Currently, there are 120 schools that make up the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; you know it as Division 1-A). But as teams continue to jump to other conferences and the lure of bigger money, the future of college football may see the rich get richer and the others left out in the cold.
Last week Texas A&M made it known that they will be leaving the Big 12, following in the footsteps of Colorado (to the Pac-12) and Nebraska (to the Big Ten). And now, with the future of the Big 12 in doubt, there are rumblings that the Pac-12 will become the Pac-16 by adding four schools including Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech.
If the Big 12 dies, something that seems inevitable at this point, we are likely headed to a situation where schools will start jockeying for spots in one of the remaining five BCS conferences (Pac-12, SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big East). And if 16 teams is the maximum size for each conference, that means there is only enough room for 80 schools. Currently, there are 66 teams in BCS conferences, 67 if we include Notre Dame, which is a BCS school. That leaves plenty of room to add deserving non-BCS schools like Boise State.
This has led to speculation that the FBS division division could be headed to splitsville. We could end up with a division made up entirely of 80 schools in these so-called super conferences. We could call it the BCS division.
Of course, the danger here is dealing with the 40 schools that are left without a chair at the BCS table. There is a lot of money at stake here, and schools left out of the super-conferences could get litigious in their desire to be kept in the loop.
Keep in mind, a school doesn't have to actually play in a BCS bowl game to make millions. There are the conference television deals that bring schools millions of dollars. And the BCS bowl game payouts are distributed among all the schools of the conferences that are participating.
And for those of you still holding out hope that someday we will see a college football playoff, consider that this setup could make that transition easier. With five super-conferences, it would be easy to set up a playoff system with the five conference champs and the next three highest-ranked teams. Simple. Almost too easy.
The top division in college football is evolving before our eyes. And as typically happens in these situations, the fittest will live to reap the benefits. In this case, that means one of the 80 seats at the BCS table, and the millions of dollars that comes with it.
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