Fourth and Dumb

Three weeks ago, I thought the idea of 16-team conferences was just a series of rumors hatched by the media during a slow news month ahead of conference meetings a few weeks in the future.  However, in the past few days, the idea of a Pacific 16 Conference has grown legs and has some decent sources, and the Big 12, the biggest loser in such a proposition, appears to be dead man walking.  So it looks like the Age of the Superconference is upon us, and within a few years, we will have four 16-team conferences taking in massive amounts of money and a bunch of other conferences relegated to picking up the scraps, which will be even more meager than they are at present.

1.  The Pacific 10 Conference will get the ball rolling by raiding the Big 12.  I will run with the six schools that are rumored to be selected for the west coast superconference: Texas (the keystone), Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado.

2.  The Big Ten Conference, already a misnomer, will become even more misnamed, until they pick up five schools and rename themselves the Big 16, especially since Conferences with Big in Their Names Greater than Ten is cleared by the drawing and quartering of the Big 12.  The Big Ten takes most of the remaining members of the Big 12: Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Missouri, and Iowa State.  Missouri and, to a lesser extent, Nebraska have been glancing longingly at the Big Ten in the past few months anyway, and the Kansas schools would come along as a package as well.  Iowa State also has a natural rival in Iowa.

3.  The Southeastern Conference is not going to sit on its hands while other conferences go +4 on them.  The SEC will sense weakness in the Atlantic Coast Conference and decide now is the time to raid the southern part of the conference: Florida State, Miami, Georgia Tech, and Clemson.

4.  The remaining eight members of the ACC now need a place to go lest they be demoted to one of the have-nots.  The Big East will be ready and waiting to become the fourth 16-team conference.  The eight football schools of the Big East will combine with the eight ACC schools left behind by the claws of the SEC: Boston College, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest.

5.  The true colors of the Big East will be revealed when the marriage between the football and basketball schools, already somewhat tenuous, has a spectacular rift.  As a result, the basketball schools will become a hot commodity for another basketball conference.  Which conference would that be?  The Atlantic 10, which actually has 14 teams, will jettison its weaker members and form a new lineup with the prized non-football schools of the Big East.

Since basketball would be the driving force in the new Atlantic 10, the new conference would likely have no more than 12 teams, although 14 is a possibility.  The eight Big East schools–Georgetown, St. John’s, Villanova, Providence, DePaul, Seton Hall, Marquette, and Notre Dame (yes, Notre Dame)–will join the cream of the present Atlantic 10–Xavier, Temple, Dayton, and George Washington–to form a high level conference for basketball.  The remaining ten schools would likely form a newer conference or, less likely, split up into a smaller conference.

6.  Even before conference expansion hit the front page in the middle of the week, Boise State was long rumored to be heading to the Mountain West Conference, bringing their roster to ten.  Does the Mountain West stop there?  If the Mountain West expands further, who would be the prime targets?  A likely scenario sees Baylor, which got disenfranchised when the big boys realigned, joins the Mountain West along with UTEP.  The next four teams in line to join the Mountain West would be Fresno State, Nevada, New Mexico State, and Utah State.  However, the specter of the failed 16-team Western Athletic Conference and with an elevation to the big boy table uncertain even with Boise State, the Mountain West may stick to 12 teams…for now.

7.  The MAC and C-USA will likely remain in their present form.  There is almost no chance they benefit from the goings-on among the giants, so they have no incentive to expand beyond 12.  The WAC could be destroyed, depending on the Mountain West does.  If the WAC becomes unviable, the remnants of that conference could become part of the Sun Belt Conference, the lowest of the low.