Hurray, Hurray, the Pac-12 decided against tearing what's left of the Big 12 to threads and expanding to 16 teams. We've all been saved from college football expansion overload.Wrong.
The college football landscape is still very unsettled and extremely volatile. Yes, the Big 12 is safe for another day. That's about it.
I'm convinced aggressive conference expansion will continue until it rips apart the college football scene. While this sounds very negative, which it mostly is, there are still some positives to alongside those greedy negatives...
1- First and foremost, as conference expansion continues and super conferences form, the BCS will have to be completely restructured, if not totally done away with. Either way, we wind up with a system resembling nothing close to the current system.
The most likely scenario of expansion, leads four super conferences (Pac 16, Big Ten, SEC and ACC) and the dismantling of the Big 12 and Big East (not they ever belonged in the BCS to begin with). In this likeliest of scenarios, we are led to the next positive...
2- Playoffs. Yes, Jim Mora, we are talking about playoffs. With so many power schools aligning in the same conference, playoffs will be necessary to determine a national champion. When USC, Texas and Oklahoma all go 10-1 playing in the Pac-16, which team gets the nod in the polls?
Each conference will have a conference championship game you say? With 16 teams in a conference and 8 in each division, there isn't much time left on the schedule after playing all the conference games, in addition to the season openers against teams like Florida Atlantic or Middle of Nowhere State. Which leads me to my next point...3- There is not enough time to play a full schedule AND have deep college playoffs. Teams cannot play a full 11 or 12 game schedule, play a conference championship and then play three more playoffs games. Somethings got to give. Playoffs produce tons of money. Conference championships produce tons of money. Texas vs Midwest Texas Southern A&M Tech? Not so much.
To play a full conference schedule, a conference championship, as well as two to three playoff games, the regular season schedule will have to be shortened. No more patsies to open the season or in the middle of the season. Just good teams playing good teams. Definitely a positive.
College football is walking a very precarious line right now and doing so with no real commissioner to guide the sport. Instead, conference commissioners are determining the fate of the sports' future, greed and arrogance rule, and it's become an adapt or die mentality.
While I'm all for anything leading us away from the BCS and towards a playoff, it's unfortunate this is what it might take to accomplish that.
The only good thing is that it could lead effectively to an 8-team playoff (conference championship games between the winners of each division) then a 4 team playoff among the conference champs. That said, all of this conference shuffling exemplifies the greed and double-speak of the University Presidents and conference commissioners. No one is looking at the impacts of travel on student athletes. It's all about the money.
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