LITTLE ROCK — It is unsettling, puzzling and the center of too many conversations.
No, not the Arkansas Razorbacks’ slow starts.
Conference realignment and expansion.
The latest is West Virginia to the Big 12 if Missouri leaves for the SEC, if the Tigers have applied for membership and if they are accepted by the conference.
Unless Louisville pulls a Nebraska and sneaks through a door Missouri pried open (see Big 10 expansion).
Just before that, it was a merger between the Big East and Mountain West, or was that Mountain West and Western Athletic Conference. What’s next, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?
Houston has notified Conference USA it is leaving, but no one has said they want the Cougars, unless the Big East, Mountain West, WAC or RCMP have been whispering in the ear of the once strong school in the fourth largest city in the United States.
Before going any further, here’s what we know for sure about the conferences.
The Big 10 has 12 teams and wants Notre Dame to join so badly it probably won’t consider adding another team until it gets the approval of the Fighting Irish, who lost at home to Southern Cal, which is still allegedly coached by Lane Kiffin.
The Big 12, which has nine, maybe 10 teams, has an interim commissioner and that doesn’t smack of stability.
The Pac-12 wanted Texas but not the Longhorn Network.
The Atlantic Coast Conference has added Syracuse and Pittsburgh, which like most of the schools, are not on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Big East has only five schools left and most likely will lose its status as a Bowl Championship Series automatic qualifier.
The Mountain West has Boise State and its Smurf turf along with TCU, which is down this season. The other six schools have a 15-26 combined overall record.
Conference USA has the most soccer sounding name for a commissioner in Britton Banowsky, but not much else as seven of the 12 teams have losing records.
The Western Athletic Conference is teams-in-waiting if anyone will have them.
Truthfully, what needs to happen is Big Brother needs to step in and call the major conference commissioners into one big meeting. A public meeting would be best, but we all know that isn’t happening.
Big Brother, of course, is ESPN, which in just 31 years has become the most powerful entity in athletics.
Who else could make South Carolina and Arkansas play while most of the nation watches LSU-Alabama? No one else, that’s who.
Almost before the ink was dry on the ESPN/Fox 12-year, $225 million per year television contract with the Pac-12, the other BCS conferences were going whoa, hold on there.
If adding Utah (3-4 overall and winless in conference play) and Colorado (1-7 and also winless in league play) can get that kind of money, imagine what adding Texas A&M and Missouri could do for the SEC.
Or the ACC, which is at 14 land loving schools, but could truly overtake the Big East as the most dominant basketball conference in the country. But this is not about basketball.
This is about football and the money it generates, which is, for example, 73 percent of what the Razorbacks receive from the SEC.
This is headed to super conferences- which will become more likely if the value of a scholarship is increased $2,000 per athlete - and super TV contracts.
Seriously, the Big 10’s Jim Delaney, SEC’s Mike Slive, Pac-12’s Larry Scott, ACC’s John Swofford and maybe Deloss Dodds of Texas should sit down with ESPN and realign everything geographically.
The first commissioner to come up with a plan that is accepted gets the right to call his conference The Sweet 16.
Sports, Pages 17 on 10/27/2011