A NEW CHESSBOARD FOR MARCH MADNESS.

The future of Big Time College Football, otherwise known as pro football's Saturday developmental league, is likely to be four conferences of sixteen teams with a playoff system.  That's got college basketball prognosticator Billy Packer worried.

Billy Packer, who had a 34-year run calling the tournament on TV before leaving CBS in 2008, thinks so.

Ongoing conference realignment seems largely focused on football. But Packer figures after the dust settles leaving, say, four 16-team mega-conferences, those conferences could leave the NCAA and create their own national basketball championship tournament — whose revenues needn't be shared with outsiders.

That'd be bad news for the NCAA, which gets about 90% of its budget from the NCAA tournament TV money, which helps stage 86 other NCAA championships. And so much for NCAA Cinderellas — like George Mason, Butler and Richmond — from outside conferences having a title shot.

In the new scenario, Packer figures such schools could have a few good seasons with players already recruited. But eventually schools in the mega-conference tournament would monopolize the elite recruits, "and everybody else would be in the intramural business."

As a bonus for leaving the NCAA, college powerhouses wouldn't have to worry about NCAA rules — they could write their own new rules.

As if Mr Packer -- long, notoriously, a shill for the so-called power conferences, is really worried about those Cinderellas.

More to the point, if the spring college basketball tournament simply becomes another showplace for another professional sport's developmental league, without the hypocrisy of the "student-athlete", perhaps that would be a positive development.  More resources for intramural sports and general exercise for the students, probably also a good thing.