Chop Culture has experienced some internet problems recently -- I apologize for the lack of recent posts. I will have a mailbag out within a week.
I am not a fan of conference expanison. In my opinion, 12 members is ideal and certainly enough to constitute "power conference" status. If I were the commissioner of the Pac-10, I would try to get just Texas and Oklahoma and become the Pac-12. I bet they could get both of those schools to join without adding four others. Instead, they appear to be adding Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M. I dont get the appeal of the Pac-16. You add two powerhouse football programs and basically four more middle of the pack / mediocre bowl teams. Assuming they will have two 8-team divisions, no teams from opposite divisions will play until the conference championship game -- isn't that like having two separate conferences? At least in the Big East -- where they have 16 basketball teams (but only 8 football teams) -- they play everyone once in the regular season. In 12-team football conferences, you at least get to play everyone in your division and half of the other division (on a rotating basis) every season.
Nebraska appears to be headed for the Big 10, probably out of self-preservation more than anything else. The rumors about the Pac-10 have been swirling for weeks and Nebraska has never been a part of that discussion. I don't blame them for jumping ship out of the Big 12, but I bet they wouldn't have done it if they knew Texas, Oklahoma, etc. were staying put.
I blame one school for all of this conference expansion business: Notre Dame. It's easy to put the blame on the Pac-10, but if Notre Dame had agreed to become the Big 10's 12th member I don't think any Big 12 team would leave. Then the Pac-10 would have been in a position to choose from among BYU, Utah, TCU, UNLV, and Fresno State. Since none of those school seem as appealing as the Big 12 schools, the Pac-10 would likely either stay at 10 schools or only expand to 12 schools.
I predict the ACC and SEC schools will stay intact and remain at 12 schools...for now. I see the rest of the conference landscape shaping up as follows:
Pac-10: adds the 6 schools mentioned above and becomes the Pac-16.
Big-12: dissolves.
Big-10: adds Nebraska, Missouri, Rutgers, Syracuse, and Pitt and becomes the Big-16.
Big East: loses Rutgers, Syracuse, and Pitt -- adds Kansas, Kansas State, and Memphis.
Conference USA, WAC, and Mountain West fight over Baylor and Iowa State.
If the SEC expands and the other conferences expand as predicted above, here are my top 10 candidates for the four spots (in order of most likely to happen): Florida State, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Miami, Louisville, NC State, Maryland, West Virginia, and South Florida.
I don't expect UNC, Duke, UVa, Wake Forest, Maryland, or NC State to leave the ACC no matter what -- they are all original members of the ACC and none consider football their best or most important sport. If the SEC expands, its focus will be on football. In fact, I would say that conference expansion in general comes down to football. Football and money.
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I advocated for power conferences back in a 2008 fantasy football posting and got made fun of for the idea. Even though I feel vindicated, I am not in love with the idea. I don't understand why the entire conferences must realign just for football. Trust me, I get that its about the money and TV deals, but isn't the more simple solution to have the conferences stay put and then create a post-conference regionals? The NCAA does this for every other sport except football and basketball. For all the money the schools make on Fball, isn't it a waste of money and resources to have the Texas A&M girls tennis team travel to Washington State for a wednesday night matchup? I thought we were in a "green" revolution?
Chop, my understanding is that the Texas legislature will not allow UT leave the conference without A&M, Tech, and Baylor. UNC, Duke, Wake and State are tied at the hip, but for the same reasons (state legislatures) they must stay together. Btw, Clemson and Maryland are ACC charter members too. Univ. of Florida would block FSU and Miami's entrance into the SEC and considering their 4 titles in Fball and Bball over the last 4 years, they can probably have that much pull in the conference.
Agreed that Notre Dame could've stopped the blood-letting, but its really hard to blame the university's decision when it can choose to play games on the west coast (USC) and the east coast (army/navy) in the same season, and control an entire network.
Give us an all-worldcup mailbag, please. -Hunt
Hunt - It takes more than one school (i.e., Florida) to stop FSU from going to the SEC. Usually you need 2/3 vote or 75% of the member schools to agree. Hopefully, the SEC won't expand, but I think FSU will be one of the schools if they do.
I know Clemson was an original ACC member, but unlike the other 6 I mentioned Clemson considers football its best and most important sport. They fit it with the SEC more than any other school in the ACC.
If the Texas legislature is really insisting that Baylor be included in this Pac-10 deal, who is getting screwed? Oklahoma State? I bet Baylor ends up on the outside looking in and accepts a spot in the WAC.
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