In college football, East was East and West was West, until the latest — and biggest — tectonic shift among the 11 Football Bowl Series conferences. Starting next year, San Diego State will play in the Big East. Syracuse and Pittsburgh, which are nowhere near the Atlantic Coast, will join the Atlantic Coast Conference. Colorado and Utah, which know about surf chiefly by rumor, now belong to the Pacific 12.

In the last two years, more than 30 colleges have switched football conferences, with no league unaffected. The Western Athletic Conference, which has been around for half a century, will drop the sport next year after a mass exodus.