College Football Super Conferences: Would They Be Better or Worse Than the BCS?

Danny FlynnSep 5, 2011

If the reports and rumors from this weekend are true, it looks as if the Big 12 conference is about to go the way of the Southwest Conference.

Like the SWC, the Big 12 is losing members left and right, and soon it sounds like the two power program of the conference, Texas and Oklahoma, will be taking up residence in the comfy confines of the Pac-12.

First, it was Colorado and Nebraska fleeing. Now, Texas A&M has made it clear that they want out, which would leave the Big 12 stuck with just nine teams.

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After being set in motion last summer, college football's conference realignment stage looks like a dangerous game of dominoes. No one is quite sure where it will lead to in the end.

The most logical thought is that one day we’ll simply have a four power conferences of either 16 or 18 teams per conference, with each conference being spit into two divisions.

This would make it easier for some type of playoff system to be put in place, but you have to wonder if it would actually be an improvement over the current college football foundation.

If it manages to reel in Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, the Pac-12 would be at the forefront of the new mega-conference movement.

Conference commissioner Larry Scott has already secured the richest TV deal in college sports for the Pac-12, and adding two notable national teams like Oklahoma and Texas would only serve to make the conference even more desirable.

While it’s clear that super conferences would certainly be good for the bank accounts of certain schools, it’s still unknown if they would actually be good for the sport itself.

By no means is the current BCS structure perfect, but it’s stable at the very least.

If the Pac-12 does indeed become the Pac-16, it could set off a state of chaos in college football, and we could see an arms race that could drastically alter the landscape of the sport.

When there’s billions of dollars at stake, you know things are bound to become dirty and corrupt one way or another.

If the Big 12 dissolves, that means conferences like the Big Ten and SEC would likely come swooping in to poach the remaining free agent teams. What would that mean for a conference like the Big East, which would only have nine teams after the addition of TCU?

Where does it leave current independent teams like Notre Dame and BYU? Or even a team like Boise State, a program that has failed to attract any invitations from a big conference?

As college football fans, I think we all agree that we would like to see some sort of playoff system instituted in the near future, but is this really the best way to get there?

If it’s done right, I think a four power conference plan would be a lot better than the BCS. That's the key: If it’s done right.

I’m not sure I trust the conference commissioners to make the quality of the sport a bigger priority than financial gain.

If you went to the four power conference structure, you would be doing so knowing full well that you’re putting the non-traditional power schools like Washington State, Vanderbilt and Duke at a huge competitive disadvantage because you’re continuing to push them even further down the ladder.

And if it did get to the format where we stockpile power programs in one conference, it’s unlikely that you will ever see another undefeated national champion ever again because the schedules would just be too tough.

It seems that inevitably that’s the way things are headed, so you just really need to have some cautious optimism that this will turn out for the better in the end.

If they put me in charge of conference realignment, here’s a look at the four 18-team power conferences I would put together.

Western Conference

Division 1