Buzz Blog
As early as Friday, Nebraska could join the Big Ten conference along with Missouri, fleeing the Big 12 and long-time rivals Texas and Oklahoma for competition with the likes of Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State and (more likely every day, seemingly) Notre Dame.
If Nebraska leaves, a college sports civil war will almost assuredly follow. Already, the PAC 10 has extended invitations to 6 Big 12 schools, including Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. That would make the PAC 10 a 16 team super-conference, which would apparently prompt the SEC to track down teams from, mostly, the Big East to create their own 16-team conference.
In short, the moves would effectively kill the Big 12 and Big East. And picking up the scraps of the Big 12, according to the Bleacher report, would be the Mountain West, which could also become a super-conference. Those teams could include Kansas, Kansas St., Iowa St., and Colorado. Oh, and it would probably be able to lure Boise St. from WAC, despite reports this past weekend that Boise St. would remain in the WAC.
Under the current bullshit BCS system, the Mountain West would almost assuredly become a BCS conference. However, if two of the current BCS conferences disappeared, there's plenty of speculation from bloggers that not only will the BCS system crumble, but the bowl system in general. The latter is probably not very likely, because bowls don't really depend on conferences. But the BCS is built on a system of rewarding competition within conferences, so they would have to rethink their approach, especially if there are only 3-4 super-conferences.
On the flipside, if the Big 12 teams flee for the PAC 10, it would effectively eliminate long-standing hopes by Utah and BYU fans that their teams would be at the top of the list for any PAC 10 expansions. Of course, they could wind up joining Big 12 Part Deux, which would probably look very much like the super-Mountain West scenario above plus a some Conference USA schools added to round out the mess.
Regardless, it would definitely hurt the smaller conferences like the WAC, who would find themselves even further on the outside of even having even a remote shot at national titles or, for that matter, exposure. Or, if the Big 12 Part Deux happened, then the WAC's upper-echelon would join the Mountain West, leaving the WAC to look at even smaller conferences (Big West, Sun Belt) for teams.
