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Temple has returned to the Big East, and college sports have been solved. Every Division I conference is now set, and no more teams will move around for the sake of making more money or for any other reason that's actually just more money. Let's assess where we stand while the smoke clears. You'd be amazed how much smoke the MAC and Big East can kick up over Temple football!
Ranked in order from most settled to least settled, here's the realignment state of each conference:
Pac-12
Next: Everything. The Pac-12 and Big Ten have buddied up, in part to protect the Rose Bowl as the BCS gives way to a playoff, and in part for media digital media branding markets synergy media spaceships television. At some point in the next few years, the two leagues will start pairing for rotating games in football and other sports, generating content media transhumanism media media. Markets networks branding content reach markets robots media. Cyborgs destiny satellites. Antimatter television markets.
Big Ten
Next: Slightly less settled than the Pac-12, since we still don't know which division is which. Also, if Notre Dame decides it wants in, the Big Ten will find a way to make room. And if Notre Dame joins the Big Ten, the ACC may just lose its mind and start expanding sideways. Sideways! Of all the ways to expand!
Sun Belt
Joining: South Alabama (2012 or 2013, depending on how you look at it)
Next: Look at you, Sun Belt! With only one change, and that one a promising young addition*, and that solid addition having two whole years to ease into actual conference championship contention, it's all breezy summer days in the Sun Belt. And with no members really on anybody else's rader, unless Arkansas State lives up to its new "Boise State of the South" boast, calm and clear horizons stretch almost as far as the eye can see.
Almost, because a great unsettling looms. New commissioner Karl Benson wants to add teams, and, as we saw with his WAC work in the '90s, there's no stopping Karl Benson.
* Even though USA's football program is only entering its fourth year, its football, basketball and baseball facilities are already each among the three biggest in the Sun Belt. Let's talk about baseball facilities!
Related: Mid-Major Expansion Coverage
SEC
Joining: Missouri, Texas A&M
Next: Mike Slive is as satisfied with 14 teams as he was with 13 teams, which is exactly how satisfied he was with 12 teams. Mike Slive is likewise satisfied with not eating breakfast, knowing movie spoilers ahead of time, and missing the last 388 years of human history. He'll also soon be satisfied with 15 teams and then satisfied with 16 teams.
Bringing on two teams had certain SEC fan bases worried about losing annual rivalry games, or at least had newspaper columnists convinced the SEC would do away with major yearly money games. If the SEC's going to make Texas A&M vs. South Carolina a rivalry, you can be sure it will protect Tennessee vs. Alabama. Thus, all is stable, or at least until A&M people start doin' all that A&M stuff in front of LSU fans.
ACC
Joining: Pitt (2013), Syracuse (2013)
Next: Hoping for Notre Dame, settling for Rutgers and UConn. The ACC's plan to line the East Coast with middling football programs will continue until schools in Cancun and Nova Scotia finally take up the sport. The ACC has always just been a front for John Swofford's cruise line, and it's time the world found out.
Rumors continue that the SEC and Big Ten might pluck away a few ACC teams, but all that stuff is so 2010.
MAC
Joining: UMass
Leaving: Temple
Next: Trying to figure out the long-term difference between Temple, which was kicked out of the Big East in 2004, and UMass, a first-year FBS program. The MAC will continue to own your Wednesday nights forever, and should be even MACtionier without Temple's really good defense around. GTFO, competent defense!
Related: Mid-Major Expansion Coverage
Big 12
Joining: TCU, West Virginia
Leaving: Missouri, Texas A&M
Next: BYU and Louisville. This will happen a year from now, but it will be done in the most dramatic way possible, with a Kentucky senator love triangle and three assassination attempts worked in somehow.
Big East
Joining: Central Florida, Houston, Memphis, SMU, Temple, Boise State (2013), Navy (2015)
Leaving: TCU sort of, West Virginia, Pitt (2013), Syracuse (2013)
Next: Once Louisville leaves, it's either Villanova or, like, Bangladesh National.
Mountain West
Leaving: Boise State, San Diego State, TCU sort of
Joining: Fresno State, Hawai'i, Nevada
Next: It's the nation's second busiest terminal, but the MWC at least has potential BCS membership coming its way, albeit for the last two years of the BCS. All that turnover doubly doesn't matter since the Mountain West is piling its scraps on the same table as Conference USA's to form the item we're still hoping will be called MOUNT USA. (Big East, if you're gonna have a name you want everyone to ALL-CAPS, make sure it's something like "MOUNT USA.")
Also: Bill Connelly's 24-team MOUNT USA scheduling plan and my 24-team MOUNT USA power rankings.
Related: Mid-Major Expansion Coverage
Conference USA
Leaving: Central Florida, Houston, Memphis, SMU
Next: Wipe brow, thank the good Lord for the Mountain West. Also, rejoice in not being the WAC, which seems set to become MOUNT USA's unofficial feeding grounds.
Related: Mid-Major Expansion Coverage
WAC
Joining: Texas State, UT-San Antonio
Leaving: MAYBE EVERYBODY EXCEPT IDAHO
Next: The spine is Idaho: