First off, I must say nice work by the Detroit Tigers to lock up Prince Fielder; he’s an excellent way to protect Miguel Cabrera with Victor Martinez down for the year, or so I’ve heard.
Now onto the conference realignment; ESPN is reporting that Navy will join the Big East Conference in 2015 (espn.com). The commissioner of the Big East says that, “It’s a marriage our membership has longed for for many, many years,” and this is quite honestly a load of crap (espn.com). Navy does not bring in a big market, and while their team is occasionally competitive, this is not the situation the Big East ever wanted to run into. It all started in 2003 when Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami all left the Big East for the ACC, and since then the Big East has never been the same (acc.com).
Personally, I really hate all of the new developments that have been going on in college football, everyone is chasing the money at this point, and the BCS should drop the Big East’s automatic bid to a BCS bowl game. Any conference that has Central Florida, South Florida, San Diego State, and Navy in it, does not deserve an automatic bid whatsoever. No offense to those schools, but they’re not exactly football powerhouses. This new Big East Conference bodes well for Boise State though, and I would have to assume that if the Big East keeps their automatic bid, that Boise State will be representing the Big East in the BCS for the next 5-10 years. If the BCS was no longer around, then there wouldn’t be so many teams changing conferences to try to make more money for their schools; but that is an entirely different issue.
I cannot in good conscience support Boise State traveling across the country for each road game that they have to play, and I think the college football landscape would be better if teams stayed in more regional conferences. In a perfect world, I think that Boise State would fit in perfectly into the Big 12, but the Big 12 will just make some excuse about Boise, Idaho not being a good television market. Realistically the teams that control the conference (i.e. Texas, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State) do not want more competition in the conference than they already have.
The bottom line is, if the BCS was no longer around teams would not jump ship from their current conferences so quickly. It should be noted that just under two years ago Boise State left the Western Athletic Conference for the Mountain West Conference (espn.com), and it begs the question; what will it take for the BCS to be destroyed and stop this nonsense?
The Daily Traub 
I agree that all of this realignment sucks. It makes ZERO sense for San Diego St, Boise St, etc. to travel across the country (and teams to travel to their homes) for a football game and all say that they’re in one conference.
You also mentioned how Texas, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma St don’t want any more competition than they already have. They also, along with Va Tech, Miami, and BC, helped cause all of this nonsense with realignment when Texas got their own TV network. Suddenly, no one wants to be a part of the Big 12 (except TCU, but that makes sense), because Texas is down there taking more money and more attention than any other school will get. As a result, past powerhouses like Nebraska and Colorado, and solid schools like Missouri are all leaving, and only TCU is joining.
I think my biggest problem with all of it is the destruction of rivalries. Kansas vs. Nebraska and Kansas vs. Missouri are two of the longest college football rivalries in the nation, and they’re essentially done due to this crap.
What teams do you think are next to bolt and change conferences? Do you think conferences like the Big East and the Big 12 will fade away and die?
In all honesty, I think the Big 12 will survive. The fact that Texas has now agreed to share some of the money they’re getting from the Longhorn Network will keep the conference afloat and keep other schools from leaving and pursuing other options.
On the other hand, I think the Big East is completely screwed. I can see the Big 12 extending offers to Boise State, BYU and Louisville to get to 14 teams and attempt to become a super power conference that way. In my mind, Louisville, Rutgers, UCONN and I think Boise State will be the next teams to swap conferences. Two of them going to the Big 12 (Louisville and Boise) and then I think its plausible for Rutgers to end up in the Big 10 (if things get completely crazy), but more realistically, I see UCONN and Rutgers making a push to join the ACC and the ACC will be the first conference to 16 teams.
This would be the demise of the Big East if they lose another four teams, and quite frankly, the BCS would drop their automatic bid in that case.
I feel the exact same way about all the BCS conferences. When I was younger, my dad used to quiz me to see if I knew which conferences had what teams and I always did pretty good. Nowadays, I have no idea who is where. I didn’t know until the night of the B1G Ten championship game that the conference was split into the leaders and legends divisions. All this conference rearranging makes it difficult for me to take interest in college teams other than my own.