ts1227 wrote: I know in articles before they were talking that the Pac 10 may consider coming a little further east than their traditional territory and plucking a couple from the Big 12.

The article focused on how if this happened, and Mizzou went to the Big Ten, it could signal the beginning of the end for the Big 12... especially if the Big Ten decided to go to 14 and yanks another school (or 2)

Why would any conference want 14 teams? That is 2 too many.


I have a general question. Is there a rule stating that a Conference has to have at least 12 teams in order to have a Conference Championship game?

bigkahuna wrote:I have a general question. Is there a rule stating that a Conference has to have at least 12 teams in order to have a Conference Championship game?

Yes.

17.9.5.2 Annual Exemptions. [FBS/FCS] The maximum number of football contests shall exclude the fol-
lowing:
c. Twelve-Member Conference Championship Game. [FBS/FCS] A conference championship game
between division champions of a member conference of 12 or more institutions that is divided into two
divisions (of six or more institutions each), each of which conducts round-robin, regular-season competi-
tion among the members of that division;

At some point these more prominent mid-major programs (like Boise, Utah, and BYU will end up joining BCS conferences). Whether they get added to these conferences now or down the road because the Big XII ends up losing teams to the Big Ten and Pac-10. If the Big Ten and Pac-10 go to 12 teams by taking teams from the Big XII, the Big XII will have to add teams to stay at 12. At that point the Big East would be the only BCS conference without a championship game and they would have to expand as well. If you think that there's a gap no between the haves and have-nots (BCS conferences and non-BCS conferences) this will create an even bigger gap. As far as football is concerned, a non-BCS school would never have a chance at winning a national championship if all 6 BCS conferences expanded to 12 teams. They may still be able to make more money in D1A, but some may be better off moving down a division to 1AA.

So we would have 6 conferences with 12 teams each, the remaining conferences (MAC, CUSA, Sun, remainder of the WAC/MWC) could have a four team playoff between their conference champs, the winner gets into the 8 team playoff along with one at large bid.