Lehigh Football Nation

If you've been following collegiate athletics like I have, you've undoubtedly seen the latest news flying around this week as colleges have been dumping long-standing conferences like, apparently, top military brass have been dumping husbands and wives. Maryland abandons the ACC, a conference which they've called home for 50 years, to join the Big 10, for little other reason than cash money to bail out their near-bankrupt athletics department.  Rutgers abandons the Big East, a conference which they've called home for more than 20 years, to join the Big 10, for little other reason than cash money to fund their struggling athletics department. From there, all hell has broken loose, as Louisville has leapt to the ACC to replace Maryland, while the Big East seems convinced that East Carolina and Tulane are acceptable replacements for the Cardinals and Scarlet Knights, and the forgotten conferences of FBS, Conference USA and the Sun Belt, reshuffle their deck chairs to...

It sure seems like - for now - the inexorable march towards sixteen team superconferences is at best sleeping, or at worst dead. After shrieking announcements that the Pac N was going to swoop in and poach five different football teams from the Big XII, the Big East might take all the rest and college football would be forever changed, it seems like, according to Andy Staples' Sports Illustrated article talking about the proceedings that "powerful outsiders, concerned that the Pac-10's plan to supersize to 16 by pillaging the Big 12 would set off an unstoppable chain of events, helped broker the deal, which may have saved college sports as currently constituted." Staples stopped short of saying it, but it could very well be one of the "powerful outsiders" that saved the Big XII may have been one of the forces that seemed to be driving it to destruction: Fox. (more)

Usually, the analogy of dominoes is overdone.  But it's hard to escape it now that we know that Colorado has elected to join the conference formerly known as the Pac Ten , and Nebraska has elected to join the conference formerly known as the Big Ten . Where might other dominoes fall?  Will the Big XII cease to exist - or survice?  Will the Big East crumble, too - or expand by four (or more) teams?  Will the Mountain West become a Western counterpoint to the Pac-N - or see its best teams lured to that conference? It's a crazy, dangerous world out there right now, especially if you think you have all the answers on FBS conference realignment. But it's a good time - with a break in the action, sort of - where we can see where this all is could lead. It could be the start of megaconferences, the involvement of Congress - or not much else. (more)

At this time in history, I think numbers have never been more misunderstood. The misunderstanding of numbers permeates every level of politics, business, mutual funds... everything. You don't have to go far to find examples, either. Look at Lehman Brothers, who three years ago thought that getting wholesale into the business of subprime loans and issuing bonds against them was a great idea because there would always be suckers to buy their bonds and real estate would have nowhere to go but up.  Look at Washington, where we've been promised a 1 trillion dollar new spending package without any form of revenue to offset this gargantuan new cost coming up in the next decade.  And not all that long ago came the book " Dow 36,000 ", a book which actually argued that stocks were undervalued since their valuations of "perfectly reasonable prices" showed that it was so.  Now Jim Delany , commissioner of the Big 10, and a gaggle of breathless sportswriters would...