re: .

quote:

---

Dan Wetzel on Yahoo has said he thinks expansion will die when cable channels go a la carte and ESPN/conferences can't shove their subscriber fees down everyone's throat.

---

That's kind of what I've thought the last few years, but it'll be a slow process. I don't think conferences want Rutgers-like red herrings (no offense to you B1G guys) hanging over them. That addition, both at the time and now, seemed like a short-term cash grab that was not particularly strategically intelligent long-term; Nebraska, Penn State, and even to a lesser extent Maryland were good adds - I have never really understood the Rutgers add, as I still don't think the conference cable model (and most cable models, for that matter) in its current form is all that sustainable.

I happen to think a lot of it depends on the health of football in twenty or thirty years. Conferences will look very different if the quality of the sport is way down or health concerns become over-riding.

I think you could see one of two things happen:

- The major conferences all get to around 16 and then start to break apart back to 7 - 8 team conferences. At that size, conferences don't have all that much cohesion and teams are just in simple strategic alliances. If certain chunks of the conferences (say, the PAC 12 South or B1G East) think they can make out much better without programs a 1,000+ miles away with whom they have little in common, then they'll do it. This would work sort of how companies in certain industries go through cycles of M&A for many years and then cycles of break-offs/spin-offs for many years.

- Some of the bigger players (Texas, Michigan, SC, Alabama, Florida, etc.) start to explore independence.