Is a Super Conference Good For College Football?

The Big Ten went out and made a deal for Nebraska.  Now the Pac-10 is going crazy trying to get the rest of the Big 12.

You can't blame Nebraska for leaving.  They get to be featured on the Big Ten network and they also get a chance to play in a weaker conference (shut up Big Ten fans, you know it is a weaker conference).

So the stronger half of the Big 12, the Big 12 South, looks like they will be jumping ship soon, with Colorado replacing Baylor.

So where does that leave the remaining five teams (Missouri, Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa and Baylor)?

The Mountain West Conference should add Boise State and then merge with the remainder of the Big 12.  This would give them 15 teams and make them a legitimate football conference with Missouri, Kansas, Iowas, Boise State, Utah and TCU.

So really they would step in to replace the Big 12. 

Another option is that the Big Ten could invite two more teams (Missouri and Notre Dame) to make 14, or four more teams (Missouri, Notre Dame, Kansas and Iowa/Baylor).

The problem is that Notre Dame doesn't want to leave their current position where they have the ability to print money while hand-slecting their own schedule.

But in theory we could see two 16-team conferences, a 15-team conference, two 12-team conferences (SEC and ACC) and the Big East.

So what happens to the Big East with only eight football schools?  Well, It could be divided up between the SEC and ACC.  So they keep what they have now in basketball, and spilt up the football teams between the SEC and ACC.

West Virginia, South Florida, Louisville and Cincinnati join the SEC while Syracuse, UConn, Rutgers and Pittsburgh join the ACC.

The Moutain West then adds a Bowling Green or Ball State.  Now you have five 16-team conferences in football.

Each conference will want two BCS bids and it will be nearly impossible to decide the championship game without conference championship games or a playoff.  So what needs to be done?

All the conferences still want two bids.  Now you have ten teams.  So, the bottom four teams play in to an eight-team playoff, deciding a true champion.  The other option is that the 10 automatic bids are joined by the six best records left over to make a 16-team playoff.

But wait, what if there is no playoff and the current system is still around?  This is a predicament.

The Pac-10 does not want a conference championship, even with 16 teams.  There is a possibility that two Pac-10 teams in different divisions of the conference could go undefeated (Texas and Oregon for arguments sake).

They don't have to play one another because there is no conference championship.  But there is also a Big Ten team (Nebraska maybe) and an SEC team (Tennessee—I can dream, right?) that go undefeated and win their championship.  

Who gets in?  The teams that win their championship games?  Well, there will definitely be an outcry from the Pac-10 that their teams deserve to be in there.

But what if those Pac-10 teams are the only ones undefeated?  A Pac-10 championship game will decide the National Champion.  Only fans of the Pac-10 will want to see that.  Unless every team has a conference championship it becomes kind of ridiculous.

Another potential flaw is that no teams go undefeated because of the high level of competition and you have five to seven one-loss teams in the discussion.

Every team will claim a stake in the big game.

And what if the only undefeated team is from the Mountain West, will they get respect finally with schools like Missouri?  

Here is another big, big problem.

What happens if the SEC and ACC stay where they are?  The Mountain West still has a chance of taking the remainder of the Big 12.

Lets say that the Pac-16, Big 10(12), SEC (12), ACC (12), Big East (8) and Mountain West (15 with remainder of the Big 12 and possibly Boise State) are your conferences.

We once again have the Pac-16 problem with two undefeated teams.  Should they get to have two teams in the National Championships just because they have 16 teams and refuse to have a championship game?

With the current system, the super conferences are going to do nothing but cause headaches in college football.  They are playoff friendly, but until that happens this is going to be a bad thing for college football.