Why Conference Realignment Will Kill College Sports

As I am sure all of you know by now, the BCS conferences are in disarray, the Big 12 is being picked apart like a carcass on the side of the road, and every time you go on ESPN, Yahoo, or AOL Fanhouse, you hear another story about what conference Texas and Oklahoma are going to.

While it is stupid that anyone seriously thinks that Texas and Oklahoma would bolt from the Big 12 and their rivalry and tradition that follows it, the idea of these super conferences is what scares me.

Seeing a money grab in amateur always leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth as grown adults make a profit on young kids' hard work that they get nothing for, and then punish them when they rock the boat; it's disgusting. This conference merger talk is so disturbing because education is being absolutely ignored.

Oh yeah that same education card that the BCS conferences play whenever it works in their advantage. We don't need a college playoff because the students will be away from class. Or the players get paid with the opportunity of an education.  The same broken record lines that we hear whenever the powers that be in the NCAA decide they don't want to do what is right.

But when the NCAA does want to do something, the education card magically goes away. How much class do you think the Texas Longhorns basketball team would get during a West Coast swing in this hypothetical Pac-16. If the answer you reached was "none," you answered correctly.

And non-revenue sports would absolutely die, with the bus trips involved even less school would be attended, this whole idea just seems wrong, putting teams in a situation with the travel and greed in this sets a horrible message and precedent to youth sports that already exists.

The idea that profiting from youth sports is OK, but selling the people who earn you that money is a cardinal sin. It is glorified child labor. This whole situation is an example of what is wrong with amateur sports, and this is coming from a person who lives in the heart of the crooked world of Major Junior Hockey.

When are we as college sports fans finally going to take a stand on this? College football has been running a hypocritical system for nearly a century and everyone has just chosen to play along, and go to the games, and give their hard earned money to booster programs for a program that churns out money hand over fist.

The Super-Conferences are unlikely, but at what point does college football finally have to answer to the hypocritical policy that it operates with?