It is game on in college football In the last 48 hours, we’ve seen more upheaval in college football than anything in the last 15 years.
Here’s what’s gone down since Friday morning.
Boise State jumped from the WAC to the Mountain West Conference. Now we’re hearing that the Mountain West, tired and irked at not getting into the BCS automatic bid club, is pursing Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri.
Except hang on, says ESPN’s Joe Schad, the Pac 10 leaders want Utah instead of Kansas…which means the Mountain West may have to add someone else.
Those schools are available because the Big 12 is imploding as we speak. Colorado has jumped to the Pac 10, soon to be Pac 16. Nebraska has booked for the real Big 12 now, running alongside Ohio State and Michigan.
Stand by for more.
The lower tier of the Big 12, the south division, has split from the rest of that conference like the San Andreas fault line. Saturday, the Pac pick your number commissioner, Larry Scott was in Oklahoma and Texas, delivering personal invitations to Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas Tech and Texam A&M to join his conference. He may only get four of those five teams. But late last night the Oklahoma City newspaper reported that Oklahoma gave the Pac 10 a thumbs up.
Because late Saturday, SEC commissioner, Mike Slive was in College Station Texas to talk to that school’s administration about joining his conference. One report last night had the A&M Board Of Regents ready to OK a move to the SEC. But one of the regents, Gene Stallings, the former A&M and Alabama coach says nobody has asked him about voting on a move.
Are you with me so far?
Over at East Carolina, Athletic Director, Terry Holland posted an open letter on the school’s web site to his faithful, detailing the life and death struggle that he believes the Big East Conference finds itself in today.
Interesting that Holland got an urge to write about this, as he’s been salivating all over the Big East, wanting to bring his Pirates the land of Bearcats and Cardinals.
According to the gospel of Terry, the Big East is trying to figure out a way to not only hang onto its eight football playing teams. It’s also trying to add teams who play football.
Oh and Holland adds this: the Big East is holding out hope that Notre Dame will finally join as a football playing member.
Someone needs to get Holland an aspirin
Meantime, at Notre Dame, the body snatcher posing as an athletic director told the Chicago Tribune his school has no interest in joining a conference.
But that opinion will only hold until another super conference or two is formed. Think about it. If we really do get to four 16 team super conferences, the majority of the conference games will be against each other. Who does Notre Dame, as an independent schedule if that happens? Maybe the Irish can make Tulsa, Western Michigan and the military academies yearly opponents. That oughta get NBC to keep forking over $14 million dollar contracts.
All of this affects nothing at UC, not yet. But here’s how it will. If Notre Dame continues to cling to its independent status, the Big 10 will look elsewhere to get to 16 teams. It will need four more. The most likely league to be poached is the Big East. The most likely teams would be Pitt, Rutgers…they want Rutgers for the New York TV market but honestly, the majority of people in the New York area couldn’t give a flying hop about that team…..and Syracuse. If that happens, that would leave the Big East with just five football playing members. Here’s the math: that’s seven teams short of the 12 needed to stage a conference championship game, which appears to be the critera for futre BCS status.
The Big East’s problem is also it’s strength. It’s the best basketball conference on the planet right now. But eight of its league members don’t play football. If you add seven teams to the equation….if you add only two, you’ve got an unwieldy lot of teams for basketball scheduling. Does the Big East, as was suggested in some reports this week, tell schools like Seton Hall, Providence and DePaul to take a hike? Don’t see that happening.
In short, college athletics have been a mess in the last 48 hours. And the domino effect of what the Pac 10 is doing right now will be significant. One of the epicenters of the shake up could be right here, in river city.
