The Super-Conferences are coming...

According to Scout.com. Their prediction for the Big 10, five years (their predicted timeline for the emergence of the Super Conferences) from now:

Leaders
Indiana, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State, Pitt, Purdue, Rutgers, Syracuse, Wisconsin

Legends
Illinois, Iowa, Iowa State, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska

Curiously, I don't hate this. I'd prefer that college football not be about money and media markets, but in a perfect world, I'd piss whiskey and shit solid gold bricks. I can see this actually going down. I know the Big 10 wants Notre Dame. They want to create more natural rivalries for Penn State (see: Pitt, Syracuse and Rutgers) and Illinois (see: Mizzou.) About the only afterthought in all of this is poor Iowa State- but they've got to go somewhere and the Conference has, thankfully, been pretty good about wanting to stay in their geographic footprint.

Whether it comes true or not, we'll have to wait and see and I hope that they're right and it preserves the bowl system while creating a monster elite 8/final 4 to battle it out for the national title. That's always been my major concern about the playoff idea- I think we sacrifice tradition and history way too quickly in this country and throwing out some of the old bowl classics in the name of a money making playoff would be stupid. (Though limiting the number of bowls might not be a bad idea. Do we really need a Meineke Car Care Bowl? At what point does a Bowl game stop being a post-season reward for a school and become a ridiculous, universal thing that basically rewards mediocrity in a lot of cases?)

But I think Scout.com hit the nail on the head: we may had dodged a bullet for now, but this is exactly where it's heading. So get ready.