Major Ripples Lead to Minor Changes in College Football
Are you dizzy from the confusion of all the conference realignment talk of recent weeks? Never fear, Al’s here to help clear things up.
My head hurts
I don’t blame you. We now live in a world where the Big 12 has 10 members, the Big Ten has 12 members, and the Pac 10 has 11 members. Luckily it’s easy to say what happens next. In the short term it means the Big 12 will switch to a straight 11 team conference in 2011 and 10 team conference in 2012.
This new Big 12 will have no divisions or championship game, meaning all the old rivalries remain intact.
The Big Ten will split into a 2 division format in 2011 when Nebraska joins. We can expect to still see Ohio play Michigan every year and Michigan to play Michigan State too. In fact most of the rivalries should survive although one or two might be in danger. Of course this will also see the addition of a championship game.
The future of the Pac 10 is still up in the air. Colorado is due to arrive in 2012. If it’s just Colorado then it will stay as a straight league. If a twelfth member is added then expect a model similar to the new Big Ten with two divisions and a championship game with most of the local rivalries preserved.
So what just happened?
Well the short version is a lot of people just spent the last few weeks making some big moves to try and make big money on College Football. Texas was annoyed that it wasn’t earning as much as Big 10 or SEC schools from TV contracts, as were Texas A&M and Oklahoma, while Nebraska felt it didn’t have enough power in the Big 12.
All of this left Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe staring unemployment in the face as the Pac 10, Big Ten, and SEC moved in to carve up his conference. First Colorado bolted west, then Nebraska moved to the Big Ten on Friday.
That should be been the end of the Big 12 and Beebe’s job but he lucked out. As we all know in College Football betting it’s never over until the clock hits zero.
The Pac 10 and Texas couldn’t come to an agreement on letting the Longhorns create their own cable TV network. That gave Beebe a chance to offer a new deal to Texas where the whole of the conference would make big increases in TV money with Texas getting the lion’s share, as well as letting Texas set up its own network.
With Texas getting what it wanted the other members of a potentially super-sized Pac-16 conference all had to bow to its wishes and return to the fold, for now at least. Of course this has some people wondering why he didn’t deliver such a deal before losing Colorado and Nebraska.
Far from over
Don’t go putting the aspirin back in the cupboard just yet. The Pac 10 won’t be happy with an odd number of teams, they will want a twelfth member. They could raid the Mountain West and nab Utah, meaning that conference could come out the loser from all of this despite adding Boise State. Alternatively the Pac 10 might decide that patience is a virtue and wait to plan another raid on the Big 12 in a year or two.
One thing this whole mess has taught us is there really is no off-season in College Football and that’s certainly true with Sports Interaction’s great NCAA Futures offers.
