Conference Shuffle: Big XXII

I will try to keep this shuffle post down to a minimum as the SEC one got a little long winded. As with the other blogs regarding this topic, there has been a lot of potential news over the past few days. The big news for the Big XXII being that they invited TCU to join next season and they have accepted. Good thing for TCU, because going to the Big East never made sense for way too many reasons to list and geographically they belong in the Big XXII.

I believe the Big XXII will at some point have 12 teams, which in turn will make their conference name the only one that still makes sense. With that being said here is what the Big XXII looks like this season, remember due to them only having 10 teams they no longer have divisions.

Current
Baylor
Iowa State
Kansas
Kansas State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Missouri (in my model leaving for the SEC)
Texas
Texas A&M (leaving for the SEC)
Texas Tech

With the addition of TCU and the eventual departure of Mizzou, the Big XXII will need to add three teams to get to 12 for the 2012 or 2013 football season.

Here are the teams I believe will be coming to a Big XXII stadium near you:

1. Louisville. They add a market that helps to extend the branding of the conference, as well as, top notch athletic facilities. This move unlike others will also help to strengthen the basketball competition in the conference.

2. BYU. This year was their first as an independent and with all of the conference shuffling it is going to be harder and harder in years to come to remain independent. BYU has said it is interesting in the Big XXII and recent reports have started the conference is starting to show interest in adding them as well. Again this expands the conference's footprint.

3. West Virginia. Even though I believed that they would end up in the SEC, stories keep creeping out that the SEC is not interested at all and the Big XXII could be their landing spot.

4. Boise State. While on paper this move makes sense, most of the BCS conferences have not approached or even thought about adding BSU. I think this is mostly based on athletic facilities and that football maybe the only power moving forward. Personally I would love to see the Broncos in either the Pac-12 or Big XXII.

So here is what I think the conference will look like in 2-3 years once the mess is cleared up. For argument's sake I am just going to call them the North and South conferences like before, even though they are going to create some division system that does not make sense like the ACC probably.

North
*Boise State
*BYU
Iowa State
Kansas
Kansas State
Oklahoma State

South
Baylor
*Louisville
Oklahoma
*TCU
Texas
Texas Tech

If West Virginia ends up in the Big XXII, I believe Clemson will be on the move as well to the SEC and Rutgers will go to the ACC........