Looks like they are going to at least try to maintain themselves as a Power 5 conference.
I think this may stem the tide for several years, but I still think 4 Conference w/ 16 team each is the future.
How times have changed… only 2300 miles from Provo to Orlando… nice tight geographic league.
More surprising Jet Blue flies non stop from SLC to Orlando… and I thought we might see them wandering around the ATL Airport. 
Like I said in another thread, the Big Twelve is for all practical purposes the AAC now. I do not see how it can be viewed as “power conference.”
It depends on the Definition of a Power Conference… all are not equal.
IMHO, there are 2 Power Conferences. The SEC and Big 10.
Then you have the ACC and PAC12. I am not very familiar with the PAC 12 except like the ACC, they value the quality of Education.
Then there is the Big 12…
BTW, should the SEC trade Vanderbilt for Clemson? 
I can remember in the old days when, unofficially at least, there were five “major conferences,” all of which had contractual tie-ins to New Years Day Bowls: the SEC, Big Ten, Pac Ten, SWC and Big Eight. The ACC did not have a New Year’s Day tie-in and was known more for basketball.
Both the Big Eight and SWC are history. The Big Twelve is essentially what is left-over of those two conferences after the other schools joined other conferences, plus other schools added as fill-ins. .
I would classify the ACC and Pac 12 as “power conferences.” Both, especially the Pac 12, are in a somewhat of a down cycle now, but both have schools with a lot of history and which have had very strong seasons before and which one can see them coming back. Remember that Alabama had its down years too.
The Big 12, on the other hand, is just trying to hang on. It has now lost it two strongest remaining marquee programs, and with its upcoming membership I don’t see any annual match-ups that are must-see marquee games during college football season. However, as you allude to, if BYU and UCF both go unbeaten, maybe that will prove me wrong.
They made the comment yesterday that it was closer from Orlando to Venezuela than Orlando to Provo.
Agree 100%, and this is what they were talking about on the radio.
A Cincy v. Iowa State would be two top 10 teams playing.
But it wouldn’t even hold a candle to a Florida v. Texas or a USC v. Oregon.
How far its it from Lincoln to New Jersey? 
Hey, we are actually in the correct geographical location for the Big10. Rutgers came later.
OK, from Lincoln to State College, PA?
Side note: A lot of people in Pennsylvania were not happy at the time when Penn State joined the Big Ten. They said it didn’t make sense geographically and would cost them a lot of their traditional rivalries. I also remember Bob Knight complaining about it because of the longer road trips.
1300 Miles
1000 miles less than SLC to Orlando.
I remember that.
A lot of their fans liked the fact that they were an Independent.
I think it turned out very good for them though (FYI, I seriously dislike Penn St.).
I don’t think it was so much that as the fact that they were a member of a informal group of independent northeastern schools which served as a de-facto eastern conference. They lost that when they joined the Big Ten.
I still think that the most short-sighted thing the Big East did in the early 1980s was to turn down Penn State for membership. Looking at it narrowly, the Big East did not play football then and Penn State was not a basketball school. Still several of those Big East schools were independents in football who played Penn State annually, and they should have seen that offering Penn State membership would have solidified Penn State’s position in the east, and thus by extension those other Big East schools who played Penn State in football. Once Penn State joined the Big Ten and those annual match-ups went away, that started the end of the Big East as it was known.
At the same time, I also read that a lot of other schools hated Penn State. I also later read that Joe Paterno had floated ideas for a formal eastern conference but - surprise, surprise - without sharing football revenue. If that was true, and it would not surprise me at all, that puts a lot of the blame on Penn State for never having a formal eastern football conference then. That still would not have precluded the Big East from taking Penn State in for its non-football sports and have all of its football members continue to play each other as independents.
I agree with that.
Reminds me of the 1984 Holiday Bowl. BYU was in the WAC at the time, undefeated and ranked #1, but the WAC champion was obligated to play in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego (not generally considered a major bowl game). They had a hard time getting an opponent and Michigan, at 6-6 and unranked, went. BYU won 24-17, coming back in the 4th quarter. BYU ended the season as #1, but many were not happy about it.
Going on memory here, but I think the following year BYU managed to get out of that contractual obligation and into a New Year’s Day Bowl because they scheduled the Holiday Bowl on a day where BYU could not play due to its Mormon faith.
Off topic - this is for parrot - Saw the A10’s go over a couple of times while picking up my grandson from school. Signs of a Chiefs game.
That time of year again