Conference re-alignments

The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of a PAC-16 Athletic Conference with the additions of Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to the league, especially now that the Aggies have scampered off to the SEC. It’s an ideal solution that maintains rivalries that are still meaningful and relevant.

Of course, it means the end of a nine-team league mislabeled the Big 12, but so be it. A PAC 16 could be divided into east and west divisions with the west consisting of the original PAC Eight teams and the east comprised of the four new additions plus Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.

Each team would play the other seven in their division plus two from the other division on a home-and-home basis, so that you changed inter-division opponents every two years.

So what happens to the rest of the teams in the Big 12? I could see Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State settling comfortably into the Big 10, making that a 16-team conference as well.

That leaves only Baylor, the one private school in the conference. Conference USA would be a perfect fit, but I’m not sure the Bears alumni would settle for a non-BCS conference situation. However, the end of the Big 12 Conference probably spells the end of the BCS anyway.

Of course, not really having any ties to Baylor (the school got accepted into the Big 12 only because former Gov. Ann Richards, a Baylor grad, threatened to veto the Texas’ schools invitations unless Baylor got one too), I could really care less about the future conference affiliation of the Waco school.

But I do care about the possibility of a PAC 16 structured the way I have just outlined.