Big 12-Big East Merger: Why Superconferences Will Force More Mergers

Upon the news of several teams potentially joining the SEC and Pac-12, the Big East and Big 12 find themselves in a bind, left for dead as college football moves toward superconferences.

That's why there's predictably some talk of the Big East and Big 12 merging to make up for their losses and create a superconference of their own.

Pittsburgh and Syracuse will depart the Big East. If Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech depart for the Pac-12, a Big East-Big 12 merger would look something like this: Baylor, Kansas State, Kansas, Iowa State, Louisville, Cincinnati, South Florida, West Virginia and Texas Christian. The LA Times also speculates that Boise State, SMU and Houston could be added to the mix.

But while this merger would mainly be enacted because of the Big East and Big 12's numerous losses, this could become a trend as the rest of college football tries to keep up with the SEC and Pac-12.

When you have this much firepower in the SEC and Pac-12, there's the potential for an annual SEC versus Pac-12 matchup in the BCS National Championship Game. That puts a whole lot more pressure on other conferences to keep from being dwarfed by the superconferences.

Like it or not, this is the way college football is moving. Once the SEC and Pac-12 expansions are completed, we may never go back to the old way of doing things, spreading programs across various conferences.

I personally like this a lot. Sure, there is the potential for certain conferences to suffer, but it does put pressure on all of college football to get better and do whatever's necessary to compete with the big dogs (besides, ahem, breaking NCAA rules).

This is an exciting time for college football. We're going to see some fantastic competition in the coming years because of this, and in the long run, I think this is going to make college football bigger and better.

For traditionalists, however, this is going to hit them like a freight train. The days of rooting for the same group of teams are soon to be over.