College Football's New World Order

The sports equivalent of Jack Kirby's Great Disaster hit major college football earlier this year. The unprecedented events nearly swallowed up the mighty Big XII Conference. The fallout and the reverberations are still being felt months later, as another football season is upon us. You really can't tell the conferences without a scorecard, anymore. So, just in case you missed it:

The Big 10 Conference got the ball rolling by inviting mighty Nebraska to come over from the Big XII. The Cornhuskers, who took maybe a minute to think about it before saying, "Yes," thus moved into the coveted spot in the Big 10 that had been being held, ostensibly, for Notre Dame. If the Big 10 couldn't get the Fighting Irish (And it couldn't. Notre Dame's contract with NBC is just too lucrative.), it got the Next Best Thing with Nebraska. The Big Red bring a ton of tradition to a truly super conference, which also contains football powers Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State, plus not-too-shabby Wisconsin and Iowa.

The initial thought was that the Big XII might make a play for the Fighting Irish, but Notre Dame remained independent in football. The Irish are joined in independence this year by Brigham Young, the usually-detested-by-all former Mountain West Conference and Western Athletic Conference member, which strives to be the "Notre Dame of the West." (Right. Good luck with that, Cougars.)

The other shoe dropped on the Big XII, however, when the PAC-10, looking to increase its national relevance, decided to expand by inviting Colorado, with its massive following in the Denver metropolitan area. There was once again a rapid courtship. That two schools of the stature of Nebraska and Colorado would leave such a powerful league with barely two blinks of an eye, says something about the state of the Big XII and the status of those institutions. The Cornhuskers and the Buffaloes were tired of playing second fiddle, in the eyes of the national media, to Texas and Oklahoma. So, the Huskers turned their backs on their longtime rivals, the Oklahoma Sooners, and bolted east. With Nebraska gone, the biggest thing holding Colorado in place was also gone. It was just so easy for the Buffs to move, as the westernmost member of the league, with its next-closest rival at least two states away.

To achieve its goal of gaining a conference championship game, however, the PAC needed to invite another school. It set its eyes on mighty Texas, with its iconic status in the Lone Star state and throughout the nation. Amazingly, there was a courtship. Stunningly, the PAC responded to some misgivings by Texas of losing its traditional rivalries, by inviting Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech to join. Astoundingly, there was some real discussion about blowing up the Big XII, with Texas A&M moving on to the Big East Conference and Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State, and Baylor being left to fend for themselves (other than the Mountain West Conference, which was oh-so-eager to extend an invitation to the Big XII leftovers).

After a couple of weeks of serious consideration (and after some major league genuflecting to Texas by the others in the conference) it was decided to keep what was left of the Big XII intact. There had first been talk about inviting former Southwest Conference members Houston and Texas Christian aboard, to keep the league's membership at 12. Ultimately, this idea was scrapped, and a way was devised to keep the Longhorns' pockets lined with cash, even with the sacrifice of the league's championship game. Texas will now have its own television network, which will do major business deep in the heart of Texas and nationwide. The advantages Texas owns over most of its league brethren will only grow bigger under this new arrangement.

And to think, all of this was done to cater to a football program that disappointed the nation last season. The Longhorns finished with a 5-7 record in all games, including a league mark of 2-6, good for dead last in the Big XII's South Division. It sounds like a slippery slope to me, but even if Texas again underachieves, and even if the Longhorn Network is somehow a failure, the Big XII can always add two more members and re-institute its lost title game, somewhere down the line.

Spurned by the Big XII members, the PAC scrapped its proposed 16-team model and went back to its initial plan of expanding its membership to 12. Utah, one of the high-profile members of the Mountain West Conference, was quickly added to what is now the PAC-12. After that, it was like a big game of dominoes, with one school falling right after the school before it. The Big East Conference, left at the altar by Texas A&M, also raided the Mountain West, picking up another of that league's crown jewels, Texas Christian. Before you could say "cutthroat," the MWC grabbed all of the top programs from the WAC, first luring Bowl Championship Series-busting Boise State, then Nevada and Fresno State, and finally Hawaii. Utah State, which for some reason declined its invitation to join the Mountain West this year, is still a possibility, along with Houston, for further MWC expansion to 12 schools in the future. The WAC, meanwhile, has tried to stay afloat by adding some schools from the next division down (Texas State, Texas-Arlington, Texas-San Antonio, Denver, and Seattle), which was its only option.

Most of this dizzying array of changes will take place for the coming football season, but some of the above won't happen until the 2012 campaign. It will be interesting to see how all of this movement shakes out on the national level. The biggest question within this fascinating scenario has to be: Can Texas regain its stranglehold on the pinnacle of prominence in the Big XII? Any way you slice it, there is now a New World Order in major college football. Let's face it: Any time the Big 10 Conference has 12 members and the Big 12 Conference has ten members, something wild and crazy must be going on!