If You Are Angry About The Changing Landscape Of College Football Please Remember That This Is All Big East Basketball's Fault

The Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC are expected to make a formal announcement about their alignment soon, perhaps as early as next week, multiple sources told The Athletic. It's not yet clear how specific the announcement will be because there are so many details to iron out, although administrators in all three leagues have stressed in recent conversations that issues of governance can and should be front and center.

Schools within the three conferences believe they are like-minded, that they want to continue to prioritize broad-based sports offerings and that the academic profile of their institutions matters — as does graduating athletes. For example, Big Ten schools sponsor an average of 24.8 sports per campus, with the ACC (23.8) and Pac-12 (22.9) not far behind. SEC schools offer an average of 19.9 sports.

I HATE the changing landscape of college football. Super leagues, historic regional rivalries in thrown in the trash heap, tradition spat on. Everything is about the dollar and that sucks. College football is just becoming a minor league NFL at this point. It's losing it's soul. I've said time and time again that I'll vote for any politician that can put the conferences back the way they were when I was a kid, but I actually want to do one better. I want to go back earlier and punch Georgetown, St John's, and Villanova in the fucking face. Those are the three schools that voted against having Penn State join the BigEast and that was really the first domino in all of this evolving landscape. 

Had Penn State been able to join the BigEast as the flag ship football member in either the 1980s or early 90s before they eventually joined the BigTen then maybe none of this would've happened. Penn State would've secured the BigEast's future as a Northeast regional power conference. If they stay then the other football schools in the conference don't start looking around to the ACC and other places. Imagine a league with the following programs

Penn State, Pitt, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Louisville, Rutgers, UConn, Syracuse, Temple, and Miami. That is a 12 team league that would've been one of the very best in the 1980s and 90s. A league that even now would look pretty solid on paper with programs and rivalries that would be circled on your calendar every year. Instead...it crumbled back to a basketball-only league because of fucking St John's and Georgetown and now basically every other regional conference has died as well. 

Mike Tranghese, who was then-commissioner Dave Gavitt's right-hand man, said he told Gavitt the Big East would "rue the day" when it rejected Penn State and said so again in the 30-for-30 doc "Requiem For The Big East". And they did, but so did the rest of the college football landscape. Penn State and Rutgers went to the BigTen. Miami, Boston College, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, and Louisville all went to the ACC. West Virginia is in the Big12 for now and about to be homeless. UConn football is basically dead no matter what Jack Mac says. Cincinnati is the best of the group of 5 and who knows what becomes of those programs after this shake up. The Big East is effectively just a catholic basketball association. The Big 12 is dead. 

College football will never be the same. It won't be as good. It won't be as special. And if you're angry about that in the years to come I want you to remember who to blame...Georgetown, St. John's, and Villanova. FUCK those schools and their short-sighted, moronic, college football killing, dumb votes against Penn State. Maybe this was all inevitable and would've happened no matter what, but this does feel like a butterfly effect moment. I hope that this is a tower of babel situation. Not "too big to fail", but rather so big that it has to fail. Then we pick up the pieces and put things back the way they should be. 

We had two charter members of the BigTen on this week with Bret Bielema and Mel Tucker. Two guys raised on Big Ten, corn-fed, grey sky, damp air, punting from the opponent 37 yardline, football. In their hearts they hate this change too even if they couldn't say it