Now that the Big 12 is all but gone the musical chair game of realignment will now begin, but this time with much faster music and the chairs all have paychecks of differing amounts in them. So here is my guess as to how this all plays out.

Kansas- to the Big 10, gives them a western market (Kansas City) to the Conference and their AAU and Basketball status helps them. Football is a dumpster fire but so is Rutgers.

West Virginia- to the ACC, they also take Notre Dame to get to 16, they are still stuck w/ Wake Forest but the SEC still has Vanderbilt.

Texas Tech- TBD

Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Baylor- all hosed. They missed the boat twice on expansion due to their own selfish insecurities. What is left is a group of geographically insignificant schools that bring little to the table by way of national interests. Oklahoma State’s benefactor is now dead, the legislature wont stop OU, same with the Texas schools. They have great facilities but will now likely be some kind of merger with the AAC to become a good but not great football conference Power 4.5 (Temple v Baylor- the Matt Rhule bowl!) they will still get into the 12 team playoff but will be a great warm up game before 2 SEC teams play each other. It will be a good conference with lots really good regional games Bally Sports and other regional carriers will love.

This leaves the Pac 12 as the last opportunity to be the 4th and last of the “super conferences” so who do they take? I wonder if watching their Big 12 remnant bretheren take an eight digit drop in TV money will move their “beliefs”. My guess is that they will look very hard at UNLV with the idea of conference academic snobbery balanced against TV paychecks. So that gets them to 13, who are the other 3?

Hawaii- really, they are playing in a HS Stadium, in Texas it’s a Middle School Stadium. Same with SDSU… Colorado State is a maybe but only out of desperation not desirability. Boise St. wow, the glorified truck driving school in the same conference as Stanford, delicious! Boise is a growing media market but it’s a quirky gimmicky program. Texas Tech is a maybe, it’s a good school, closer to Denver than any other school, it also gives the conference a toehold into Texas.

Which brings us to BYU. It might be time for some to acknowledge that those in the Board of Education knew what they were doing when they did nothing but park us as an Indy for a bit. The assurances sought from the Big 12 regarding Texas and OU look pretty visionary today. There is strength in our current position. We are a nationally known viable program in multiple sports. Academics are good, we travel well, we move the TV needle. We have fans everywhere we go. (the Baylor game will have 10k BYU fans easy- 32 from my ward right now) ESPN likes us (hopefully in a good way) will it take a lot of pride swallowing, yes, but is BYU in a Pac 16 model possible, yes, say along with UNLV, TT and 1 other winner who snags a chair.

If we move to the Big 12/ AAC remnant that’s not the worst thing ever- lots of games in Texas and the East Coast, access to the playoffs, roughly the same TV money, and were in a conference again. BYU playing at TCU, SMU, Baylor, Houston and OK State isint bad either, especially if you live in Zion (Tx).

And if we stay independent then were still ok. ESPN gets us some higher profile nationally televised games, the downside is no access as a conference champion- that will be problematic.