The Midwest Conference?

The college sports image is changing as we know it. Nebraska to the Big Ten, possibly along with Missouri. Also Colorado heading to the Pac-10, with the Pac-10 heavily looking at Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State as well. So with the Pac-10 and Big Ten creating a couple of super conferences I believe the Big 12 should have some fight to obtain their conferences name. Kansas State, Kansas, Iowa State, and Baylor will be without a conference. This leaves a question for the Kansans, Cyclones, and Bears fans. Where will they go?

One option would be to take a "Notre Dame" approach to things and go independent. Positives of a decision like this is that it gives more freedom with scheduling and allowing these teams to play whoever they want. Negatives of this decision would be that it would cost much more money to bring teams to Manhattan, Lawrence, Ames, and Waco to play and also be harder to find games to play on the road, due to the majority of the other D-1 teams being within a conference.

Another option would be to respond to the Pac-10 and Big Ten's decision to recruit and take teams from the Big 12 by recruiting teams from the C-USA, SEC, and Mountain West. The expansion of the Pac-10 and Big Ten has left question in the mind of 4 Big 12 teams of where will they go? and what conference will they be in? Representatives of the Big 12 understand that money is the motive for teams to move. Yes, the Big 12 has been a successful conference winning football and basketball championships within the last 5 years. Also they have the money producing football program of Texas and basketball producer, Kansas.

Football wise I believe this is a poor decision. As we speak there are several problems with the BCS system and the expansion of several of these conferences definitely changes the way the BCS must do things. With the expansion it will be much tougher to make the Top 25 polls and also to decide on the teams who will play in the BCS bowls.

Basketball, No matter how much the conferences change the 68 team field will always be there. Yes the committee for the NCAA tournament will have tougher decisions to make because of the fact that there will be less conference champions. This puts the pressure on the committee to choice more teams off of the bubble. Besides that when March rolls around you will see the same selection show and the same format to win the National Championship.

Overall my position on the expansion, being a Kansas State fan, is that it is a very poor plan. It makes the BCS recreate the system that they never even predicted in the first place. Also it makes it harder to become a national champion in both major money producing sports, which as we can tell by the expansion that money is the most important thing in college sports.