Last September, when the Big 12 was in complete and total chaos, I decided to put some thoughts together regarding what I believed would happen to the Big 12 and other major conferences. For the most part, I was in the ballpark, and several of my predictions came true. But a few didn’t, and after re-reading that post, and applying what I’ve learned in the last eight months, I’ve decided to dissect it and determine why I was right in some cases and wrong in others.

The next post in this series, which will be my official prediction post, will build off of this exercise, so it’s important for me to go back through my old predictions and re-analyze them to see if my theories will apply in 2012 and beyond.

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In my last post, I discussed a lot of the financial and competitive reasons why teams will move from one conference to another. However, in this post, I plan on discussing what matters to schools and conferences after all of those factors are analyzed and weighed. Just because School X wants to move to Conference Y, it doesn't mean that they can. And just because Conference Y wants School X, it doesn't mean that they'll get them.

There are a lot of talking heads out there (including myself) that put more emphasis on one factor over another. I am going to give my thoughts on what I believe to be the 'Rules of Realignment', and what matters and what doesn't, regardless of what the mainstream media may be telling you.

If you haven't read the first post in this series, please feel free to do so before moving on. I'm starting off where the last post ended.

Click the jump for more.

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The season of conference realignment is upon us once again, but this time, the Big 12 is the aggressor (as opposed to defending their turf), and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) has become the conference that's in danger of losing valuable members and faces an uncertain future.

Oh, and the Big East is on life support, but it forgot to sign a "Do not resuscitate" form, so it's being left on the ventilator until someone gives it the sweet, merciful death that it truly deserves.

I think the most pertinent question out there is, "Where do we go from here?" But there are a plethora of other questions as well. Is the age of super-conference football upon us? Are we destined for four sixteen-team leagues? What about this playoff thing they're working on? Who will the Big 12 expand with? Will they expand at all? What will happen to the ACC and Big East?

All of those are good questions, but to understand where everything is going, you have to understand how college football got into this mess to begin with.

My intent of this post, which is the first in a series, is to identify the trends in the overall landscape, attempt to support or debunk a few thoughts floating out there, and establish a set of rules that govern conference realignment. The end result of the first two posts will be criteria that identifies where we're going, and it will set up my predictions for the future of the Big 12 and other conferences from around the country.

Hit the jump to find out why we're even talking about realignment to begin with.

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Per Dennis Dodd, the Big 12 has verbally agreed to a 13 year deal with ESPN and Fox that will be worth $2.6 Billion ($200 million per year). This means we're currently sitting in the top four with the Big Ten, SEC, and Pac-12.

The deal is expected to be the one reported by CBSSports.com on March 13 worth a combined $2.6 billion with ESPN and Fox. The 13-year deal is projected to be worth $200 million annually to the conference (an average of $20 million per school) through 2025. For the moment, the Big 12 enters the stratosphere of the Pac-12, SEC and Big Ten, all of which are near or above the $200 million per year mark.

Expected to be announced along with the new deal is an extension of the league's grant of rights. League CEOs had previously agreed to a six-year grant of rights that would allow the conference to keep a school's television rights if it left for a new league. The expectation is that the new grant of rights will be 13 years to match the TV deal. That provision essentially binds the at-times contentious league together for the term of the agreement.

The question regarding realignment, now, is finding two schools that add at least $40 million, annually, to this contract.

The game is afoot. Welcome to another summer of realignment fun, boys and girls.

Per Cole Manbeck in the Manhattan Mercury, Angel Rodriguez is staying.

Kansas State fans can take a deep breath and exhale now — Angel Rodriguez has decided to stay at K-State, the Mercury learned on Monday afternoon.

Link can be found here.

To say that today is one of the most surprising days of my life as a sports fan is probably a gigantic understatement. Twenty-four hours ago, I was shouting #Gottlieb4KSU from the rooftop of every metaphorical building in hopes that the ESPN Analyst would be the next coach at Kansas State. Today, before I go to bed, I will do so knowing that recently fired Illinois head coach Bruce Weber is now leading the Wildcat program.

Regardless of how I feel about this, and I've been pretty vocal about my opinion in the open threads, we have to focus on moving forward because this is the new reality. When I wake up in a few hours, I will still be a Kansas State fan and alumni, and Bruce Weber will still be our basketball coach. I can't wish it away. It is what it is.

I realize in saying that I wish that this situation could be magically reversed is an insult to Bruce Weber. I also realize that my initial comments in the post this morning were not very "professional" of me. However, from my perspective, hiring a coach that was just fired from a lateral position (and, yes, Illinois is a lateral job) is disheartening. When that same school is willing to part with a shade under $4 million dollars for someone to not coach their team, well, it furthers whatever reservations that I have about the hire.

But just because things went sideways for Weber at Illinois, does that mean they will here as well? Has it been proven that he's just a really good mid-major coach that benefited greatly from a stockpile of talent left behind by Bill Self? Can he continue the level of recent success that Kansas State saw under Bob Huggins and Frank Martin?

During his press conference Saturday, when notified that fan sentiment wasn't necessarily in his favor, he asked K-State fans to give him a chance.

Well, Bruce, I'll give you your chance, but I'm not going to give you a lot of rope. Here's what I believe you'll need to do to win over Kansas State fans (such as myself) and establish yourself as a viable replacement for the most successful coach at Kansas State in half a century.

If you can't do these things, well, things are going to get rough in a hurry.

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Per Rob Cassidy's tweet, we're hiring Bruce Weber at Kansas State.

I know that we're not technically supposed to swear on the front page, but I just have to say that this is f***ing bulls**t.

Bruce Weber sucks. Fire John Currie.

Screw this, I'm done.

Let's use this thread to carry on our conversations from the morning since the slate thread is about to overflow.

Post thoughts, comments, rumors, conjecture, and your hopes and dreams.

So, Andy Katz says it's not done yet.

Basically, this reads like Frank is waiting for us to counter.

The line in the sand has been drawn. Discuss here.

Well, it happened. I don't know what else to say other than the fact that we've lost the best basketball coach that Kansas State has seen in at least 25 years due to incompetent leadership within the athletic department.

I don't care what you guys put in this thread. Get angry, talk replacements, vent, heal, whatever.

Here is the link to the story in the Star.

Much like last year, we're left to wonder if Frank is going to leave us for a lesser program due to...whatever. Fill in your own blanks.

We can try to consolidate our hopes, fears, anger, future coaching candidates, etc. into this thread for the time being.

Kansas State hung tough with Syracuse for about thirty minutes, but they weren't able to come away with the win. The game was probably closer than the final score indicates, but hey, them's the breaks.

I'll let the better writers come up with something more poetic to say, but hop on in and celebrate and/or mourn the season.

It's hard to put into words what you want to say when someone passes away. It's even harder when you've never met that person, personally.

In our world of sports blogging and message boarding, where anonymity is king and you are whatever persona you and your avatar desire to be, we all create our social circles. Even if we've never met in person, and even if we don't know everyone's true identity, we still come to befriend and/or revere others in cyberspace.

Fatty fat fat, Fatty4KSU, FFF, or just "Fatty" (as he was known all over Big 12 message boards), was possibly the greatest KSU fan on the planet (Yes, he rivaled Robert.), at the very least in the electronic realm. Fatty's real name was Shwan Alkhatib. I had no idea about that until yesterday, when I heard of his passing on goEMAW.com.

Some of you may recognize the name due to his videos, of which, many are nothing short of legendary. You may know the name based on a message board interaction, where he was prolific. He was one of the few posters who transcended normal message boarding and became an icon. There really isn't much to say other than that. If you were a serious poster on any Big 12 message board, you knew Fatty. End of story.

Most of you have probably seen the following video several times. Maybe more. It's still, in my opinion, the greatest video in the history of Kansas State athletics. Period. The Birth of Kansas State Football said everything there needed to be said about where we were, where we went, and what it meant to all of us. I doubt there will ever be another video created that captures everything that we ever wanted or needed to say about the "Greatest Turnaround In the History of College Football", and he did it in ten minutes. Shwan was a genius whose passion was EMAW.

I highly suggest that you watch this video again and click on of the links above to visit goEMAW to learn more about Shwan. Also, if you feel so inclined, please feel free to donate to his memorial fund, which will help fund his elder brother's fight with cancer.

I don't know what else to say. The world is a worse place without fatty. He will be missed dearly by many, many people.

RIP Fatty.