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College conferences keep stealing each other's Olympic valor thanks to realignment

blake schuster
·3 min read
Katie Ledecky adjusts her goggles before competing in the 200 meter freestyle swim on Sunday, June 16, 2024, during prelims for the U.S. Olympic Team Swimming Trials at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Katie Ledecky adjusts her goggles before competing in the 200 meter freestyle swim on Sunday, June 16, 2024, during prelims for the U.S. Olympic Team Swimming Trials at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

The Olympics are generally a time where the world comes together to bask in the awesomeness of the greatest athletes on the planet. A global event where even the most patriotic among us may find themselves rooting for a foreigner after learning their story.

It's beautiful and inspiring — unless the athlete played college sports in the United States. Then it gets messy. Especially in 2024.

You see, college conferences all want one thing: bragging rights. And they don't care how tangential their conference is to someone's glory if they can claim even a partial percentage. That's only gotten more absurd after the latest round of realignment.

Conferences like the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and ACC are actually claiming medals from athletes who either haven't competed in their conference yet or, in many cases, will never compete in their conference.

It's gone hilariously too far — egregiously so in some of these cases.

The No. 1 golfer in the world did not compete in the SEC, no matter how much more it means.

Stanford alum Katie Ledecky competed in the Pac-12. The ACC did not make her. The SEC actually has a better claim, considering she trains at Florida.

But the conference certainly does not get to claim the fastest woman in the world just because she used to run at Texas. It doesn't get the Crouser Slide, either.

Yet the NCAA and it's leagues just cannot help but make the Olympics about themselves. And as long as someone is keeping score, the power conferences are going to claim whoever they need to in order to feel superior.

It's just pure silliness at this point. No one is going to be offended if the Big Ten doesn't post about a former Washington rower. It can really just leave it to the Huskies to celebrate the win.

And yet.

The thirst is just out of control.

The conferences saw the "make it about you" meme and took it as a personal challenge.

At least we can point and laugh at all of them for trying to steal each other's Olympic valor. Because you just know it's destroying some of these leagues inside when they can't claim all the glory.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: College conferences keep stealing each other's Olympic valor thanks to realignment