ALL IS PROCEEDING AS I HAVE FORESEEN.

Let's set the Wayback Machine to last December.  "How long have I been carrying on about College Sports, Inc. realigning until there are four major conferences of sixteen teams each and the National Collegiate Athletic Association becomes irrelevant?"

Will you still read me, will you believe me, when there's thirty-four?  "SEC, Big Ten 'advisory group' stands as coded threat to NCAA: Figure it out, or we'll go off ourselves."  The money quote was nailed to Newmark's Door.

In essence, the two leagues are aiming to remodel what is left of the collegiate model. Don't like it? Well, you don't have to. If NCAA membership doesn't agree to their reforms, the SEC and Big Ten have the leverage to take their 34 teams and stage their own national championship. The networks and the market itself have told them that is possible, and it's a path which SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has already hinted at in the past.

It's always been that way, with the sports programs that think they would do better under a different set of rules seeking to defect from the Cartel in Shawnee Mission.  "They've always drawn well at home, and it used to be that Notre Dame would defect from whatever college football cartel the Oklahomas and Texases and Ohio States and Universities of Spoiled Children cobbled together, because they'd get a better division of the revenue going it alone."  And yes, the regents of the University of Oklahoma brought their own antitrust suit against the cartel managers, and won.  I lose track of whether Oklahoma are in the expanded SEC or not, there are still at least thirty football programs that want a piece of the action, and the Atlantic Coast can't figure out whether or not to concentrate on basketball.  All I know for sure is that the Mid-American will still be on the outside of whatever the four power conferences cook up.

First, those two conferences can go their own way, which appears to be what the latest bargaining position is.

If that means a velvet hammer -- Friday's release -- leading to a chaotic breakaway of the two leagues, that's an option, too. It's just unlikely to be one that is explored right away. Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti would certainly like to affect change within the system first.

The SEC commissioner has left breadcrumbs leading us to this day. In June 2023, he criticized the composition of the NCAA Board of Governors, calling them out for having too little Power Five representation.

That's how it always goes, if you think you're being hard done by, you set up your own tournament.  It's been that way ever since those Puritan congregations of New England started having fallings-out over some minor point of Scripture.  It had little to do with money then, it has everything to do with money now, and CBS correspondent Dennis Dodd could use an economics lesson.

Former respective commissioners Mike Slive and Jim Delany viewed each other respectfully from a distance, but their legislative and financial interests were strictly their own.

Now, there is too much money and power at stake for them not to join brands. The best rivalries worth watching mostly now reside in these two conferences. Those rivalries translate to television ratings, which translate to revenue. Thank you, conference realignment.

What, you think the realignment preceded the money?  Why did Penn State go from an independent to a member of the B1G, and why did its crash-test dummy Rutgers, which, if we had relegation in football, would be first out of the new alignment, follow?

He's right, though, about the emergent structure of a national championship.

These behemoths are ready to take over college athletics. If the NCAA can't manage the current mess, they will take it upon themselves. And it's becoming increasingly obvious the NCAA can't handle the current mess, mostly because a large part of the oil spill has been caused by the governing body overseeing college athletics.

We haven't even gotten to the muddle which is the baskeball tournament. What was informed speculation a dozen years ago might be where College Sports, Inc. is headed.

Maybe the old system, without any attempts to establish a true national champion, was better. Or maybe the conference realignments will lead to four major conferences of sixteen teams divided into two divisions of eight, then a tournament either of the conference division winners, or start the seeding for the playoffs right there, with the standout teams from the mid-major conferences exiled to the Mineral Water Bowl ever after.

The antitrust lawyers will have opportunities to wet their beaks along the way.