Another wacky speculative realignment post

[MTSUPiKapp]

I think all that's holding the next round of moves up is the right timing, the ones with the most power, the SEC, the Big Ten, Texas and Notre Dame are sitting back waiting till there's blood in the water to make a move.

The Big Ten is positioning to force Notre Dame's to finally fall in line, in my opinion, TAMU to the SEC could ultimately be the lynchpin in all of this. If TAMU goes to the SEC, then, presumably the SEC will look to add at least a 14th. The SEC has said they won't be going after the ACC, but I'll believe it when I see it. So if the SEC poaches one from the ACC(just for the sake of a name Clemson), where does the ACC turn? IMO the obvious move is UCONN, with an outside chance of Louisville or WVU. Let's assume the ACC take UCONN, UCONN bridges the gap between Maryland and BC, UCONN fits academically and have the basketball. As soon as UCONN is reported to be leaving, this sends the Big Ten back into action, they grab Syracuse and Rutgers, further crippling the Big East at which point Notre Dame begins to sweat and perhaps go ahead and finally cave to the Big Ten's overtures so the Big Ten snatches up Notre Dame as number 15 and finally goes back and picks up Missouri to get to 16. Now the (former)Big XII is down to 8 members and Texas cracks and takes TTU, OU and OSU with them.

At this point the Pac is at 16
The Big Ten is at 16
The SEC is at 14
The ACC is at 12
The Big East is at 5(all sport) and 12 total
The Big 12 is down to 4

In my opinion this is where things could get really tricky. Just looking at the math of it, this actually works out perfectly for the leftovers of the Big 12 and Big East to form a 9 and 16 team conference that leads to balanced scheduling in all sports. But even with the Big East losing most of the northeastern outliers, you'd still have a conference that had four extreme corners, of Waco, Ames, Pittsburgh and Tampa. Perhaps they'd try to make it work, I mean the four remaining Big XII teams would still have all that buyout money, but what if the Big East doesn't want to stretch to Ames and Waco, so they try to grab Kansas and Kansas State. So Kansas and Kansas State are left trying to decide what's in their better interest, holding together with Baylor and Iowa State for the sake of all that buyout money, but having to reconstitute into a lesser conference or to make the dash for what would still be a pretty good conference with WVU, Cincy, Louisville, Pitt and USF. Assuming they choose the conference the Big East would presumably grab two more, in this new geographic footprint you have to assume that Memphis would be one and the second would be...UCF? ECU? Now Baylor and Iowa State are just hanging out, so Iowa State takes the spot Utah left in the MWC and Baylor takes one of the spots left in C-USA. Then C-USA will need to take one more to get back to 12, perhaps they take La Tech, but they lost two eastern division schools and have already added another to the west in Baylor, if they lost UCF, that would work greatly in FAU or FIU's favor. Perhaps C-USA decides to go ahead and go to 14 or 16 and adds La Tech, MT, WKU, FAU and FIU...

But back the train up a minute, what if before any of that happens the SEC and/or ACC decides to gobble up remaining Big East members, or if the SEC were to grab further ACC members and then the ACC were to take Big East members. IMO, Cincy could really get screwed in this scenario, they don't have the fanbase for the SEC and they don't have the geography or academics for the ACC. So the SEC takes WVU and FSU to get to 16, the ACC takes Pitt, Louisville, and USF to get to 14, they consider going further, but with whom? Temple? ECU? I don't know about either of those, maybe ECU if they were to lose one or more NC schools to the SEC.

Now Cincy is standing in the cold with the Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and Baylor. So they form a new conference and look at anyone within the footprint...mostly anyone in C-USA, anyone in the MAC, select Sun Belt schools and La Tech.

So perhaps something like:
East: Cincy, Marshall, WKU, MT, Memphis, UAB, Troy, USM
West: La Tech, SMU, Houston, Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Tulsa, Iowa State

The moving parts in this are dizzying and how much one schools decision can dramatically change everything, but anyway...here's just another speculation and as is the case whenever throwing out realignment scenarios, I realize it's subject to being torn to shreds, so fire away...

[techman05]

Great post, as of 8 this morning. Not coming down on you, because that would have been very interesting. With Texas and TAMU not going anywhere, the Big 11 will become the Midwest 12 and stop. We may see some shifting when the Big 12 rebuilds, but who the heck knows now.

[TYLERTECHSAS]

This isn't over yet.