Power Four?
What if the Big 12 fell apart? Here is what I thought could possibly happen:
Texas takes a similar offer as Notre Dame for ACC membership. Gets to keep Longhorn Network, 6 game scheduling alliance for football, and a full ACC invite for all sports. This leaves the ACC with 14 football schools and 16 all other sports.
In return the B1G invites both Oklahoma and Kansas to go a long with previously invited Nebraska. This moves the B1G to 16 teams.
With conferences going towards 16 teams both the SEC and PAC look to add teams from the left over Big 12. The SEC adds Kansas State and Oklahoma State to go 16 teams.
The PAC-12 also grabs Texas Tech and BYU to get to 14 teams.
That leaves Baylor, TCU, Iowa State, and West Virginia with no home. In return the Big 12 leftovers add Connecticut, East Carolina, UCF, South Florida, Memphis, Cincinnati, Boise State, SMU, Houston, Rice, Tulane, and San Diego State to get to 16 schools and becomes the Big 16.
After a couple of years of what seems like everything has played out. Texas Tech feels like they are left on an island and misses playing other Texas schools. They make a big push for the PAC to add more teams from Texas more i.e. Baylor and TCU. Also at the same time the B1G East Schools are feeling outnumbered by the Mid-Western schools and not playing enough games in the east and want to add UCONN.
The B1G starts the next round of going to 18 teams in a conference by adding Connecticut and Iowa State.
The PAC starts looking at adding TCU and Baylor to go to 16 teams. However the SEC goes after both to keep the PAC as much out of Texas as possible. TCU and Baylor both go to the SEC to play more like minded schools and to be with previous conference members OkSt, K-State, Mizzou, Ark, TA&M. This gives the SEC 18 members.
The PAC then goes to his second option of adding both Houston and SMU to go to 16 schools.
With both the B1G now at 18 teams and taking over more ACC territory by going into New England. The ACC looks to add West Virginia and Cincinnati both in the hear of the B1G country. One thing the ACC does not realize is that the SEC is also looking to add two east coast schools to please UGA, UF, USF, and UT and one of those schools is WVU. The ACC extends invitations to both Cincinnati and West Virginia and at the same the SEC offers an invitation to West Virginia and East Carolina. West Virginia takes the SEC up on its offer and so does East Carolina bringing the SEC total to 20 schools. Cincinnati takes the ACC offer however the ACC is left without WVU. In reaction to not getting WVU the ACC sends an invite to Memphis who is in the heart of SEC country to get back at the SEC for taking WVU. This gives the ACC 16 full members + ND and Texas.
Now that the Big 12 is down to just UCF, South Florida, Boise St, Rice, Tulane, and San Diego State. All seven schools start looking at moving up to one of the Power 4 conferences. With ESPN's help and ESPN not wanting to have to support another conference ESPN starts trying to work a deal to get all 7 teams into a P4 conference. Both the SEC and B1G are done adding schools and at are not looking for any leftovers. With both the B1G at 18 schools and the SEC at 20, ESPN tells the PAC-16 they need to expand their markets in order to grow. The PAC-16 adds SDSU, Rice, Tulane, and Boise State to go to 20 schools. With every conference at 20 or 18 the ACC adds both UCF and South Florida to dominate the Florida market and to go to 18 full members and ND/TX to be on par with the other conferences. This leaves the conference as follow:
ACC Atlantic
Florida State
Clemson
Louisville
Boston College
Syracuse
Wake Forest
NC State
Cincinnati
Memphis
ACC Coastal
Duke
Virginia
Pitt
Georgia Tech
Virginia Tech
Miami
North Carolina
UCF
South Florida
and Notre Dame and Texas as non-football members.
B1G WEST
Kansas
Oklahoma
Nebraska
Iowa
Iowa State
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Illinois
Northwestern
B1G EAST
Indiana
Purdue
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Penn State
Maryland
Rutgers
Connecticut
The SEC and PAC-20 go to a four division style conference:
SEC WEST
Kansas State
Oklahoma State
Missouri
Arkansas
TCU
SEC SOUTH
Baylor
Texas A&M
LSU
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
SEC CENTRAL
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Tennessee
Alabama
Auburn
SEC EAST
West Virginia
East Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia
Florida
PAC NORTHWEST
Washington
Washington State
Oregon
Oregon State
Boise State
PAC WEST
Cal
Stanford
UCLA
USC
San Diego State
PAC CENTRAL
Arizona
Arizona State
Utah
BYU
Colorado
PAC EAST
Texas Tech
SMU
Houston
Rice
Tulane
|
then again, if they need a good home we'll gladly take some travel subsidies. K.State, Baylor - come on down!
