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Probably some value in oSu, Kansas and the Arizona schools.

I did not agree with this initially because I always thought it was kinda neat that even in an obscure sport an athlete got to compete against their school's major FB rivals. Ie, a swimmer or rower at tOSU/M still gets to compete against their school's FB rival.

The national mega-conferences make sense both financially and competitively for FB and, to a lesser extent, BB. People will watch Ohio State play in Autzen or UCLA play in the Big House and the money needed to fly tOSU to Eugene or UCLA to Ann Arbor is EASILY recouped by the TV money those games generate but it really makes no sense to fly Oregon's swimmers and rowers to Columbus nor Michigan's to Los Angeles.

Although to be honest, don't they pretty much fly most places these days? The PAC-12 was already a fly-between conference IMHO. The B1G is also in many cases, although there are a handful of schools close enough together the bus it. 

What if for the other sports, they did do east/west divisions? 9 schools each.

• West: USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois
• East: Northwestern, Purdue, IU, MSU, Michigan, OSU, PSU, Rutgers, Maryland

Other than Illinois/Northwestern, that really doesn't disrupt any mainstream rivalries that I can see... And it makes a lot more sense than Oregon traveling to Rutgers every year or vice versa.  

Yes, but that seems like a much heavier travel burden on the West schools

But I think the Western schools had a heavier travel burden to begin with and this is more-or-less unavoidable.  

I'm thinking we end up at 24 broken into four "pods" of six where the pods are reasonably geographic but who knows.  

Probably some value in oSu, Kansas and the Arizona schools.

If there were any value in them, they'd already be in the SEC.  The Arizona schools just changed conferences.  If they'd had an SEC invitation, then they'd have easily picked the SEC over the B12.  They didn't have an SEC invitation, because there's no value in adding them.

I'm not saying they weren't valuable to the B12.  They are.  They're just not valuable to the SEC.

And would oSu or Kansas turn down an SEC invitation?  Of course not.  It would have been easy to add them at the same time as Texas and OU.  The fact that this did NOT happen, tells you all you need to know about whether or not the SEC sees any value there.  Short answer-- they don't.

Yes, but that seems like a much heavier travel burden on the West schools

I don't know how the Olympic sports work? If they do home meets between schools once a year, the 5 existing B1G schools would each only travel to the West Coast twice a year. If they had any cross-division meets that would also be as easy as it is today. (And honestly for those schools there's not much difference between traveling to the West Coast vs State College, Piscataway, or College Park.)

I know basketball (which I'm not sure would be included) have some 2-play schools, but if they tried to not avoid divisions and do a more round robin w/ protected rivalries, with a 20-game schedule you'd have 16 one-play and 2 two-play teams. Stick with traditional (and geographic) rivalries for the two-play teams, and the traditional B1G teams also only need to travel to the West Coast twice yearly.

As for UCLA/USC/UO/UW and their travel budgets? Screw 'em; they're getting paid enough to fly wherever we tell them to fly

Gotcha.

What we all need to understand here is that the TV networks are driving everything.

If Fox, NBC and CSB tell the B1G to dump Rutgers and Northwestern and to take FSU and Miami, it will get done.

If Mickey Mouse tells the SEC to dump Mizzou and Vandy and to take Clemson and UNC, it will get done.

Overall I agree with your premise, but we have yet to see any modern cases of a conference kicking out a member.  Now that the implications of such an action have reached the Billions of Dollars range for any particular school, I'd be pretty surprised if any conference actually kicked out a sitting member.  The enormity of the instant lawsuit they'd be facing, would be enough to bankrupt any conference within months.

It would take a complete breakaway of existing schools to form brand new conferences.  We've all talked about that at length over the past many years, but at this point I think we're going to see the sport of college football implode before we see a full breakaway restructuring that would dump the Northwesterns and the Vandys.

It would, but do you honestly put it past them? The PAC was one of the most historic college conferences that existed, and now Wazzu and OrSU, although not "kicked out", are the only ones there.

The only reason to not kick them out is, per OAM's point, is to placate the power team conference teams by allowing them to inflate win totals against patsies. But the problem is that this means they can NEVER do anything about the parity problem in college sports, because there's no reason to let Northwestern and Vandy from any changes that improve parity.

No I don't put it past them, I just don't think it will happen in time.  I think college football is going to implode before a full breakaway can occur.

I think what we're seeing now, in this mad dash to reorg conferences and get as much fast cash is possible, is the university presidents realizing that the golden goose is nearly dead, and doing everything they can to extract the last few eggs.