Nebraska | Obsessedsportsnut's Blog

June 15, 2010

College Football Expansion: the dust finally clears

Filed under: football — Tags: big 10, big 12, conference expansion, Nebraska, pac-10, texas — Jonathan Lee @ 10:55 am

so after weeks of speculation about this Pac-16 megaconference, it turns out…nothing drastic will happen. it was nice to daydream this past couple of weeks about what could have been, but in the end, I always believed this was too drastic a change that the chances of this happening was pretty unrealistic.

in the end, the University of Texas decided to stay in the Big 12 of only 10 teams. on a side note, the Big 10 has 12 teams now…go figure.

a recap of what’s happened…

1) Nebraska left the Big 12 to go to the Big 10.
2) Colorado left the Big 12 to go to the Pac 10
3) Boise State left the WAC to go to the Mountain West Conference

All along, Texas kept placing the possible downfall of the Big 12 on Nebraska and Colorado for deciding to leave. However throughout this entire ordeal, it was always Texas that was the biggest key to keeping the conference intact. In the end, yes it was Texas’s decision, and they finally decided to stay.

Why? Money, money, money. All along, I’ve always said its been about the money.

By staying, the Longhorns have re-negotiated their contracts to make an estimated $20-$25 million a year, as opposed to $10-$15 million before. They have also been allowed to create their own tv network that will bring in $3-$5 million a year. On top of that, Texas will keep the buyout penalty that Colorado and Nebraska have to pay for leaving the Big 12.

Another reason to have doubted the expansion rumors to the Pac-10 was the fact that Texas has always been the “alpha male” in its conference. If it had joined the Pac-10, it would have had to compete with equally strong schools such as USC, UCLA, and Stanford (who have won the Director’s Cup for the past 15+ years as the country’s top athletic program). No one in the Big 12 dares to put up a fight with Texas and they just bow down to their presence. On the contrary, there are many schools in the Pac-10 that would put up a fight with Texas.

The ramifications of everything…

1) The Big 10 gets what it has always wanted…Nebraska so they can hold a conference championship game. Ideally they would have wanted Notre Dame, but Nebraska has always been there #2 choice.

2) The Big 12 might turn out stronger with this change. Nebraska and Colorado never really offered much lately to the Big 12 in terms of football or basketball, and with the departure of these two, the Big 12 can now play in a single division. Before they had played in two very, very competitively unbalanced divisions, with the South composed of Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech, and the North composed of teams like Nebraska, Missouri Kansas State, and Iowa State in the other. How unfair were these divisions? The South has won 10/14 championship games, including the last 6.

3) The Pac-10 has to be the biggest loser here. Yeah they were able to bring in Colorado, but they definitely struck out trying to bring the entire Big 12 south to the conference. They are still one team short of a championship conference game, and will have to go back to the drawing board to see who to invite. All guesses will be the University of Utah Utes.

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June 11, 2010

College Football Expansion: Let The Domino Effect Begin

Filed under: football — Tags: bcs, big 10, big 12, Boise State, college football expansion, Colorado, Mountain West, Nebraska, pac-10 — Jonathan Lee @ 4:00 pm

Rumors this entire week have been swirling about what’s going to happen with regards to the Big 10, Big 12, and Pac-10 in the future.

Well in the past 24 hours, two major players made their first move, and now its time to see how the dominoes fall. In a completely unrelated move, another football powerhouse made it huge move.

Here the main things you need to know…

1) Last night, the University of Colorado officially accepted an offer to the join the Pac-10, which I guess will be the Pac-11 right now. Like I mentioned yesterday in a previous post, the Pac-10 had always targeted Colorado because Denver is a significant TV market.

2) Today, the University of Nebraska officially accepted an offer to leave the Big-12 and head to the Big-10 (I’m not sure what they’ll be called. After Penn State joined the conference, they’ve had 11 schools…and were still called the Big-10).

3) Boise State, the nation’s best mid-major conference team (not part of the Pac-10, Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 10 or Big 12), made a move to leave the weak Western Athletic Conference and join the relatively strong Mountain West Conference.

What does this all mean and what’s going to happen moving forward?

1) The Big 12 is officially down to 10 teams, two teams short of what’s required to host a conference championship game. It’s highly unlikely that the Big 12 is going to be able to survive for now, and its more and more likely that Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State will follow Colorado and join the Pac-10 to form the Pac-16.

2) With the Big-12 collapsing, there was talk about what to do with their BCS bid. Since the Pac-16 would be powerful, there was even talk about giving two bids to the conference, one each for each division winner, which I think is a terrible idea.

With Boise State joining the Mountain West Conference, I say the MWC gets an automatic BCS bid. If Boise State was in the MWC last season, the MWCwould have had 4 teams ranked in the top 25: Boise State, TCU, Brigham Young, and Utah.

Year after year, these teams continue to show that they have the ability to compete with the major conferences. It’s about time that we reward them.

3) Basketball and small markets get screwed.

This expansion has always been about money, and unfortunately the basketball schools (Kansas) and the small market schools (Baylor) get screwed.

For a program that has such a rich history like Kansas with regards to basketball, it’s kind of sad to see them without a major conference to play in. However, I believe this “homelessness” will be short-lived as the Big-East (a power conference in basketball already) will come along and invite them.