I was watching the Sports Reporters on ESPN today and they said a couple of times with all the teams moving conferences, that college football wouldn't need the NCAA and my question is how that would happen or what would it be like?

Just a statement, I thought Bob Ryan brought up a good point, since everybody thinks football and not other sports this affects, Ryan said that it shows where college adminstrators or thinking about and basketball is on the back burner and football is the most important thing. I thought a good point.

Football is driving it because it is far and away the biggest money maker. Wish it was more complicated than that... but it ain't.

At most schools, football pays for the rest of the athletic department.

Here is Iowa's budgeted numbers for 2011:

Income: Mens Sports: 22.6M (19.9 coming from football)
Women's Sports: 2M
Other Income: 47.8M (22 of which is coming from the big ten and the reason that Nebraska wants out of the Big 12)

So out of actual sports revenue, football is bringing in 90+% of the revenue.

I know football is the big money maker, like Ohio State Football pays for everything, I was just wondering how they could break away from the NCAA, like I heard a couple of times yesterday.

The NCAA is simply a voluntary alliance of colleges. The BCS schools could leave the NCAA if they wanted. This leverage is why the NCAA won't be the one who creates a football playoff.

If there ends up being 4 super conferences, you probably have enough condensed power that you could realistically break off from the NCAA if you really wanted and survive and thrive, especially considering that the minor conferences would have to choose between becoming a glorified club sport like most non Division 1 leagues are and staying relevant.

It won't ever happen because the NCAA is completely powerless against the powers that be in the power conferences so they have no reason to destroy them(by creating a college basketball playoff and taking away pretty much any revenue that the NCAA generates).

I don't see any way that it happens but the conference commissioners, especially Jim Delany, are more powerful than anyone in the NCAA office. The NCAA isn't needed since most conferences do 95% of the work already but the NCAA is a good way to avoid Congressional issues and it allows the guise of college athletics at the top to be comparable to Division 3 schools who play "for the love of the game".

If they were actually saying that the end of this will result in the teams leaving the NCAA, then that's incredibly unlikely and actually pretty dumb. Then again, that's been my opinion of most thoughts I've seen on the SportsReporters.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Thanks for the answers Rick, and on your last sentence, you heard some of those things from Israel Gutieriez from Miami on yesterday's show.