Mindless Speculation, Just Because I Can

Yes, it's time to revisit my favorite hobby- mindless speculation about conference re-alignment: just because I can. To be honest, not much is moving on the re-alignment front right now. Yes, the A-10 is probably going to get raided by the Catholic 7/New Big East for a few programs, but that's basketball and that's life in the mid-majors for you. Boundaries shift, Popes resign and life goes on. Xavier, Butler and potentially some combination of St. Louis, Creighton and Dayton could all be headed to the new league- when and how has yet to be determined.

There was a mild buzz about two weeks back about UNC and UVA talking/getting invites to the B1G but that hasn't materialized into anything concrete- everyone's waiting on the results of the Maryland/ACC lawsuit before making a move. I stumbled upon some fairly coherent and well-thought out analysis of the situation over here- a vast improvement on the usual mindless insanity that fills the ESPN.com comment boards whenever a whisper of realignment leaks out into the world.

What surprised me with the article above though isn't that UVA and UNC are being targeted. It's that Florida State seems to have climbed into the ranks of the papabile leapfrogging even Georgia Tech with the final stopping number of the B1G now looking more and more like 18 than 16 and some people even mentioning 20 which just seems utterly ludicrous to me.

Look, to me, at a certain point, you just get too damn big. If the B1G is insane enough to go to 20, then we're essentially going to be two leagues that schedule games against each other. (And maybe that'll work out in the long run- I mean, it's seeming more and more likely that we're getting Wisconsin back in our division and that should make many a Hawkeye fan happy.) And while I'm not thrilled about the prospect of UNC joining the B1G, it could be worse- at least they're not Duke. (If Duke joins the B1G, the Buckeyes will be forever displaced from their position of 'if my kid goes to that school, I might disown them.' F--k Duke. Seriously. F--k that noise.) If we get anyone from North Carolina, I'd prefer NC State but the Illuminati of the B1G undoubtedly have their own opinion on that.

UVA makes sense- it expands our reach into Virginia (though I think you could make the argument that VaTech gets you more of Virginia than UVA does, television-wise), we give Maryland a neighbor that they've got a long rivalry with and though not many people have been mentioning it the B1G will be awesome at both Lacrosse and Soccer- and that's pretty damn exciting to me. I almost wish Iowa played lacrosse just for that reason... But it brings up another interesting rumble I found and that was the whisper of Johns Hopkins joining the B1G as an associate member in Lacrosse.

Color me surprised on that one- I didn't know the B1G was into that but it raises potentially cool possibilities in both lacrosse and hockey that are worth considering. (The best Lacrosse powers and the best of the old WHCA? Could be cool... just sayin'.)

In the meantime, we few, we happy few watch and wait for the next domino to fall.