no one thinks big enough. I personally would prefer smaller conferences that are regional and allow for round robin football and home and home round robin basketball play. BUT, if you are going to expand, do it right--go all in.

For example, when the ACC came to the Big East looking for Miami, they invited Syracuse and Boston College. I have no idea why they didn't see the hornet's nest of legal, political, and otherwise controversy it was about to stir. Then, they backed off, and circumstances allowed VT to get in there instead of Syracuse. It appeared predatory not to mention amateurish. If they would have done their best at the time to think big and invite all the football schools, it would have been so much better in the long run. Heck, they ended up with Pitt and Syracuse anyway. And my feelings are mixed on the value of Rutgers, but heck, I'd have taken a flyer on them. I would have even tried to include the Big East basketball only schools (maybe an Old Big East basketball division and an Old Order ACC division, preserve rivalries)--it would have been massive fun. Massive markets, Massive money. The BB tournament in NYC would be an embarrassment of riches and must-see TV.

Which brings me to your fine example. I think the Pac10/BigXII could have went for a big merger that would have blown any other conference away at the time. Had they been all inclusive, basically inviting all of the BigXII, it could have been something grand. Pay off the ACC to take WVU and take the rest out west. WVU should be in the ACC anyway.

In both cases above, you'd have football divisions big enough that you wouldn't need to play crossover games and therefore, avoid lame rematches in the conference championship game. Also, divisions would be big enough that the winner of it would likely be pretty darn good. And in a bigger picture, both of these scenarios would have changed the landscape of college athletics and the SEC and B1G would have been looking to keep up.

And the first of these would-be conferences would have done two things: 1) Had the pick of the litter in terms of schools to build up to become superconferences. If others wanted to keep up, they would have had to add G5 schools or raid another conference. And 2) had the these would-be all-inclusive deals happened, they would not have ruffled any legal and political feathers.