Conference shakeup continues

[MeanGreen61]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/200...hopscotch_x.htm

Conference shakeup continues as schools seek right fit

By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY

Change happens. Bob Lilly is enough of a realist to accept that. But there's still a bit of the romantic in the 65-year-old Football Hall of Famer, who as a kid in Texas used to tune into Southwest Conference broadcasts and drink in the colorful calls of radio legend Kern Tipps — to whom a fumble wasn't simply a fumble but a "malfunction at the junction."

Lilly recalls watching some games wide-eyed from the stands with his dad. Later he would star in them as an All-America tackle and future No. 1 draft pick at Texas Christian. "We had a big rivalry at the time with SMU ... and a pretty good rivalry with Rice, which during my era was a pretty good football team," he says. "Those were the good old days, in my opinion."

They're all gone now. The inimitable Tipps. The SWC. The rivalries — or at least the intraconference intensity that fed them.

TCU hasn't shared a league address with Southern Methodist or Rice in five years. The Horned Frogs haven't been able to work up a healthy competitive hate for anybody of late, calling four different conferences home in the past decade. Things were beginning to heat up with Louisville and Southern Mississippi in Conference USA, but Louisville bolted for the Big East and TCU is bound for the Mountain West.

Those are two of almost two dozen moves that become official Friday. They cap a dizzying round of conference hopping that has seen nearly one in five schools in the NCAA's top football-playing Division I-A change addresses in the last two years. It isn't merely realignment. It's a recasting.

The basketball-rich Atlantic Coast, which started it all by plucking Miami (Fla.) and Virginia Tech from the Big East two summers ago, now is a 12-team force in football, too. Miami, Tech and newly arriving Boston College were ranked at the end of last season, along with Florida State and Virginia.

The Big East took such a football hit that its automatic berth in the Bowl Championship Series might be shaky, but behold the power surge there in hoops. A league that already owns three of the last seven national championships brought in four new members — Louisville, Cincinnati, DePaul and Marquette, in addition to South Florida — that account for 100 NCAA tournament appearances, 19 Final Four berths and five national titles.

Conference USA might take some time to sort out. Nine schools, including TCU, are going. Six, including SMU and Rice, are coming.

Feelings were hurt, names were called and lawsuits were filed when the shakeout began. "At times, in different venues, it's been very difficult ... for me and also very difficult for our players and for our coaches," says Boston College athletics director Gene DeFelippo, looking back on the Eagles' final year in an affronted Big East.

"I think time has passed now. People are getting on with their lives and rebuilding conferences ... or building conferences, whatever."

Pacific-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen, whose league hasn't changed in nearly 30 years, suggests, "We need to step back and take a broader view and realize that these things do happen. It's kind of like we in California know that those earthquake plates are building up pressure and sooner or later, boom, something's going to snap. In college conferences, you've got different pressures building.

"It's pretty predictable that 10 years from now there'll be still more (movement)."

Geographically, a lot of what has happened makes sense. Boston College, a charter member of the Big East, is raising eyebrows in becoming the northernmost member of the ACC by more than 400 miles. It's 700 miles from North Carolina's Tobacco Road, the ACC epicenter. But Virginia Tech fits nicely, and Miami looks more natural in a Southern-leaning league.

The Western Athletic still is stretching to include Louisiana Tech. But in losing Rice, SMU, Texas-El Paso and Tulsa and picking up Idaho, Utah State and New Mexico State, it has shored up its Mountain and Pacific time zone identity.

Seeking a bigger challenge

Competitively, after going 30-8 and winning three championships in five years, Louisville had its sights set higher in football than Conference USA. So the Cardinals left for the Big East, which has automatic entry in the BCS for at least three more years.

TCU likewise sees more BCS possibilities in the Mountain West, where Utah ran the table last season and was able to break into the BCS' big-money bowl lineup. The league is hopeful of an automatic berth down the road.

"Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to put yourself in the best situation," says Gary Patterson, heading into his sixth season as TCU football coach. "You have to look at our ultimate goal, and that was to give us the best opportunity to win — sometime and someday — a national championship. We felt like the Mountain West move was one that could do that because of the BCS."

The Southwest Conference, where the Horned Frogs won seven football titles and played in one Orange, two Sugar and six Cotton bowls, fell apart in 1995. The Frogs landed in the WAC, which split in half. They transferred to C-USA in 2001, but now it's being made over. A Mountain West invitation in January 2004 was too good to pass up.

"Change is inevitable," says TCU athletics director Danny Morrison, who moved into the job just two weeks ago.

"I happen to come from the Southern Conference (where he was commissioner for four years). It was founded in 1921 — it's the fourth- or fifth-oldest conference in America — and the Southeastern Conference split away in 1932. The ACC split away in 1953. So it's not like this (kind of) change hasn't occurred in history.

"It's a natural evolution. I think things will settle again and there'll be some stability. I really do think stability's important."

The Pac-10's Hansen, however, isn't alone in predicting further change. Later if not sooner.

Speculation persists about Baylor's future in the Big 12 and Arkansas' possible interest in moving there from the SEC. The Big 12 has had "general discussions ... on the changing landscape of conferences and its potential impact," Commissioner Kevin Weiberg says, "but there is no active plan or discussion regarding changing our own membership structure."

The Big Ten still is sitting on an odd number — 11 — which may not change unless the league finally can talk Notre Dame out of its football independence. That's an apparent non-issue until 2010, through which Notre Dame's $9 million-a-year contract with NBC has been extended.

What's the next move?

Will the Pac-10, static since Arizona and Arizona State joined in 1978, be obliged to follow the SEC, Big 12 and ACC and expand from 10 schools to 12? Even if it were, Hansen says, his league sees few if any attainable schools that come with a requisitely large TV market.

Most down-the-road suspicion involves the Big East, now a 16-member conference housing I-A and lower-division football schools and those that don't play football at all. "Sixteen is kind of unwieldy," former conference commissioner and College Football Association executive director Chuck Neinas says. "It's also, in this day and age, difficult to mix and match."

The 16 are contractually committed to the Big East and one another for five years, starting this year. But few will be surprised if Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Connecticut, Rutgers, Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida eventually peel off to form their own I-A conference.

A question, too, is whether the next dominoes can be tipped with more sensitivity and decorum.

The verbal and legal brawl between the ACC and Big East still reverberates, and not only through athletics offices.

"We've created a lot of anger and anguish among institutions. A lot of friendships have been damaged if not lost," Hansen says. "College athletics and even higher education have been criticized — sometimes justly, sometimes maybe not so — for the process.

"It's a pretty ugly public process."

[grad88]

Of course no comment on the Sunbelt Conference...we might as well be IAA as for as the writer is concerned.

[SCREAMING EAGLE-66]

The Sunbelt is a 4-year old football conference.... patience.... we (as a conference) need to start regularly winning non-conf games....plus stop the blow-outs...... then respect and attention will come.

Any MAC mention... nope....... Personally I think we are a better conference or soon will be.... we are the football crazy South.

[NCMeanGreen]

The Sunbelt is a 4-year old football conference.... patience.... we  (as a conference)  need to start regularly winning non-conf games....plus stop the blow-outs...... then respect and attention will come. 

Any MAC mention... nope....... Personally I think we are a better conference or soon will be.... we are the football crazy South.

That is just an excuse. To be a Division 1A Conference is a big deal, and the Sunbelt Conference should be treated as such. Come on...there are only, what, 116 schools in the entire Division 1A. It is ridiculous to ignore the programs in our conference when refering to Division 1A schools, or conferences...