Has anyone noticed all the conference realignment over the past couple years? All of a sudden, teams that college football fans have become accustomed to playing certain groups of team are now associated with teams half way across the country. Did Texas Christian really sign up to be in the same conference as Rutgers? Does it make sense that Boston College regularly plays the University of Miami?
All of this shifting occurs because of football revenues, much of which stem from television money. The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 have all reached 12 teams over the past six years. In just the past year, eight BCS teams and Boise State changed or are preparring to change conference affiliations
The reason for the musical chairs: acquire enough teams to hold a conference championship game and make money off of that game. This site will breakdown the evolution of television revenues and how certain conference's contracts determine what the Saturday armchair quarterback gets to watch each week in the fall.
In every other sport, the large majority, if not all of the schedule's are set prior to the season. Not in college football. In order to maximize the quality of games shown to the largest audiences, TV executives choose the games they want to show and at the times they want to show them a mere 6 days before they are played. Even ESPN's college basketball gameday games are determined in late October.