The voice of reason, Stan Marsh. South Park Studios
Having observed the events of the past 20 months or so, Stan has come to a conclusion about conference realignment.
Stan: You see, I learned something today. Everyone talks right now about how excited they are about TV markets, and national ratings and getting the next big TV contract. But that's not what college sports are about! College sports are about tradition, and history, and passion, and geography, and rivalries. If we keep going down this road of only caring about which TV markets a school captures, we're going to end up with a bunch of schools playing each other who have no history together. We're going to turn college sports into pro sports, and pro sports are already boring enough. I mean, we're already kind of on our way to doing that. We have Texas Christian from Fort Worth, Texas, joining a conference called the Big East. Marquette is the next-farthest-west member of the Big East, and they're in Milwaukee! It's like the Dallas Cowboys playing in the NFC East just because it keeps them relevant in the east-coast TV markets.
Before long, we're going to have Nebraska playing Indiana and Purdue and Northwestern, and we're going to have Texas A&M playing Vanderbilt and Kentucky and Mississippi State, and we're going to have Colorado playing Washington State and Oregon State, and acting like it matters. If we're not careful, we may have K-State and KU playing Cincinnati and Connecticut and Providence and St. John's, or we could have Texas Tech and Oklahoma State playing Oregon and Washington. We may not have Red River Shootout, or the Lone Star Showdown, or the Border War, and we know we won't have Nebraska playing Oklahoma. If things get really crazy and state legislatures start letting in-state schools split up, we may not have a Sunflower Showdown or a Bedlam Game.
People, we've got to come together now. It's time to come to our senses and realize that if we keep treating college sports like big business, we're going to ruin it. C'mon people now, there's plenty of money out there to go around. Hell, even the NFL players and owners figured out how to split a billion dollars. Surely NCAA athletic programs and conferences can be content with the already-obscene amounts of money they make, rather than pushing the envelope and risking the traditions and rivalries and things that make the college game great. Do you really need X-Boxes and iPads in each locker? Do you really need 352 different uniform and helmet combinations? Do coaches really need to make more per year than the budget of the entire English department? I mean, c'mon people, it's time to wake up and realize that if we keep going like this, we're going to ruin college sports.
Cartman: Dude, you're so gay.