College Football Consolidation

The BCS was always BS...

Talk of the consolidation of college football's major conferences has been all the rage this week. Today it looks as if it is becoming official, with University of Colorado's announcement that it is joining the PAC-10 and the University of Nebraska announcement that it is bolting the Big 12 for the Big 10. This will very quickly make the Big 12 no mas, as most of the remaining teams will seize the opportunity to make the PAC-10 a sixteen team league.

As wily observers know this is all about the haves and have-nots amongst the college football power players. The expansion of PAC-10 to a sixteen team league will be followed in short order by the Big-10 and SEC expanding to sixteen team leagues. The ACC will also be reluctantly forced to do so to ally with the college football superpowers. This will allow these four conferences to sideline the NCAA, as well as the BCS and have their own college football playoff. It is all about the dead presidents and there is no reason for the college football programs with the juice to split the Division I-A college football revenue pie one-hundred and eleven ways when they can reduce that split to sixty-four.

There is an interesting analysis about how this came about by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports here. However that is looking backward, the Clarion Content is more fascinated by how things will turn out going forward. Our prediction is it will not be long before the Big East is a basketball only league again. Villanova, St. John's and Georgetown will not mind. The question is what happens to the storied and not so storied programs from the current BCS conferences that end up on the outside looking in at the money. Our speculation on the schools that might end up on that list would include Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and UConn. These schools along with the already jilted: Utah, Utah State, Boise State and Fresno States of the world may be made enough to actually get congressional action this time.

Have the college football commissioners warned the university presidents that their radical schemes for the future might bring about anti-trust lawsuits and Department of Justice maneuvering. President Obama signaled way back in the election campaign that he was pro-college football playoff, but by any means necessary?

The Clarion Content is pro-college football playoff too, but it is easy to feel genuine concern that money has distorted the system so badly that these schools are losing track of their education mission to their student bodies and their duty to the college athlete. And maybe this was already so under the corrupt and co-opted NCAA, but will this consolidation make it any better? Quien sabe?