"Alright, that's it. We're moving to the Pac 10. Leave him here."
It was just one year ago that we were sitting in the college football world and debating whether the Big 12 Conference was on the same stage as the SEC. Now the conference is in shambles and likely dead. With half the league moving to the Pac 10, and Nebraska moving to the Big 10, speculation is open as to what college football will be in the future.
The common fan likely believes that this is one more step to a playoff system in college, but I believe it is one step farther away. For college to adapt to a playoff system it needed to fix three things. It needed to have the Big 10 add one team to form a championship game. The Pac 10 needed to add Boise State and Utah to form their own championship conference, while also eliminating the Mountain West argument. Finally the Big East needed to add four teams to make their own championship. Six conference champions needed to join together with two at large teams to create a simple bracket. Essentially the BCS doesn’t get ruined, but rather it gets improved. That is what college needed.
But to have college football jumble this badly does nothing to help a playoff. With the new formation of the Pacific 16, the Big 16 and the SEC (16) we will now have three money hungry, powerful entities. College football is currently a 2-tier setup that is divided by the BCS. But with the new formation there will be four tiers. The top three conferences will have all the power and all of the glory, and the 2nd tier (ACC, Big East leftovers) will look like the Mountain West does now. The Mountain West will still stand as the best of the bottom and the spoils (see: Sunbelt Conference) will still be powerless.
The three major conferences will never want to have a playoff system because they have found a way to get a one in three chance of a championship game ticket. The fact of the matter is that the distance between the BCS and a playoff system has not come closer, but has grown much farther away. In fact the historical presence that you remember from the bowl games in the past is gone. Remember the 2005 championship game where Vince Young beat USC? That game never would have happened. And what about the future of a historical duo like the Rose Bowl. Nobody will be excited to see Nebraska and Oklahoma State in the Rose Bowl Parade.
What about the geographic division between conferences. Could we really see a Pac 16 South conference that had Texas, Oklahoma and USC against each other? And the winner of that battle gets to destroy the North Division’s best combo of Washington State and Colorado? Could the Big 16 really be split up to have the current Big 12 North, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin taking on Ohio State each year? There will be no perfect way to split up divisions, but there definitely isn’t going to be a winner in a 16-team conference.
You keep hearing about the money potential that the three major conferences are playing with, but at this point it is monopolizational greed. I haven’t heard anything about the college football world being corrupt and greedy, until now. College football had a place everyone’s hearts that couldn’t be touched. That was of course until college football sold itself out this week. We haven’t gotten anywhere closer to a playoff system, but rather have gotten closer to hating college football for all the same reasons that some hate the NFL. Tradition, history and heart were all sold out this week, and the Big 12 unfortunately was the conference that had to suffer.
