Not So Seismic Afterall

This isn't a rumors blog, so I have tried not to speculate about the impending College Football Armageddon until it went down. Well, a funny thing happened along the way - it never happened. A few teams moved conferences, but overall the picture is the same as it ended last year.

Instead of taking more money to join the Pac-10 in 2011, Texas made a shocking decision to stay in the Big 12 conference, prompting Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma St to also stay. I think one more piece needs to fall into place, but the end results look like this:

• Colorado from Big 12 to Pac-10
• Nebraska from Big 12 to Big 10
• Boises St from WAC to Mountain West

That's it. Really. Only three big changes. Now, the Big 10, Pac-10 and Big 12 will probably change names and the Pac-10 will add a 12th team (ok, one rumor: most likely Utah) while the Big 12 may decide to add two or stay at 10. Besides those minor alterations, no seismic changes were seen.

What does this mean for college football? To be honest, I'm not sure that anything changes. The Pac 10, in adding Colorado and potentially Utah, will add Denver and Salt Lake City to their markets, but they are hardly sexy picks that would have brought a massive Pac 10 Network into mainstream (imagine USC and either Texas/OU in the Pac 16 title game every year). The Big 12, if they decide to stay put, will no longer have a football championship game while the Big 10 can have a championship game and rake in some extra bucks. Ultimately though, while Nebraska's style of football is perfect for the Big 10, I wonder if the league could have done better with someone else, like say Pitt or Rutgers. They don't have the tradition of Big Red, but they have the all important TV markets that this whole mess is about.

Come postseason time, nothing changes. We still have 4 huge conferences, 3 semi-huge, 4 also-rans and one big mess of a championship picture that will not be fixed in the foreseeable future. (I have proposed the following for several years now: it's my idea of keeping bowl games while having a playoff. SEC, Big 12, Big 10 and Pac 10 get the 1-4 seeds while the Big East, ACC and MWC get seeds 5-7. One and only one at large team, then gets the 8 seed. For all the other teams, keep the bowl system. Humanitarian Bowl still exists as does the Liberty Bowl. Keep the small guys. Then for the 4 quarterfinal games, have them be the Cotton, Holiday, Outback and Orange Bowls. The Semi's are the Sugar and Fiesta while the title game goes to Pasadena in the Rose Bowl. It's all very simple. Unfortunately money, which drove the conference realignment will also keep anything like this from happening.)

This whole episode has been driven by money and tv networks. Amazingly Texas made the bold move to turn down the bigger bucks to remain loyal to the conference that brought them on board nearly 15 years ago. This may or may not be a good decision for Texas, but I have to wonder if changing conferences would have at least been good for the public. At the very lest, having 3 mega power conferences would have made us reexamine the BCS and that is never a bad thing...