Duck4life

Its hard to imagine an exclusive foot ball club (B1G/SEC) can rightfully call it a National Championship game that doesn't include a path for Clemson, Florida State, Miami, Oregon, Notre Dame and others who were in top-10 rankings, participated or won a Title in recent history. After all isn't a Title, not money, the ultimate goal. I think the path through the PAC is easier than going through the mid-west in November. (As UCLA/USC will painfully discover) Just win baby win. They rest will sort out.

Six hour flight to Minnesota in November...does blue blood freeze?

...and adding to my last post, with any lack of central control in college sports, it is left to individual team and conference to wheel and deal with media, who could care less if some teams get left as road kill in the process.

The NFL has salary caps, trade deadlines, contractual deals with players and team and collateral income deals with the likes of Nike, etc... None of this is regulated in the "new" NCAA. The NFL and other professional sports didn't put these things in place for fun. It was necessary to have a healthy and fair playing field. Whether we like it or not, college football has virtually become a professional sport, but none of the safe guards have been put in place for a healthy league. That needs to be reckoned with if there is to going be any success in this new model.

yet in the new era of super conferences and expanded playoffs, most assuredly B1G will get more than one seat in the playoffs. The question "can USC be number two?"...hmmm?

no exclusive TV network? that's odd?

As said before, eyeballs bring dollars. Choosing conference members based on success is a risky short term strategy. To be shrewd, a truly successful but controversial strategic merger between PAC12 and BIG12, would means culling the smaller schools. The revenue dilution between so many schools make competing with BIG and SEC difficult at best. (My controversial opinion) assuming contracts even allow would be to drop these to compete. Wash State, Oregon St., Arizona, TCU, KSU, WV...cal?....and yes Stanford (who cant half fill a 40K stadium). Perhaps my list is 20 degrees off kilter, but I think something has to give from both conferences for this merger to work.

If B1G takes more teams, (say for example Oregon/UW/etc.)....doing the math...20 teams and 8 in-conference games. Is it not plausible, as an example that two teams could go undefeated without a single common adversary. And still have 4 more teams in conference that played neither...and then consider all the one loss scenarios. It makes my head spin. It seems somebody gets left out. Therefore, does it not seem that a 20 team conference really need a playoff of sorts? Or a super conference would need to be guaranteed multiple spots in the CFP? With multiple divisions, are they really conferences in disguises? ( say the PAC12 division and the B1G division) Is this what FOX and ESPN really want anyways???? This is all so confusing.....