June 12, 2010 – June, 2010 will forever be known as the beginning of a new type of letter of intent day. It marks the date when major college football programs began the profit-incented migration to new conferences, which should lead to a complete overhaul of alignment that will turn college sports on its head. The University of Nebraska went first as it declared its intention to leave the Big 12 and go to the Big Ten and then Colorado announced it will join the Pac 10.

I have an immediate suggestion, why doesn’t the old Big 12 call itself the Big Ten and the old Big Ten now call itself the Big 12?

Because its not over yet, and conferences have never had a problem naming theirselves something corresponding to the number of schools in its conference, only to have more schools than that number. Like the Big Ten now having 12 teams and the PAC 10 having 11. It’s called “college math.”

Nebraska to the Big Ten at first, looks like a good fit, until you weigh the side you are on. If you are from the Big Ten, you’ve added a perfect state, land-grant school from the midwest, with a deep football tradition which was largely started by Bob Devaney who Nebraska robbed from Michigan State. You’ve shored up the league to have 12 teams and qualify for a conference championship game. You add a stadium that packs 81,067 red shirts in every Saturday and has hopes to expand. Nebraska gets to share in the ultra-profitable Big Ten Network which pays its schools something near $22 million a year each, approximately $8 million more than NBC pays Notre Dame. There also may be sharing of agricultural secrets which could mean better corn for all the Big Ten training tables.

On the other hand, Nebraska just walked away from both of their traditional rivals, Oklahoma and Colorado, even though the Big 12 blew the OU-Nebraska thing a while ago by scheduling it every three years. Colorado going west on its own has as much to dooming that matchup as Nebraska’s move. The Huskers will now have to establish their own new rivalry. With Michigan and Ohio State already taken, Nebraska will either have to center in on Penn State or hope for some consistent improvement from border-sharing Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan State (The Delaney Bowl?), or hope Michigan continues to fall out as a valid rival of OSU.

Actually, Nebraska’s move, although largely financial, is a natural. The Big 12 was beginning to choke the elite programs with Texas alliances and inferior football programs. There isn’t close to the revenue the Big Ten can offer. The Big Red’s slump prior to their 10-4 campaign in 2009 and resurrection under Bo Pelini had as much to do with this move as the money. Nebraska fell behind Texas, Oklahoma and even Boone Picken’s money-charged Oklahoma State as a conference influence, which was one of the main reasons Tom Osborne was brought back to right the ship.

Nebraska will not get lost in the shuffle in the new Big Ten and if everybody’s sweetheart Notre Dame, and number one media market Rutgers, make it the Big 14, the Huskers probably made the shrewdest business decision since Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.