Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year, you know that there has been a lot of change in college football.

Conference re-alignment has been in full swing for the past calendar year now. It started with Big 12 members Nebraska and Colorado leaving for the Big Ten and the PAC-10 respectively. Utah soon followed Colorado, leaving the Mountain West.

So the PAC-10 is now the PAC-12, so what? It’s not like there aren’t 12-team conferences in college athletics.

Well soon after announcing the expansion to 12 teams, PAC-12 commissioner Larry Scott hinted toward the possibility of expansion to 16 teams.

Soon a magic term “Super conference” began to appear everywhere. But as the 2010 season began, talks quieted about this mythical phenomenon known as a “Super conference.”

Turn the calendar ahead twelve months.

Suddenly Texas A&M jumps off the Big 12 ship and heads to the SEC, expanding the conference to 13 teams, leaving Texas and Oklahoma to hold the fate of the Big 12 in their hands.

As both programs have looked into joining another conference, the remaining seven programs of the Big 12 have been forced to watch as their league has been under constant threat of extinction.

Mass chaos has ensued since the news of the Aggies departure, the biggest news coming this past weekend with the ACC’s announcement that it would be adding two new members; the Big East’s Syracuse and Pittsburgh.

The ACC is now at 14 teams and suggesting that Connecticut and Rutgers may be soon to join creating the first super conference in college football.

With both conferences facing disbandment, the Big 12 and Big East are looking into the possibility of a merger. The Super conference is now becoming a reality, and there is nothing the NCAA can do about it.

The NCAA can only sit back and watch as its largest source of income takes a life of its own.

The major programs of college football and conference commissioners know the NCAA can’t do anything to stop them from forming these behemoth 16-team leagues.

But why can’t the NCAA do anything? The largest 64-plus programs would be a part of the super conference movement, the teams with the largest fan bases and the greatest revenue generated from football.

If the major teams come into a disagreement with the NCAA, they easily have the means to break away and from a new college football league.

Why wouldn’t the major programs do this?

They can make their own rules, there is no restriction on recruiting, and they can do away with the BCS and create a playoff system, and THEY CAN PAY PLAYERS.

Imagine it, every program having its very own Nevin Shapiro hanging around the football team, and it is not taking over every major sporting news output.

Nevin Shapiro on the University of Miami sideline. The program he illegally funded for the majority of the past decade.

Why?

Because it would be legal if the governing body of this new college football league says so, if a governing body even exists.

The league could allow programs to begin recruit as early as high school. The free agent biding wars of professional sports would be brought to the college level as recruiters could wave bundles of cash in front of high school players’ faces trying to lure them into committing to their program.

Okay, maybe the idea of bidding wars for high school players is a little farfetched.

But at least with this new league, expect a player to receive a stipend along with his scholarship.

The SEC has already asked for changes with recruiting; expect social media integration and a more informal way of contacting players.

High school freshman and sophomores being dubbed future college football “phenoms” better be ready to have their phones flooded with texts from college coaches saying “hey son, have you given any thought to your future?”

This new league would be the new Nobody Cares About (our) Athletics nightmare.

More than half off its Bowl Subdivision teams are gone, and the NCAA is left with the scraps that aren’t good enough to compete with the big boys.

The NCAA would be forced to combine its remaining FBS teams with the FCS, but what team can the NCAA promote?

Notre Dame isn’t stupid; you better start believing they’d leave the NCAA; Boise State will be swept up into a conference in the new league. The NCAA will find it very hard to promote the MAC and Conference USA as its big conferences when trying to compete with the super conference league.

The beautiful world that we have come to love each fall known as college football could be in for some big changes.

We soon may not be able to recognize it anymore.

Sure there are some faults with the current state of college football, but do we want to see the current world of college football completely imploded?

Well if you side with the NCAA then your answer is no, and you should be afraid, very afraid.