception of Marquette who does not field a football team.
The conference would be a strong contender across the board, it would be competitive, and it would be geographically dispersed and capture some of the nation's largest markets.
Headlined by the likes of UCLA, Florida, Howard, and UNC the Jordan brand is aligned with very successful teams.
Michigan, UCLA, Oklahoma, and Florida boast some of the most prestigious and elite athletic programs in the nation. Colloquially speaking, playing football at Michigan or basketball at UCLA, for example, is the athletic equivalent of getting into Harvard or Yale.
The UCLA logo, just like the jump man, has become synonymous with roundball. The UNC logo, along with that of the Chicago Bulls, is heavily associated with Micheal Jordan himself, and by extension, basketball dominance.
In the College Football Playoff era, Jordan schools have been represented in the playoff seven times, although Cincinnati did not wear Jordan school when they played.
Because Jordan’s well-diversified portfolio of schools has avoided major redundancies, there wouldn’t be any significant existing rivalries.
Georgetown and Howard have the DC Mayor’s Cup, which could evolve into a captivating cross-town in-conference rivalry. Other than that, it would be a fresh canvas for schools to build new rivalries.
With California, the east coast, the North, the South, and the Midwest becoming the five dominant pseudo-sectors, regional rivalries could bloom.
In California, UCLA and San Diego State. On the east coast, Howard, Georgetown, UNC, Florida. In the north, Marquette, and Michigan. In the south, Florida, Houston, Oklahoma and UNC. In the midwest: Cincinnati, Marquette, Michigan, and Oklahoma.
The locations of the schools wouldn’t only help cultivate regional rivalries, it would give the conference a wide sweeping footprint.
It would have LA, one of the most coveted sports markets in the United States, along with San Diego, Florida, and Houston. However, it would miss out on some major markets. The Bay Area, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, and of course, the mighty New York media market. Although it misses some major metros in the regions, it would have an overall strong presence in the Midwest, the South, and the east coast.
Putting together a conference based on jerseys might seem sporadic and random. After all, Jordan deliberately selected these schools as an advertising apparatus. Not necessarily the best blueprint for building a league. Then again, maybe it's not the worst blueprint either.
Despite the unmethodical and slightly erratic reasoning behind an Air Jordan-only conference and the logistics of putting it together, it could actually be pretty successful.
The Jordan brand has been very meticulous and measured in its approach to corporate sponsorships. Because of that careful consideration, the Jumpman logo is only associated with strong schools.
So, the Jordan Athletic Conference would certainly be entertaining. It might not be likely, but it would probably work. With arguably more money and brand recognition than any other group of eight to 11 schools, it would be a high-powered league pitting some of the nation's most recognizable brands against one another. At the very least, it would be a very entertaining conference.
