College Football 2011: The Worst Culprits to Blame for Conference Realignment

Hey, have you heard the news?

Apparently there’s some talk about expanding college football conferences.

Yes, it’s been a long, grueling few months that we college football fans have had to endure.

Instead of soaking up the great on-the-field action that’s taken place over the last few weeks, the sports media has pounded realignment talk down our throats without remorse.

And where did all those rumors and false reports get us?

Basically, we’re right back at start line.

What we do know is that the Pac-12 is not expanding at this time, contrary to all the 'It's basically a done deal' reports. Texas A&M is headed to SEC; Pittsburgh and Syracuse are joining the ACC, and after that, who knows?

For now, it looks like the big storm everyone was fearing has subsided and we can take a deep breath, at least until next summer when this all gets stirred up again.

So whose fault is it?

Let’s have a look at who’s to blame for the whole big realignment mess.

The ACC

People seem quick to forget that the wheels of all of this were set in motion back in the mid-2000’s when the ACC stole Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College away from the Big East.

Now they’ve done it again by poaching Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

Right now, with 14 teams, the ACC has the highest member total out of any conference in the country, and if they move to 16 teams, it’s going to set off a dangerous trend that will likely lead to all-out superconferences.

Nebraska and Colorado

Colorado and Nebraska both awoke the sleeping expansion beast from its slumber last summer when the two schools decided to ditch the Big 12 in favor of some more lucrative new homes.

The departures were just the beginning of this latest college football realignment wave and we could ultimately look back on them as the two landmark moves that began a drastic alteration to college athletics.

Texas

Ah, the Longhorn Network.

Texas’ beautiful cash cow.

Who could have ever thought that giving one school its own special $300 million television network, run by the biggest sports media giant in the world, would offend fellow conference counterparts?

Well, apparently everyone’s jealous, but Texas A&M is the only school that actually did something about it.

The Aggies made the move to the SEC because they were sick of playing second fiddle to the boys in burnt orange, and it was an exodus that nearly crushed the Big 12 conference.

In an odd turn of events, the LHN actually may have saved the Big 12 because it prevented the Pac-12 from accepting Texas.

School Presidents

Former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese was spot on during an interview with Outside the Lines when he used the Gordon Gekko quote “Greed is good” to describe the philosophy of big-time college athletics these days.

In this current ‘survival of the fittest’ college football climate, school presidents across the country have been putting their own individual interests ahead of the best interests of the sport.

Who cares about traditions and history, anyways, there’s money to be made, dammit.

Television

Forget about the radio star, television may have killed college football tradition.

Thanks to television, college football and college basketball are now both billion-dollar industries.

Lucrative television deals are now much more important than trophies and championships, and we’ve seen conferences sacrifice the overall good of the game just to make an extra few million from television rights.

It’s a dangerous trend that’s been set, and it’s frightening to think about what it could mean for the future.