Pac-10 Expansion Muddles the Future of College Football

Expansion is threatening the very fabric of college football.

The Pac-10 recently extended an offer to a plethora of Big 12 schools in Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to join the conference in a move that would rock the college football world. A sixth invitation is rumored to belong to Colorado or Baylor.

Originally only Texas was extended an offer according to published reports. But the current Big 12 heavyweight didn’t want to lose its in-state rivalries, which caused the Pac-10 to sweeten the deal so Texas A&M and Texas Tech could stay in the same conference.

Then somewhere in the midst of these expansion talks, the Pac-10 decided to engulf the western majority of Big 12 schools.

To make this clear, all expansion is driven by financial motives. But what the universities and conferences fail to realize is that the non-monetary costs far outweigh the fiscal benefits.

The first thing the Pac-10 conference is going to have to recognize is that inviting schools like Texas could pose a problem in terms of traveling for both athletes and fans.

I don’t know if Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott knows his geography very well, but it’s a long way from Austin, Texas to Seattle, Washington. Which ever team has make that trek once a year will be at a severe disadvantage. Not only that, but fans who are usually eager to catch away games most likely won’t be able to do so because of the increased distances been universities.

While inviting all the teams Texas wants to keep a long standing tradition with seemingly solves some problems, there’s no way of telling for sure if all these schools will want to jump ship and leave the Big 12 in first place. Schools like Oklahoma haven’t brought up expansion at all and might be quite comfortable staying put in their own conference.

We are also forgetting about Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and the rest of the Big 12 schools, who won't be getting an invitation to join the Pac-10. What happens to those long-lasting matchups?

Unfortunately for the Big 12 and college football, most schools are probably going to surrender to the pressures of expansion, with the convenient excuse that “everybody’s doing it.”  

We won’t know what this means yet for the Big 12, which could be facing extinction since eight of its universities have been mentioned in expansion talks (including Nebraska and Missouri for the Big Ten). Nonetheless, it won’t be good for the sport or for the existing conferences losing their schools.

Looks like Armageddon is coming early for college football.