On Tuesday the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee gave its blessing for a four-team college football playoff starting with the 2015 season. It’s a great day for college football fans.

How long have we waited to hear those words? Well, here’s some perspective. I’ve been writing about sports since 1992. I’ve been writing about a college football playoff since 1997. What prompted me to write about a college football playoff? The BCS’s formation in 1997.

That’s how long I’ve been chiming in about this subject. And, you know what? After this news ….

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Even if you’re a die-hard college football fan, keeping with conference realignment is a monumental task. In just the last month, Temple has bolted for the Big East and the Mountain West and Conference USA are contemplating an insane merger, even for conference realignment. They’re courting Sun Belt schools, and in turn the Sun Belt Conference is courting schools they may need to stay viable.

This is the trickle-down effect we anticipated when conference realignment started in earnest a couple of years ago. Remember when Nebraska bolted for the Big Ten and Colorado bolted for the Pac-12? That seems like a decade ago.

Larger conferences are bolstering their coffers. Smaller conferences are scrambling to survive. And it all seems patently unfair, though we are a country that prides itself on survival of the fittest.

But all of this conference realignment leads to instability in college football, instability the game doesn’t need. What’s worse is that it’s disorganized instability. Every man for himself.

So what if we embrace the chaos? What if we bring organization to the instability of conference realignment and make it a little more fair? Or at least a little more fun? Here are a few ideas that have been percolating in my mind as of late:

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It took an extra couple of weeks – and a reported $20 million deal between West Virginia and the Big East – but we have a Big 12 2012 football schedule.

The conference released the schedule on Tuesday just a couple of days after the Mountaineers engineered their departure from the Big East far ahead of the conference’s original 26-month exit timeline. But that’s what a little money will get you these days.

West Virginia, along with another Big East refugee, TCU (which, technically, never played in the Big East despite accepting the conference’s invitation in 2011) will play football in the Big 12 in 2012. So now we have an idea of the Big 12 opener for all teams, which is Sept. 15 when TCU travels to Kansas. We also know that West Virginia will open up at home on Sept. 29 against Baylor. Mountaineer AD Oliver Luck didn’t sound too worried about selling beer to Southern Baptists on gameday. Remember – the Mountaineers actually sell beer in the stadium.

In a conference where everyone plays everyone, you may not think there are winners and losers in this sort of thing. But when you examine the league schedule, you can see that a few teams received more favorable draws than others, as you’ll find out after the jump.

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Is Chris Petersen celebrating a bowl game victory or another top recruiting class?

There was a time, however brief, that the Mountain West thought it had enough to crash the party, and it might have made a difference when assessing the 2012 national signing day winners and losers for the Mountain West.

That was back in the middle of 2010. TCU was about to embark on a Rose Bowl-winning season. The league had just lured Boise State away from the WAC, giving the league perhaps the two best non-BCS programs in the country. That, along with Air Force and BYU, seemed to give the MWC enough ammunition to at least make a charge at the BCS gates.

It fell apart fast. BYU chose to go its own way, as Fleetwood Mac would sing, and become an independent. TCU accepted an invitation to the Big East, followed by an invitation to the Big 12 after texas A&M left. Boise State accepted an invitation to the Big East after TCU left for the Big 12.

There is no potential challenge now. The Mountain West is still a good league. Of course, it practically raided the WAC to become a 10-team league, as Fresno State, Nevada and Hawaii join the league this year. It can certainly content to be the best of the non-BCS leagues. But that’s about it.

The potential merger with Conference USA seems curious too. As I mentioned in my C-USA review, that would create a league that stretches from Hawaii to North Carolina. Wasn’t the reason the old 16-team WAC blew up in the first place due to unwieldy travel?

No, the Mountain West, to me, is better off on its own. It would seem to share little in common with Conference USA. But that’s for them to decide, not me.

As for recruiting this year, did all of the upheaval make a difference? Did it impact the winners and losers in the Mountain West? Find out after the jump.

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As it stands now, the Big East appeared to have a slightly better year than one would expect considering all of the upheaval. If you look at Scout.com’s conference rankings, the Big East was sixth with 2,022 points. But the Big East was within 300 points of the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12. So there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the four leagues.

Right now, I’m not sure the new members would make that much of a difference to the Big East’s overall rankings. Two of their future schools – Houston and Boise State – were ranked at the top of their current conferences, but their overall rankings among FBS schools wouldn’t have helped the Big East this year. That means that, so far, the new schools haven’t seen a bump in joining the league just yet.

What about the holdover teams? Well, the entire conference recruited just three Top 100 players and 5 five-star players among its haul. The only other conference among the Big 6 to recruit fewer than 10 Top 100 players, according to Scout.com, was the Big 12.

The Big East is a hard sell right now for its coaches. Recruits see the changes in the league and wonder if it will still be a BCS league when the new BCS contract is signed later this year. It’s a legitimate concern. No one knows how the BCS will react to dwindling attendance and sagging ratings. Who knows what will happen.

For now, the Big East is still in the BCS. And only one team can be declared the big winner. Find out who after the jump.

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If Kellen Moore had two more years of eligibility, he could play in the Big East Conference in 2013. Today he just has to be content for paving the way for his teammates.

If college realignment were a TV show, this edition would be Extreme Makeover: Big East Expansion. While it makes no geographic sense, Big East expansion accomplishes what is important – the league’s survival as a football conference.

Today the Big East announced that five schools had accepted its invitation to join the league – Boise State, San Diego State, SMU, Houston and Central Florida. Yes, it’s a geographic mess. The Big East has gone from a regional league to one that spans from east coast to west coast. There is no conference that is more far-flung than the Big East will be in 2013. In fact, no one’s ever attempted such a thing.

It’s an experiment created by necessity. The defections of TCU, West Virginia, Syracuse and Pittsburgh put the league in a position where it would no longer exist as a football league by 2014, thus ending the league’s automatic qualifying status in the BCS. While the Big East is considered to be the weakest of the six AQ conferences, being AQ means $23 million in guaranteed BCS money every year. That’s impossible to walk away from.

So now we have a Big East that looks more like old NFC West. Remember the days when Atlanta and San Francisco were in the same division? High school geography teachers are going to have a fit.

But as college football has shown in the past few months, there’s little regard for geography when it comes to creating conferences. How else to explain Missouri‘s addition to the SEC as a member of the Eastern Division. That had little to do with geography. It had to do with Alabama and Auburn not wanting to play in different divisions, thus potentially ending their yearly rivalry. And that, my friends, would NOT go over well in Alabama. Texans have had to accept the end of the texas-texas A&M rivalry. No way that’s happening in Tuscaloosa and Auburn.

So what does this all mean? Well, there are several ways to look at the impact of Big East expansion, and we’ll explore those after the jump.

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The topic was Boise State and whether the Broncos deserved a shot at the national championship game this year, even if all of the current undefeated teams ended up with a loss. Both Holtz and May said no.

Their reason? Boise State’s schedule isn’t good enough, and they scoffed at the notion that Boise can’t impact its own strength of schedule by scheduling Top 25 teams during the non-conference schedule. Holtz actually implied Boise State wouldn’t schedule more than one difficult opponent each season.

My issue isn’t their point, really, because I agree to some degree. My issue is this. Boise could schedule more Top 25 teams in non-conference play, and I actually think the Broncos would like to do so. The problem is this, guys – the automatic qualifying conferences are scared of the Broncos.

Yes, I said it. Scared.

Here’s the way the game is played among the six automatic qualifying conferences when it comes to non-conference action. Those schools do everything possible to make sure they win those games because they know their conferences are tough and that they’ll probably absorb a loss or two during league play. These programs value this strategy so much that they’ll actually pay lesser teams hundreds of thousands of dollars to come to their stadium so they can put a beat down on them.

The AQ teams get a win they can use to push their bowl eligibility and protect themselves from conference losses.

Sure, you have an unusual case like LSU this year, which scheduled a robust non-conference schedule to go with its SEC schedule. But most of the time you get a schedule that includes one decent AQ team and two or three non-AQ teams that will be easy to beat.

Boise State doesn’t have that luxury because it plays in the Mountain West, which is probably the best non-AQ conference going, but only has one ranked team and that’s Boise. The Broncos scheduled Georgia this year and beat the Bulldogs in the opener, but weren’t able to schedule another AQ team.

You don’t think Boise State wants to play tougher opponents? I feel certain that they do. But when you create a system where there’s no benefit for AQ teams to play a program like Boise State, then the Broncos will be lucky to get their one game against a ranked AQ opponent each year. The BCS continues to treat the Broncos as a novelty instead of as one of the nation’s top programs. This is just a case of the BCS trying to keep the non-AQ teams down. They don’t like party crashers.

Of course, Boise may finally get a chance to make its case, if the Big East’s flirtation with the program comes to fruition. Boise State moving to the Big East provides the conference with a program with a national following and helps take some of the sting out of the losses of Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia (and maybe more). The move finally provides Boise State access to the AQ world and legitimizes them, as much as TCU’s move to the Big East (and later Big 12) did for the Horned Frogs and Utah’s move to the Pac-12 did for the Utes. Yes, I know the Utes are 1-4 in the Pac-12 right now and May made that point. But the fact is Boise is a better program than Utah and I think Boise would do much better in an AQ conference.

Boise State’s move to a conference like this is well overdue. So is the respect this program deserves. Boise State no longer needs a pat on the head when they beat an AQ school.

Boise State needs a chance to play with the big boys every week. The Big East – even as decimated as they look right now – would give Boise State the chance. Sadly, it does the Broncos no good this year.

So, without further ado, My PigskinU.com Top 25 poll after Week 9:

1. Alabama (last week: 2): The biggest game in the history of college football (November 2011 edition) is just six days away. The Tide must establish the run against LSU.

2. LSU (2): Meanwhile the Tigers not only have to stop the run but figure out how to keep the heat that is the Crimson Tide’s pass rush off QBs Jarrett Lee and Jordan Jefferson.

3. Boise State (3): Boise’s final five games don’t look imposing. All they can do is play their games and see what happens.

4. Stanford (4): The Cardinal needed three overtimes to defeat USC. I don’t look at as a bad thing. This should toughen up the Cardinal for Oregon.

5. Oklahoma State (5): The Cowboys have had one close game this season, their one-point win over texas A&M. One other was a 12-point win. The rest have been absolute blowouts. The offense has scored at least 30 points in every game. Can anyone slow them down?

6. Oregon (6): What’s the worst thing that can happen to a Top 10 team during the season? A quarterback controversy. Watch the Darron Thomas-Bryan Bennett situation closely.

7. Oklahoma (8): I expected a bounce-back win for the Sooners. I didn’t quite expect the Sooner to blow out Kansas State, though.

8. Nebraska (9): The Cornhuskers just screwed up the Big Ten in a good way by beating Michigan State. You know, on second thought, Nebraska fits right into this league.

9. Arkansas (11): Yes, Arkansas struggled with Vandy. But that says more about the job James Franklin is doing in Nashville than the Hogs.  

10. Virginia Tech (13): You know if Duke had a kicker that could make a field goal we’d be talking about what’s wrong with the Hokies and not their escapability.

11. Penn State (14): Joe Pa is now the winningest coach in FBS/FCS. Congrats. Now enjoy the bye guys, because Nebraska, Ohio State and Wisconsin loom. Don’t get comfortable, Joe.

12. South Carolina (15): The best thing South Carolina has going for it right now is its win over resurgent Georgia. If the Gamecocks beat Florida, the SEC East is theirs.

13. Clemson (7): Remember when I said I wasn’t sure Clemson would go undefeated? Well, there you go.

14. Cincinnati (18): I wasn’t sure what to do with the Bearcats, considering they didn’t play this week. Five Big East games lie ahead for the nation’s No 2 run defense.

15. Michigan (19): The Legends Division is now a mess and the door is open for the Wolverines to take control. They still have the Cornhuskers in three weeks.

16. Houston (20): I saw QB Case Keenum in person last week. He’s definitely a quarterback worth paying attention to. Houston is on course for a Conference USA division title.

17. Kansas State (10): If I’m Bill Snyder, I’d be asking someone in the Big 12 offices why they ended up with Oklahoma and Oklahoma State on back-to-back weeks.

18. West Virginia (21): The Mountaineers are on their way to the Big 12. They still have a shot to claim their last Big East title.  

19. Arizona State (22): The Sun Devils dominated Colorado. That’s no mean feat. Losses ahead of the Sun Devils move them up three spots.

20. Wisconsin (12): Two flukish losses in a row for the Badgers put them in a precarious position. They must win out to contend for a Big Ten division title.

21. texas (23): texas ran the ball with impunity against Kansas. The longhorns are a win away from getting back to a bowl, but all five of their remaining games will be tough.

22. Georgia (NR): The Bulldogs won the Cocktail Party and it appears that Mark Richt’s job is safe. Sad that it takes that to secure a job for a great head coach like Richt.

23. Georgia Tech (NR): Food for thought – The Yellow Jackets have beaten five straight ranked opponents at home. Just sayin’.

24. Michigan State (17): I still think the Spartans are a Top 25 team. But they can’t keep laying eggs after winning big games.

25. Auburn (NR): I’m a little surprised the Tigers have been this good without Cam Newton. RB Michael Dyer is one of the best backs you’re not paying attention to.

Dropped out: texas A&M, Syracuse, USC.

Note: This series previously ran at RoadTripSports.com, but given the current climate of conference realignment, stoked by the Big 12, I feel this series of articles is as relevant now as it was a year ago. It will run every few days here at PigskinU.com. Check the PigskinU.com archives for Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

So in Part One I laid out an overview of building a better college game. In Part 2, we put our commissioner in charge with a mandate – change college football for the better. In Part 3 we re-drew conference lines, though not as radically as I originally intended. In Part 4 we talked about reducing the schedule to 11 games to allow all of our re-drawn conferences to participate in conference championship games.

But do you want a true national champion? Start a playoff. Here’s how.

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The ACC sparks college football’s next great shift. Perhaps the ACC wanted to get some pub before the craziness began. But the additions of Syracuse and Pittsburgh came out of left field. Most of the word the past week had been how the ACC was seeking to up its buyout fee to keep teams, not add them.

The fact that the two teams are a charter member of the Big East (Syracuse) and a Big East member since 1982 (Pittsburgh) underscores the new philosophy of college sports – find me the best deal. While there is no better conference for basketball than the Big East, the conference is No. 6 among the BCS conferences in football. And football pays the bills.

So the Orange and Panthers will migrate south in search of a better financial deal. The ACC gets access to upstate New York and Pittsburgh media markets, which will be handy at the negotiating table with ESPN. And, they’re now the closest to being the first “super conference” of the 21^st Century.

At least for the moment.

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Kellen Moore has plenty of upside as a potential Heisman candidate in 2011.

PigskinU.com is highlighting the 10 players it feels will be major players in the Heisman Trophy race in 2011. This series will appear periodically at PigskinU.com’s Just Sayin’ blog.

Kellen Moore, QB, Boise State

2010 Statistics: 13 games, 182.6 quarterback efficiency rating, 273-of-383 for 3,845 yards, 35 touchdowns, 6 interceptions, 71.3 completion percentage, 295.8 yards per game passing.

Last year’s Heisman? Moore was fourth in Heisman voting.

Why him? Don’t you love underdogs? Of course you do. This is America. And we love underdogs even more when they’re incredibly talented like one of our Top 10 Heisman Candidates in 2011, Kellen Moore. While Andrew Luck has the big-school pedigree, Moore has the small-school, outsider pluck that goes with leading Boise State the last three years. But unlike most small-school QBs, he’s cultivated a respected national reputation that may earn him points if the Broncos end up undefeated. He has a tremendous number of positives. On the field, he’s one of the nation’s most efficient quarterbacks. He rarely throws interceptions (just six a year ago). He leads his team with unquestioned alacrity. Off the field, Moore appears to be as humble and as focused as they come. Face it – voters for awards like these enjoy voting for guys that seem as if they came by their success the right way.

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