Brian in Boston

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst will announce at a press conference at Gillette Stadium tomorrow that the school's football team will be moving to the NCCA Football Bowl Subdivision's Mid-American Conference in time for the 2012 season. With the move, UMass will shift all of its home football games from the on-campus Warren P. McGuirk Alumni Stadium to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. UMass football press conference will announce upgrade to FBS

If Colorado Athletic Director Mike Bohn is to be believed, such an alignment is unlikely. On Wednesday, the Denver Post reported that Bohn claims to have been promised placement in a division with UCLA, USC, Arizona and Arizona State. In part, the story reads: Playing in a south division instead of a north with the Bay Area, Oregon and Washington was a must for Colorado to accept an invitation. Its largest out-of-state alumni base is in Southern California. "That is a huge boost for us," Bohn said. "The southern division for the University of Colorado provides many opportunities that are keys to reaching our alumni, to our recruiting and to enhance media exposure that connects best to the Denver market." Now that Utah has accepted an invitation to join the conference, it is expected that they would join Colorado as part of a Mountain Time Zone-based "travel pair".

The Pac-10 will become the Pac-12 as soon as the University of Utah accepts the invitation that was extended to it today. The Big Ten will likely remain the Big Ten no matter how many member institutions it adds. The Big XII Conference should be renamed the Big Tenuous Conference, as its long-term viability is anything but assured.

The schools that the Pac-10 would most like to get are BYU and Colorado. Colorado would bring the Denver Metro Area population with it, as well as Denver's #16 primary television market. BYU and Utah are a wash as far as population base and television market go, as both would be playing to the Salt Lake City Metro Area and the #31 television market. That said, BYU is considered to be a significantly better school than Utah academically. U.S. News & World Report pegged BYU #77 in its annual ranking of universities, with Utah checking-in at #126. Incidentally, USN&WR has Colorado ranked #77 on its list.

There are 120 Division FBS schools. Eliminate independent programs and organize these schools into 10 conferences of 12 teams each. Divide each conference into a pair of 6-team divisions. Within its conference, a team plays all 5 divisional foes each year and 3 of the 6 schools in the other division on a rotational basis, making for an 8-game conference schedule. Additionally, each school can schedule 3 non-conference games, bringing regular-season play to 11 games. (In the event that a school wishes to play a non-divisional traditional rival from within its conference, said game can be scheduled as one of the non-conference games, but won't be counted in conference standings.) Division winners in each conference face-off in a conference championship game. After the conference championship games, a 16-team playoff field is put together, comprised of the 10 conference champions and 6 at-large schools. Selection of the at-large schools and playoff seeding is determined by a committee using a combination of a coach's poll, a media poll, the Harris Interactive poll and computer rankings. Playoffs are single-elimination, with teams seeded 1 vs 16, 9 vs 8, 5 vs 12, 13 vs 4 in one half of the bracket, and 3 v 14, 11 v 6, 7 v 10 and 15 v 2 in the other half of the bracket. First-round and quarter-final games are played at the home stadium of the higher-ranked team. The semi-final and championship game sites are put out to competitive bid. The most games a championship team would have to play would be 16 - one more than the FCS champion currently has to play. Bowls could still exist and those teams not qualifying/selected for the 16-team playoff would be free to accept bowl bids. The title of "National Champion" would be determined on the field of play and awarded to the winner of the 16-team playoff tournament. Finis