Josh Pate uses Florida's example to showcase impact of Conference Realignment on disparity in CFB

In the last few years, a mass conference realignment has occurred in college football, leading to the creation of two "super conferences" featuring the best teams in the country.

In a post on X (formally Twitter) on Friday, college football analyst Josh Pate argued that the recent conference realignments do not benefit member schools and used the Florida Gators as a prime example of this.

"Florida plays 8 of the top 21 teams in @FDSportsbook national title odds in 2025. Conference realignment has created inexcusable disparity in strength of schedules," Pate said.

Strength of schedule is a good measurement of how tough or easy a team's schedule is. Coming into the 2024 season, Sports Illustrated said that the Florida Gators had the toughest schedule in all of college football.

This is due to games against the Georgia Bulldogs, LSU Tigers, Ole Miss Rebels, and Texas Longhorns. These four teams are some of the strongest in the entire country and are now all part of the SEC conference, with Texas joining in 2024.

This means that the Gators have to face these teams regularly, and their success will be compared directly to these stronger conference rivals. This does not help struggling programs like Florida or Mississippi State, which may be resigned to the bottom of the conference with a low win count, solely because they have to face the best teams on a weekly basis.

This problem does not go away for the Gators in 2025, as they are again set to face teams that are expected to be in the hunt for the national championship at the end of the season.

A look at the 2025 Florida Gators' Schedule

The Gators' 2025 schedule is one of the hardest in the country. As Pate mentions in his post, they face eight of the top 21 teams during their season.

Many of these games are on consecutive weeks. For example, on September 13, the Gators are set to open their SEC play against the LSU Tigers. This is directly followed by a game against the Miami Hurricanes (who, without Cam Ward as quarterback, may be an easier game than what they were this season). The Gators then face Texas, followed by Texas A&M.

A few weeks later, it was Georgia, followed by Ole Miss and then Tennessee.

These are all teams that have been very strong in recent years. While we cannot predict whether they will maintain this form in 2025, the Gators are likely to be on the back foot going into these games.

Super conferences may be great for the fans and the teams that are strong enough to compete, but for everyone else, they only highlight the massive disparity between each program.