Conference Reshufflin' is as American as Apple Pie

When Conference USA and Mountain West announced their intent to merge on Monday, they made a promise of mediocrity to America in the way that only Conference USA and the Mountain West can.

The structure of the new conference, Smatresk and Cowen's statement said, will have a "national scope from the Atlantic Seaboard to Hawaii, regular season scheduling in divisions, NCAA FBS affiliation and mechanisms to emphasize and improve academic standards and fiscal responsibility."

I think could be more accurately phrased as:

So we were worried our terrible football conferences would die to death of mediocrity. With Boise State, TCU and BYU all leaving for greener pastures the chance of having a national presence in the sphere of mediocrity was diminishing. We felt it was necessary to merge in order to continue the fine tradition of nationally pedestrian football.

Between the two conferences they return seven teams next season with winning records. If you take them and another three teams, you might MAYBE have a decent football conference. What they're choosing to do is to take all of the good teams and all of the bad, 'til death or more dollars do you part. Instead, it'll be like a fine layer of crap smeared too thin all over the United States and Hawaii. Only Alaska is spared from this mess and have you seen When Mooses Attack? I'd rather deal with boring football.

Yet, while the quality of the game might not ever exceed Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, they've stumbled on an idea that might be very interesting in execution.

The new conference will consist of 18 to 24 members and start in the 2013-14 academic year. It would not only have a conference championship football game, but also conference semifinals. Conference USA and the Mountain West would continue as is for the 2012-13 season.

This new conference, the USA Confest we can call it for now, has decided it's place in the pecking order and it's not with the BCS big kids. So they're going to go off and secede and start their own system that has a "Plus-One" playoff right inside their own conference. Could the plan be to try and create a system for the non-BCS kids that creates a four or eight team playoff system independent of the BCS? That's so damn AMERICAN it just might work.

One thing is certain. With Delany talking playoffs and the USA Confest talking conference playoffs, the days of a playoff free college football landscape are drawing to a close. The risk-averse computer programmer in me worries that the new landscape will be too devoid of anything resembling a rivalry game. That every game will become a Michigan State vs. generic-team-to-be-named-later-with-a-varying-level-of-goodness. But the person in me who watched Boise State vs Oklahoma a few years ago is hopeful that this change will be good.