Monday, September 19, 2011

Your Morning Conference Realignment Update

((ht: statesman.com))

Well, the next dominos to fall in the "Galactic Realignment" of College Football should fall if not today (Monday), then sometime in the next couple of days.

We, along with the rest of the universe, reported both Texas and Oklahoma regents would be meeting today to discuss their options. Those options, at least from their perspective got a bit clearer this weekend when Pitt and Syracuse committed to the ACC.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, substantive talks between Texas and others with the Pac-12 occurred this weekend. Made more convenient due to Texas playing UCLA in Los Angeles. This despite Pac-12 commish Larry Scott saying just last week, "We're happy where we are". And we will say, these schools are coming to the Pac-12, not the other way around.

Statesman reporter Kirk Bohls reports Texas would prefer to stay in the Big 12, but that may not be possible.

Read the entire story RIGHT HERE

What it appears will happen is this: Oklahoma, Oklahoma St., Texas Tech and Texas appear all but certain to head to the Pac-12. Scott is doing his best to try and accommodate/fold in, the Longhorn Network. We are reasonably certain, that will work out.

The only question really is when?

In light of this weekends moves, we expect this all to go down this week. There has been speculation that the Big 12 will try and absorb some schools from another conference. (The Big East football schools?).

Initially, we thought it would be the Big East and ACC who would have to combine to make their own super-conference, we don't think that now. It will end up being the remnants of the Big 12 combined with the Big East. It has to be. There's no other choice for any of the remaining schools to survive in the new landscape.

There are still questions out there. There is no guarantee Missouri or Kansas will sit for a combined conference. Though they certainly could and be just fine.

The other wild card is West Virginia. There's been a lot of speculation they want in the SEC. In a bad way. They question is: "Does the SEC want them?". And really, nobody knows the answer to that.

A Sports-Talk radio host in Pittsburgh tweeted Sunday that the Mountaineers have already sent their paperwork to the SEC. And the interest is mutual.

We could go on forever discussing the repercussions of all this. There are a lot of teams and a lot of people who are anxiously awaiting the fallout. The seismic shift is coming and while Saturday's announcement was big and in some ways, very surprising, it won't be the biggest. That friends, is a rose that has yet to be delivered.

We don't watch this show, though the Lovely Bride does, and don't totally understand this, but it is the best analogy would could think of visually to go along with this story, because these schools and conferences are essentially doing the same thing.

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