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I've been trying to wrap my head where this is all going. I can't make much sense of it. Conferences going coast to coast just seem awful for all involved, except for the TV People.

Try to remove the emotional attachment to your team. If the long term goal is going to a pro-style setup. How does it not make sense to go to something like, 4 new conferences separated by Geography (South/Central/North/South)? Then also drop any schools that might be perceived as dead weight. Logically, it makes the most sense to me.

What am I missing? Too many politics involved to make that happen? TV Deals? Naming rights? Trying to pretend that it isn't actually a Pro-League?

There is no long-term plan that everyone agrees on. There is no Master Plan.

The leagues are in competition with each other. They are just trying to one-up each other and build the best possible conference for themselves that they can. Everyone is following their own self interest.

There is certainly no quest to make this a pro league. Quite the opposite, in fact: they are trying to preserve the image of amateurism as long as they can.


The Big Ten would have been insane if they didn't try to court USC because USC is a top-5 brand that will boost the revenue of each Big Ten school by 5-10 million per year. Also, it gives Big Ten schools an advantage in marketing to students on the West Coast. The fact that USC showed interest is not part of some secret master plan. It's much simpler than that: USC decided it was in their own self-interest to join the Big Ten.

If there was a Master Plan, they would cooperate on playoff expansion. Instead, there is very public bickering and the only actions that are taken are once a decade, and are exactly on the path of least resistance (from bowl system, to Bowl Coalition, to BCS system, to today's BCS+1 system)

If there was a Master Plan, the P2 wouldn't have zero teams in New York, zero teams in New England, and only one team in Florida.

If there was a Master Plan, the P2 wouldn't waste four precious spots on relatively low-revenue teams in Mississippi and Indiana.