Totally agree. I miss the Big 8. It really sucks that they're tearing apart rivalries, building conference's so big you won't be able to play a team for 5 years or more.
When will they realize that making super conferences is going to destroy college football. If my college is left out I just won't watch it anymore, and I love the college sports much more than pro.
Here’s something else that reminded me of. With 8 conference members you had 7 conference games. Back in those days, you usually played 11 - so there were four non conference games. With 12 like today, you’d have five.
Look at the opportunities for cross-region big-time matchups! If all conferences remained a reasonable size of 10 or fewer, think of all the non-con inventory available! TV networks could get all the Oklahoma-Alabama or USC-Michigan or Clemson-Texas games they wanted, every single season, while still keeping regional rivalries and logically organized conferences.
But no, conferences locked down holding TV rights for their members after the Oklahoma lawsuit took them away from the NCAA, and TV networks realized the only way to
guarantee these big-time games would be on their channel would be to get those brands into the conferences they had a deal with. So sure, it’s TV money ruining college football, but it didn’t have to be this way. A sensible overseer of college football as a whole could have made both media partners and schools rich - it’s just a lot of the schools wouldn’t have gotten
as rich as they have with this system.