Pac-10 Expansion Will End Fair Competition, Create Big Program Monopoly

The most important part of understanding where this article is going is understanding the presupposition:

The Pac-10 is going to expand soon, and they will bring in a lot of teams.

Those teams may be from of all the schools rumored in the Orangebloods.com article from yesterday—Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech, or it could be some combination of those schools and a few other programs.

Regardless, an expansion is going to happen (likely sooner rather than later), and it is only a matter of time.

There was a very interesting article on ESPN.com back in April about an interview with Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State coach. In the interview, "Joe Pa" claimed he had a "gut feeling" that the Pac-10 would expand before the Big Ten—forcing the Big Ten's hand.

He also said he was in favor of adding three schools to move up to 14 total, but with a major and aggressive Pac-10 move, the Big Ten would likely need to move up to 16 as well.

That would force action from the SEC, the Big East, and the ACC.

It isn't difficult to see the domino effect that will occur when the Pac-10 makes its move. It has been suggested that there will be a new "Superconference" era with four major allegiances: the Pac-10/Big 12, the new Big Ten (Now with more Notre Dame!), the new SEC, and what is left of the ashes of the ACC and Big East.

With all of the broadcast money that these schools could make from such a restructuring, it seems to be a foregone conclusion that events will shake out—now is not the time to buy into the "perhaps in a few years" speculation.

After all, the thing everyone hates the most about college football (the BCS National Title) came from the same stacks of broadcasting money.

It has been speculated that in the Pac-10's situation, such a merger would at least double revenue for every school involved.

With that kind of money on the line, can the University of Texas really try to leverage and say they deserve even more cash?

Universities in a modern context have become nothing more than businesses feasting off of naive young folk diving into barrels of non-cancel-able student loans. They'll smell the money on this and it will happen—no matter how many great rivalries are broken up because of it.

What does it mean for a college football landscape that appeared to be flattening out last season, finally and for the first time, with so many surprise teams playing in huge games?

It means that the big program monopolies will survive as these four premier conferences will undoubtedly command the National Championship and post-season picture (whatever that ends up being).

The world can say goodbye to any program not included in restructuring—your Utahs, BYUs, TCUs, Boise States, and Hawaiis need to be fast thinking of a way to jump in this game.

By isolating the competition and only facing off against other schools who are a part of this new, college football monster, big schools will have the ability to protect their storied legacies from up-and-comers.

Is it fair?

Not really, and a lot of deserving student athletes and programs are going to get the shaft when this all happens.

There are over 120 schools in the NCAA's Division I FBS, and 16 multiplied by 4 is only 64. So roughly half of those schools will no longer have a chance at college football relevance.

It is pretty easy to already see a future college football "plus one" system involving the champions from each of those four conferences squaring off to decide who the best team in the country is.

But with all the excitement of the rumors swirling around, and with how possible everything seems at this very moment, college football fans need to keep in mind what the implications are of these changes.

Such a conference restructuring renders half of the nations teams obsolete and essentially kills the concept of the "Cinderella story."

Is America really ready to accept that?