Is it Finally Over?

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.

View From Bennett Avenue

Well I was hoping to post on conference realignment but may as well wait until there is some more definite news. I do find it ironic that on the week that Colorado lost scholarships due to grades, they get welcomed into the Pac 10. But of course their inclusion is solely for their proximity to the Denver market. Of course if the Buffs continue to stink up the joint on the field, the good people of Denver will do something other than watch football each weekend.
The craze for markets is driving a lot of this discussion, but there seems to be a lot of misinformation. For example, I live in New York City where there are about 20 people who care about Rutgers football. I happen to be one of them, but New York City is a pro town except for some folks who liked Seinfeld and Sex in the City and moved here. But those folks still root for the school they went to or their hometown team. They did not switch to Rutgers, which is a good hour drive west and does not warrant any media coverage here in New York. So how does Rutgers bring New York sets to the Big Ten, which already has a ton of graduates of their current schools residing in metropolitan New York City?
Meanwhile I find it hilarious that no one has brought up Boston College and their move to the ACC when discussing all of this musical chairs. Every graduate that I know hates that the Eagles left the Big East. And did all of the extra money they earned by selling out get funneled back into their sports department? The reason I say that is I do not see any improvement from their teams due to any extra cash. Perhaps they will get the last laugh if the Big East folds, but maybe they could have kept it together.
I am off to the beach, from where I will write again about USC. I feel that is appropriate.