All About the Benjamins: Exposing the Motives of Conference Expansion

While there are still many dominoes to fall in the meteoric fall of the Big 12 Conference—namely what in the hell happens to Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Baylor, and Missouri—one thing is for certain: beginning in 2012, college football is dead.

All of it. Dead.

The rivalries our parents and grandparents instilled in our veins? Dead. 

Any tradition that didn't start within the last fifteen minutes? Dead. 

All of the greatness and uniqueness that differentiates college football from professional football? Dead.

(And don't even get me started on the implications on college basketball; Not only is it dead as we know it, but it was also seemingly forgotten just months after the NCAA inked a multi-billion dollar deal with CBS and Time Warner.)

The term "college" football should actually be stricken from our vocabularies. 

With conferences expanding throughout the country, the concept of amateur athletics is now completely exposed as a fraud.

Over the next couple of weeks, multiple athletic directors and school presidents will step to podiums (or if they are spineless snakes, release statements) and speak of how the opportunity to enrich university culturally was too much to pass up.

Or they will say how much the money gained from the move will benefit other students who are not athletes by preventing tuition increases and allowing for building improvements.

Or, using ultimate cop-out excuse, the athletic directors will say they only did it because other schools were doing it. 

All of those excuses are, as my grandpa would say, complete bullshhhh-muckers.

Conference expansion is about nothing but padding the all ready fat wallets of athletic directors, school presidents, and their ilk.

Mega-conferences weren't created to enrich universities culturally, to benefit students, or to follow an already-moving crowd.

They were made for cash and cash only.

These university presidents and athletic directors are now running a massive sports league—not unlike the NFL, MLB, NBA, or NHL—instead of the former association of independently contracting conferences.

In this newly created "league" there are three major divisions: the Pac-16, the Big (insert number larger than 12 here), and the SEC. 

All "mid-major" and lower tier conferences will simply be cast further into irrelevance.

And then the winners of those major divisions and/or the top eight teams will then go into a playoff system (after the current BCS contract runs out) to determine a national champion.

Conference expansion paves the way for a smooth transition into making college football our fifth major sports league.

However, when boiling it down to simplicities, there is now only one difference between the NCAA and our four major professional sports leagues: the professional leagues pay their players.

Don't worry—this is neither an argument for nor against giving stipends to college football players.

We have heard the arguments both ways ad-nauseam. Half of America says players should be paid, while the other half thinks a free college education is payment enough.

It's a completely worn-out argument.

Despite how you feel either way about players receiving stipends for their play, all fans should agree that the concept of "student-athletes" has been exposed as more of a fraud than ever by conference expansion.

Athletes at major universities have now been outed as nothing but minor-league professional athletes masquerading as amateurs.

Unfortunately for players, they still have to adhere to the rules and regulations of amateurism—unlike their coaches, athletic directors, school presidents, and all other superiors.

And considering the inequity of responsibility between the players and their superiors and the amount of profit conference expansion will create for schools, who could blame the players for taking extra payments from agents or boosters?

"A new car and an apartment for my mother? Sure! I just paid for Subway with change from my glove compartment. This sounds great!"

In addition, in the wake of the NCAA's extensive punishment of the USC football program, do the sanctions taken not seem wholly hypocritical?

I mean, if you were a college football player would you not disregard the well-being of the school the same way they disregard yours? And if you are a coach, would you not look the other way as your star player is drives around a Cadillac Escalade so that your athletic director renews your multi-million dollar contract?

College football has truly turned into a massive scapegoating Ponzi scheme aimed at casting all blame behind the true masterminds: athletic directors and college presidents.

Throughout the entire BCS era, players have been scapegoated as the reason the NCAA could not implement a playoff system: "It interferes with final exams ." "Flying across country every week is too unrealistic for the 'student-athletes.'" "A playoff would cheapen the long-standing conference traditions that players and coaches live for by rendering the regular season meaningless."

However, if you throw a few hundred million dollars in television contracts at the problems, players suddenly don't have final exams and flying from southern Texas to northern Washington becomes less of a problem.

It's funny how that works, isn't it?

On the other hand, athletic directors bastardize and condemn coaches for not being able to field a team which performs while doing things the right way, while creating statues of deceiving quick-fix masterminds who win national championships but leave destruction in their wake.

I, for one, find myself already nostalgically remembering the days of amateurism and non-supersized conferences.

Hey, maybe if we can pool together a few hundred million dollars it's not too late.

You know, unless we plan on giving the players a chunk of the pie.