In 2010, I read a book called Death to the BCS by Dan Wetzel. In that book, Dan laid out a proposal to replace the Bowl Championship with a playoff in college football. He actually proposed a model with a sixteen team playoff. When he showed the playoff matchups, I have to admit they were very cool. He also explained how the Bowl System worked, and why the antiquated games didn't really make sense anymore. Finally, Dan pointed out how much more money college football could make from a playoff as compared to the BCS.

I was fully on board. To prove it, here's what I posted to Facebook the day the College Football Playoff was announced only two years after Wetzel's book was came out.

What I didn't see coming back in 2010, naively, was conference expansion. Granted, I did already know about expansion when I was excited about the CFP announcement in 2012, but it was still new and shiny. Fast forward and I see the fact that in 2022 Georgia still has not played at Texas A&M. Now we know that Texas and Oklahoma are set to join the SEC as well. When the SEC AD's met a few months back with an easy fix to this slow rotation of teams, they delayed their vote. I have to imagine that delay means the nine game SEC schedule won't happen.

And now, we've all lost our collective minds. As if it wasn't bad enough that the Southeastern Conference added the likes of Missouri, Texas A&M, Texas, and Oklahoma which are nowhere near the southeastern United States geographically...The Big 10, the biggest conference in the midwest, has added UCLA and USC from noted midwestern state, California? And why are they doing this? To create a super conference.

And why are conferences trying to do this? To get more teams in to what we think will be an expanded playoff. You can hear my thoughts about an expanded playoff from a conversation @PowellJohnT and I had with @Graham Coffey and @Josh Hancher about a year ago, but the short version is I'm against it.

If this realignment goes the way it's looking, college football will not look anything like it does today. We're heading toward an NFL type setup. College kids are going to be flying across the country to play some random team they have no history with. It will be new. It will be shiny. Everyone will rejoice about what has just begun. But eventually, if you're like me, you'll miss those old rivalries.

The Deep South's Oldest Rivalry is already on the chopping block from being an annual game just from the SEC expanding to 16 teams. If we end up with two mega conferences,  you can kiss that game and many others goodbye. And then, I worry we will start to ask...What have we done?