What happens when all the football schools (read as most popular schools) break away from the NCAA and start their own basketball tournament which will be the only one that matters?
What is happening to college sports is absolute nonsense, and you can say a lot negative about the college administrators making these decisions, but you can't say they are stupid- breathtakingly greedy sure - but not stupid.
The reason all these nonsense moves are taking place is because the big boys want to operate independently of the little guys (and not share any money with them). There is zero chance they just forget to take the NCAA tournament and the billion dollars annually it earns with them on their way out the door. It was always a mistake to have, for example, LeMoyne and Ohio St be regulated by the same body. There is no way for the NCAA to find common ground between schools so different, and it was always destined to fail. The problem comes with schools in the gray area that want to be with the big guys but maybe aren't quite desirable enough to make the cut. They can hold things up in court, which is why expansion is happening in weird disjointed ways - its the big guys trying to limbo under the anti-trust laws. And they are going to succeed because American anti-trust laws never stop the biggest fish from gobbling up most of the market in any industry.
This nonsense transition period which has teams in California and New Jersey playing in the same conference (called the Big 10, which as sixteen teams) is going to suck for everybody. The final solution will probably be a better college sports product for everybody except those schools in the grey area that didn't make the cut. Unfortunately for us, Syracuse lands in that grey area. I dont think we have much of a choice but to play the game and hope that the line of demarcation falls at 64 schools or there about, because we will most likely make the cut in that case. Which I think it is a likely outcome, for what its worth.