Speculation won't be enough to spark 16-team super-conferences.
They will only happen if valuable commodities are on the market.
The Pac-12, for instance, wouldn't resist expansion if Oklahoma and Texas were available, just as the Big Ten couldn't say no to Nebraska.
Only one other conference is both vulnerable enough to dismantle AND has enough valuable pieces to attract interest.
Most think it's the Big East. The league doesn't have any football tradition. Almost half the schools don't play football. And league members are spread from Florida to Wisconsin to New England (and soon to be Texas).
Schools like West Virginia, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Rutgers are candidates for other leagues.
But the ACC is just as vulnerable. Cohesion is gone after adding Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College. Yet the league is nearly as bad in football as it was before expanding to 12 teams.
This is a football world now, and the ACC doesn't play well enough — or care enough — to earn the largest TV contracts.
And basketball? Aside from North Carolina and Duke, the dominance in the ACC's signature sport has waned dramatically the past decade. Tell me, what exactly does a school like Wake Forest bring to the table as a BCS-conference member?
But the best ACC schools are more attractive than the best Big East schools and, thus, more likely to be stolen away from the ACC. The reasons: Academics and geography.
Any Big Ten or SEC professor would be glad to rub elbows with Virginia, North Carolina, Duke and Georgia Tech. And those schools are located in the Sun Belt, where population is booming. That equals TV revenue and fertile recruiting ground.
If 16-team super-conferences become reality, the ACC's demise is most likely the spark.
— Dirk Chatelain
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