Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Dean Juipe: Waiting for dominoes to fall

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.

The first domino has been flicked and a second is undoubtedly waiting to fall.

But how many more in the wavy line that is college athletics will topple, now that Miami and Virginia Tech have initiated the latest round of conference realignments by switching from the Big East to the Atlantic Coast as they did Monday?

And will the impact of what may be a succession of moves be felt all the way out in the Mountain West Conference?

These are questions without real answers right this minute, which allows speculators to roam freely. But I'm inclined to believe a drastic restructuring -- one that at its most extreme would all but eliminate basketball's March Madness -- is unlikely at this time.

This much is known: The Big East is now in need of two new members and will pillage a lesser conference, probably Conference USA, to fill that void. Cincinnati and Louisville are the most likely candidates to be wooed into a merger that would restore the Big East's basketball reputation at the expense of a conference that just this year expanded to 11 teams with the addition of South Florida.

Conference USA probably becomes a victim in this chaos; whether it, in turn, would choose to plunder another league is unknown.

But you see what's going on here: every conference wants to protect its assets and explore its own expansion possibilities. This has happened a couple of times in the past decade or so and is topical again now that the ACC got the ball rolling by luring Miami and Virginia Tech into its fold.

It brings to mind how intriguing some of the possibilities can be. Remember when it looked to be a certainty that the Pac-10 would heist Texas and Colorado from the Big 12, only to get neither?

These days any Pac-10 expansion talk centers on Brigham Young and Utah, which would devastate the Mountain West while barely adding to the Pac-10's appeal.

Fresno State and Hawaii make for another tandem that is frequently projected to be available, especially if the Mountain West comes calling.

But I can't see the logic of the Mountain West adding teams to what is a solid, eight-school league of like-minded sports programs. These same schools withdrew from the Western Athletic Conference because they thought it was unwieldly at 16, so adding two or four schools goes against the Mountain West's basic premise of less being better.

But there are leagues that want to grow, as proven by the ACC's two new additions as well as the Big Ten's talk of adding a 12th member.

What some administrators fear is a split (along economic lines) among the 325 Division-I schools that play basketball and the 117 that play Division I-A football. It has been suggested that the "super conferences" might split from the voluntary National Collegiate Athletic Association and strike their own network TV deals, which would negate the need for the Bowl Championship Series that orchestrates postseason football games while putting a huge crimp in basketball's March Madness as well.

These are not unreasonable fears. Nor are they new.

But they cause conference commissioners to panic, which leads to public conjecture, which results in uncertainty among fans as they study the potential impact on their favorite teams. There's the domino effect again.

The only certainties as Miami and Virginia Tech switch leagues is that the Big East will continue to pursue legal action against Miami in particular and that it will eventually look elsewhere for their replacements. The changes could be short and sweet.

Or they could be protracted and unnerving, with one implication following another until every league has been shaken, stirred and rearranged.

This takes some adjusting for those who prefer the status quo, or who still fondly recall the dearly departed Southwest Conference or who lost track of conference affiliations after the previous wave of change. If you think you have a handle on things, quick, name a few of the schools in the Sun Belt Conference.

But change is good, right? And additional changes of the conference landscape are inevitable as traditions and bonds are cast aside. There will be tinkering, perhaps even massive overhaul.

Look at it as a potential rhyme: Evolution never quits and these conferences are forever evolving. Or see it as the game that it is, as simple as any known to mankind, where each and every piece falls not randomly but neatly into place at the appropriate time.

Thanks to the ACC, Miami and Virginia Tech, the game is on once again.

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