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Conference Realignment

As you all know the dominoes of college athletics are about to come tumbling down in the form of what appears to be an extensive realignment stretching from coast to coast. Rumors have it that the Big Ten will expand from 11 teams to 14 or 16 handpicking their favorites from the likes of the Big East, the Big 12, and Notre Dame. Even though the Irish likely have no interest in losing their independent status along with their ginormous T.V. contract with NBC. The expansion talks of the Big Ten have already started tons of rumors and speculation as to what will happen to the landscape of college athletics. What gets me is the fact that people start freaking out like if y2k is about to hit.

Let’s start with what we know. The Big Ten will definitely expand. It currently has 11 teams and will likely expand to at least 14 if not 16. The most likely candidates for the Big Ten are (in no order) Missouri, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Rutgers, and Syracuse. The Pac-10 is also looking to expand likely to 12 teams which means they would only need two. There is not a great likelihood that the Pac-10 would expand to 16 like the Big Ten because there just aren’t enough schools in the geographic vicinity that also fit academically, and are monetarily appealing (as far as are already good revenue generating programs, and are located in markets that could potentially do well for the conference. Schools like Fresno St and Boise St are long shots). The most viable candidates, as everyone knows, are Colorado and Utah. Really, other than the facts that the two conferences will expand, everything is mere speculation.

So what happens once the dominoes start to fall? Well, the rich get richer, and the poor get, well, kind of just stay the same. The majority of mid-major and smaller schools will remain pretty much unaffected. That‘s not to say that nothing will change, but even with all the conference switches life will remain the same for virtually all the small guys. “Same thing, different day“. All the chaos will be going on mainly within the major BCS conferences, and those schools will be the ones to profit from the new BCS and T.V. deals. A few mid-majors may get swept up in it all and enjoy the benefits of this whole thing by being invited to the Pac-10 (Utah), or maybe the Big 12 (Houston, TCU), and possibly the Big East (Memphis, maybe UCF). Other than that, not much is going on for us smaller guys. Point is that these things have happened before and it is not the end of the world. Teams will get shifted around in the power conferences, a couple teams will get poached from the mid-major conferences, and a few of the smaller guys will fill in the new voids that have been created. We saw it with the dismantling of the SWC, and we saw it a few years back when the ACC took from the Big East, the Big East from C-USA, C-USA from the WAC among others, and on and on and on. This year is no different.

So what does all this mean for UTEP? Well, bottom line is if we don’t want to be on the outside looking in we need to perform. The most likely place, if anywhere, for us to land is the MWC. A couple of spots are going to need to be filled as they likely will try to expand to 12 (I think talks of the MWC expanding to 16 are ridiculous as that was the reason they left the WAC in the first place. Why would they basically go right back to what they left?). However, we need to remember that when the teams that created the MWC defected from the WAC they didn’t want UTEP. Nothing has necessarily changed so again we would need to perform for us to be appealing to conference that, if it stays intact, may be on the verge of BCS status. This means no more “next year” for UTEP. It has to be this year. It’s time for Mike Price and the UTEP Miners to establish themselves as a real football program. Also, Tim Floyd and his Miners need to continue what Tony Barbee started and improve on that by winning an NCAA game or two. Solid football and basketball programs, along with our history and geographic location should be enough to get us an invite to club MWC. Another possible landing spot for UTEP, believe it or not could be the Big 12. With it losing a couple teams it might be easier to bump the Oklahoma teams to the North and reload with two Texas teams to form a Texas division. For that to happen, again we would really need to perform.

I’ll say it again. This is nothing new. Conference realignment and expansion are not new ideas. These things have happened before and they will happen again. So everyone please quit freaking out. Let things play out and we’ll all see that we’ll still have our football and basketball just like we’ve had it in the past.

***Check out my post of mock realignment

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