So the Big Ten conference now has 12 programs and the Big 12 has 10. Got it? The Pac 10 can no longer brag about being the only true league with every conference member playing each other during the season as they are now too big to do so. Once the Pac 10 adds Utah, or some other fortunate soul, to be the 12th team in the conference, they will be done expanding for now. And that is good, because no one was ready for the myriad changes to the sport their expansion to 16 teams would have unleashed.
Will the Big 12 miss Colorado and Nebraska? Sure, at least competitively on the football field (well, Nebraska anyway and the basketball programs just saw their RPIs go up with the loss of two lowly programs). But considering that funeral dirges were being played moments earlier, losing two programs is a problem that can easily be solved. And as an aside, why do sports journalists love to kill off conferences before their time? They did so with the Big East too in the mid 2000s.
As far as competition goes, Boise State's move to the Mountain West may be the biggest news of all. If the conference can hold on to Utah, it will be loaded with big-time programs. Nebraska moving to the Big Ten is big too, of course, but the conference will still be under-appreciated until they can win a national title. Perhaps the Cornhuskers will help there. Penn State almost won it all in their second year of conference play. Meanwhile, Big 12 fans are warning the Huskers that they may not be able to recruit Texas as well as they did in the past, and perhaps the two or three players they lose there will find themselves on rosters of Iowa State, Missouri, Kansas and/or Kansas State, thus helping those schools too.
So the conference realignment craze is over for now. There are no super conferences and we can now, I hope, focus on the upcoming season.
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