College Football Cafeteria » Expansion

What’s Going On With Conference Realignment?

Sloppy Joe — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:17:55 +0000

So a few things have changed since last we addressed conference realignment. It looks like the Big East is trying to court TCU and Villanova. Memphis and UCF are the back ups. The WAC is making a splash by being the first step for a lot of little guys into the big time. Who are they you ask?

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The Big East Is Expanding To 10 Football Teams

Sloppy Joe — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:30:39 +0000

It’s official: the Big East athletic directors, school presidents and everyone else involved in the conference have agreed that it is in the conference’s best interests to move from 8 to 10 teams in football. Or, in their own words: “Today, our Board of Directors affirmed a set of key strategic initiatives, including expansion, designed to enhance membership stability and maximize our value.” So who will be the lucky two teams do you think?

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Will The FBS Be 4 Mega Conferences?

Sloppy Joe — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:47:05 +0000

Expansion talk has died down now that actual games are being played. I’ll leave the game analysis for another post. I just had a thought that I can truly see play out that could be good or bad for college football, depending on how you look at it. And it has to do with the possibility of mega conferences.

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Mountain West and Conference USA merger?

Nellie — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:49:20 +0000

Bleacher report just published a story about a possible merger between the MWC and Conference USA. If the MWC can pick off a few quality teams from Conference USA, then it becomes a mid-major superpower, and can really challenge the BCS conferences for sooner addmission into AQ status, and BYU really would have to rethink leaving a conference poised to be able to renegociate their agreement with college football as well as a new, more profitable TV deal.

This would solve all of BYU’s reasons for leaving, and make it really kind of stupid to do so. Updates will follow on any more breaking news.

BYU’s dillemma

Nellie — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:36:36 +0000

My how things have changed in the last few hours. Somehow the incompetent Craig Thompson, commissioner of the MWC seems to have made it nearly impossible for BYU to leave without injury to it’s non-football sports by raiding the WAC of Nevada and Fresno State. This move changes things in a two important ways. First, if BYU leaves the MWC and uses the WAC for basketball and other sports, they are joining a conference that is significantly weakened, to the point that if one more team leaves it will cease to be a conference. The WAC will have to add FCS (Division IAA) schools or try to raid the MAC or Sunbelt or Conference USA to bolster it back to an acceptable size, but water-down it’s competitiveness even further. That leaves BYU’s other sports the big fish in the microscopic pond. True, Utah State’s basketball team helps, but the resultant RPI for BYU basketball drops to dangerous levels and threatens the success of their basketball program, as well as the quality of opponents that are available for the Cougars football schedule. It becomes much more of a risk to leave the conference because the partner that you were planning on leaning on has now lost a leg, and might not survive.

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BYU Is Leaving The Mountain West Conference To Be Independent

Sloppy Joe — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:11:13 +0000

Sources are now confirming what Craig Thompson and the entire MWC have been fearing since Utah left for the Pac-10: BYU is pulling a Sarah Palin and “going rogue.” It seems the only thing in the way now is the pending approval of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who owns Brigham Young University. In a nutshell, here’s what this means: BYU will be a football independent but will play all other sports in the Western Athletic Conference, a conference they dominated for a good part of 40 years. What does the move mean for the college sports landscape? That’s a different story altogether.

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The New Big Ten and Pac-12 Divisions

Sloppy Joe — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:34:55 +0000

Ever since Nebraska joined the Big Ten and Colorado and Utah joined the Pac-10, no one has said much about how the conferences will be structured. Granted, the change can’t even happen this year so it isn’t a big deal, but what is the best natural fit for each conference? They obviously want a championship, so that requires to divisions of 6 teams each. Do you divide by geography? By rivalry? By seniority? What makes sense for each conference?

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My Proposed Big Texas Conference

Sloppy Joe — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:00:00 +0000

I know everyone is already calling the new Big XII the Big Texas Conference, but hold your horses. Texas obviously owns the conference and all bow to their will. But this whole thing got me thinking- what if there really was a Big Texas conference? What would it look like? How would it go? I’ll tell you one thing, it would probably be light years better than the now mangled Big XII.

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The SEC plan for expansion

Sloppy Joe — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:57:31 +0000

Well, it came out this week that OU and Texas A&M were in fact invited by a top official into the SEC. They of course refused because neither school has a spine and cowers in the presence of almighty Texas. So the now decimated and pathetic Big XII is now the Big X. Everyone has talked about them over and over and over again, us included. But the interesting thing people are missing here is about the SEC. Hello?! They tried to expand to 14 schools and no one seemed to care! It would have been a great plan too. Imagine adding OU and Texas A&M along with Vandy to the west division and Alabama and Auburn to the east division. But alas, not to be. However, this does give us an insight into the SEC’s plans for expansion in the future.

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Expansion Who Wins, Who Loses

Chris — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:50:28 +0000

Okay with the dust finally settling in this realignment business, we can be sure of one thing that even though things may be calm and the wholesale changes to different conferences has been stemmed for now, the realignment talk is not done.

Let’s recap; Utah leaves the Mountain West behind and joins the Pac-10, Boise St. replaces them in the MWC after leaving the WAC Nebraska and Colorado leaves the Big-12 for a chance to play in the Rose Bowl, Nebraska to the Big-10, and Colorado to the Pac-10. For the record only four programs will be filing change of address forms for now.

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