College football never stops changing; will fans continue to follow?

One week into the latest – and biggest – upheaval that college football has experienced in the Realignment Era, sources tell On3 that the fetal position is not a long-term solution.

The Great Los Angeles Bugout left an entire conference, and for that matter, an entire time zone, in tatters. The Big Ten and SEC can flex. The rest of college football is in flux, as in a state of flux, as in Flux State, which feels like the alma mater of every Pac-12 fan.

The West Coast developed an identity. The West Coast gave us an offense. The West Coast gave us Trojans running backs who couldn’t trot out of the iconic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum tunnel without winning a Heisman.

All of that is irreparably damaged by the departure of the Selfish Teams of Tinseltown. Hard to believe that in a town powered by the entertainment industry, its two top universities would be so self-absorbed as to lay waste to an entire conference. Perish the thought.

College football is winnowing its way to two heavyweight conferences and others of lesser weight, for whom the future looks ominous.

How can college football exist with the Pac-12 dropping down to light-heavyweight? (Middleweight?)

How long will the recruiting pipeline from southern California to the other 10 conference schools continue to operate if those teams no longer play in Los Angeles?

Do the other four schools in the Pac-12 South make a deal with the Big 12? Do all 10 schools make a deal with the Big 12? Can Oregon and Washington latch on somewhere and survive the in-state political fallout of not taking their in-state archrivals with them? Is the prestige of Stanford’s academic and athletic excellence appealing enough to compensate for the Cardinal’s lack of media presence? Might the Big Ten decide that the Cardinal, like a Maybach, is worth the price of showing off?

That noise you hear is Northwestern clearing its throat.

Everyone has questions, and those who have answers, if answers exist, aren’t talking. If you’re old enough to remember the season ending on January 1, if you’re old enough to remember Catholics beating Convicts or split national champions, you look at the state of college football with great alarm. The framework of the sport as we have known it for decades has been damaged by the hurricane that blew through last week, and as we all know, try hiring a construction crew to rebuild anything these days.

If you’re too young to be enamored with the sport’s history, you shrug at the money grab and pull for your team. UCLA and USC acted in their best interest, which is more than anyone ever does for the sport as a whole. And, no, you’re not going to rope me into a-college-football-needs-a-commissioner column. As long as SEC commissioner Greg Sankey remains the most powerful man in American sports – OK, second to Aaron Judge – what incentive does he or his conference have in doing something that might benefit everyone. I mean, why start now?

About the best thing anyone can say at this point is that not even the guys who brought us a multi-billion, three-time-zone, coast-to-coast, get-ready-for Rutgers-UCLA monstrosity can screw up college football.

Powerful programs have come and gone, and the sport goes on. Look at the very first AP college football poll released in October 1936. You find Duquesne, Saint Mary’s, Fordham, Holy Cross and Marquette. The non-Catholic schools include Tulane of the SEC and SMU of the Southwest Conference. Army is No. 3.

When the NCAA allowed athletic scholarships after World War II, the ante eventually became too rich for every Catholic school outside of South Bend and Chestnut Hill. Army didn’t make it out of the 1950s, a victim of a cheating scandal and a discovery by the Pentagon that West Point could turn out top-notch soldiers regardless of their 40 time. Tulane bailed out of the SEC in 1966. The Southwest Conference died in 1995.

Those teams are diminished, if not gone entirely, and the sport kept growing. We lost Marquette and Saint Mary’s, but we picked up Florida State and Miami.

If you point out that Maryland and Nebraska have never found their footing in the Big Ten, you’ll get no argument from me.

None of the four teams that the SEC has added in the past 30 years – Arkansas, South Carolina, Missouri and Texas A&M – has won the conference championship.

Boston College and Syracuse left the Big East for the ACC and haven’t been heard from in years. The same goes for the Big East.

Speaking of which, I’m willing to bet that a decade later, the typical West Virginia fan couldn’t find Texas Tech on a map and vice versa.

College football has issues that it soon must solve. Will the schools that can’t stay in the heavyweight division still think the sport is worth the trouble? When will young alumni put down their phones and become contributing alumni? Is there an app for that? Will NIL income and Alston payments be the issue that curdles the fan base? Nothing else has.

That’s the point. The sport never stops changing, yet the networks are willing to bet billions that fans will continue to follow. So far, they have.

And now, to figure out of nickname for Flux State.