UCLA, USC to Pac-12 will start mad conference dash

Wow, the dust has begun to settle after one of the craziest days we’ve had in college football since USC fired Lane Kiffin on the airport tarmac. Seemingly out of thin air, the University of Southern California and the University of California Los Angeles will leave the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten in 2024.

Everything we know about the college football landscape has quickly eroded in the past few years, beginning with Colorado and Nebraska departing from the Big 12 in 2010 to the end of the BCS era and the start of the College Football Playoff in 2015.

Power five programs Texas, Oklahoma USC and UCLA plus group of five programs BYU, Houston UCF and Cincinnati have all left their conferences in roughly the past year. It is safe to say that quite a few more drastic changes are on the horizon.

There is a widespread belief that we could be facing two mega-conferences with 20 members a piece building around the current SEC and Big Ten.

However, consolidating everything down to two major conferences would be difficult. Four conferences at 20 teams apiece sounds more realistic.

So, what is this ultimately going to look like?

The numbers in bold indicate the number of programs in the conference if the schools listed preceding them join that respective conference. 

1
SEC

Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

The SEC has shown over the past decade that they will continue to do whatever is best for the conference. In 2011, they added Texas A&M and Missouri and then a decade later they added Texas and Oklahoma. So if the SEC continue to pioneer the way, who will they look to add?

Existing members: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt (14)

Verified joining members: Oklahoma, Texas (16)

Rumored joining programs (Keep four): Clemson, FSU, Miami and Georgia Tech…