Conferences without football

Now that it appears inevitable that Boise State will join the Big East for football, it’s obvious that geographical boundaries don’t matter. Boise is 2,600 miles from Storrs, Conn. It’s not much closer from Colorado Springs to Storrs. Yet both BSU and Air Force could be part of the new-but-not-improved Big East.

All this brings me back to a conversation I had with WAC commissioner Karl Benson a couple of weeks ago. Asked if he could foresee conferences without football, he said yes. The idea would be for the BCS to run college football and the NCAA to run the rest. It makes some sense. After all, BSU, Navy and Air Force are being invited to the Big East in football only.

Benson said even before a proposed WAC/Big East/Mountain West/Conference USA merger was floated (that now appears unlikely), he wondered about making football a separate entity. He said the C-USA and MWC commissioners talked in October about a 22-team, football-only alliance.

“A week later it’s 32-teams and who knows, maybe the next week it will be 48 teams,” Benson said.

He theorized that there could be eight 10-team divisions in college football that are “geographically placed, east to west, and those 80 schools could have their own organization, rules, manage their own TV and post-season. And they could operate as a stand-alone entity. All other sports would be under the umbrella of their respective conferences.”

He said approximately 40 current FBS (formerly I-A) teams would play in the FCS (formerly I-AA) division.

Interesting idea. If football runs college sports, why not separate it from the others? Then let the NCAA run the rest in orderly geographically balanced conferences. There is something appealing about having, say, Utah State, Utah, BYU, Montana, Colorado and Wyoming playing in the same conference. Sounds a lot like the old Skyline Conference, in fact.

But TV basketball contracts could be problematic. Why would, say, Utah or Colorado give up lucrative basketball TV rights with the Pac-12 to join in with Montana and Wyoming?