There some reasons you would only have 4 super conferences. It would make a perfect playoff system and they only have to share the wealth with 64 teams. To look even further down the road they can get rid of the NCAA and form their own governing body and then have their own basketball invitational national tourney and keep the 777 million that tv just signed over to the NCAA. Sure some of that would have to be used to fund the new governing body but not near the amount that is used now with the NCAA. This is all about money and the schools with it don't want to share with another 16 teams.
This. ESPN and fox are the driving forces for all of this conference realignment.
The whole point of the deal that ESPN and UT made last year was to get the biggest school in the country's brand in with their network. ESPN was the one that talked incessantly about the highschool games, and UT games on their network.
A&M leaving sets a the whole thing in motion. It will take some time before everything is in place, maybe at the end of the BCS contract, five years from now.
Four conferences that will seperate from the BCS and NCAA. Then you set up a playoff and watch the cash roll in.
The NCAA knows how irrelevant they have become with this new structure beginning to emerge. But they still have the contracts and the money to stay in charge for now.
Look no further than the way they dealt with ohio state. They should have received the same type of donkey punch that Tennesee and USC took.
But all it took was Delany to go all Kurt Russell in Tombstone, telling the "powers that be" I don't think I am going to let you arrest us today....He knows where he takeshis marching orders from, and he knows that an unhappy, and ineligible osu, is very bad for business. He tells the NCAA to go **** themselves, and all hell breaks loose.
The two networks are chomping at the bit to do this, but they don't have everything in place, yet. Watch it all begin to emerge the last couple of years of the current contracts. The tax exempt stuff won't matter, because the money will be so great.