The battle among conferences for survival has come down to a tug of war between the Mountain West & Big East for the heartland.  The winner follows the Pac-10's precedence as a 16-school super conference. The loser struggles to remain relevant.

The Big XII has lost Colorado & Nebraska & will lose Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma & Oklahoma State next week.  The remains have been nicknamed the 'Little Five' - Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State & Baylor.  After being rejected by the Big Ten & Pac-10, they held a conference call & resolved to band together. This doesn't sound like a big deal in itself but it could have big implications for the Mountain West & Big East.

The Little Five's options are: 1) merge with the Mountain West, 2) merge with the Big East & 3) absorb the C-USA.

Option 1 - The Mountain West now has 10 teams so the merger with Little 5 only requires 1 more team - obvious choice is Houston from the C-USA. Split divisions into East & West.  The other option is keep New Mexico with the other 7 original MWC teams over Boise State. MWC 16 would be a BCS conference is 2012 in it's first season.

(the #s next to each school is rank 1-120 from last season

Option 2 -Look eastward and merge with the 8 Big East schools.  Add Houston again with Memphis & Central Florida.  Memphis has been pledged $10 million annually by the CEO of FedEx to get in a BCS conference.  UCF adds a 2nd school in Florida for symmetry  with the 2 Texas schools.

This leaves the Mountain West stuck with adding Fresno State & Nevada-Reno or Texas El-Paso to reach 12 teams.

Option 3 - absorbing 7 teams from the C-USA. 4 from Texas, 1 from Oklahoma, 1 from Florida & 1 from Tennessee. I don't know if the BCS bid would be preserved with less than 6 teams from the Big XII.

But this option also leaves Mountain West's options limited to expand to 12.

Scheduling would require a 9th conference game.  7 against your division & 2 against the other division.  Colorado State could play K-State in 2012 at home then visit Manhattan, KS in 2016.  The division winners would play a 10th conference game to determine a champion & who receives the automatic BCS bid. State breakdown:

1 California, 1 Nevada, 2 Utah, 1 Idaho, 1 Wyoming, 2 Colorado, 1 New Mexico, 3 Texas, 2 Kansas, 1 Missouri, 1 Iowa

0 Washington, 0 Oregon, 0 Arizona, 0 Dakotas, 0 Montana, 0 Nebraska, 0 Oklahoma

Iowa State might not love flying to San Diego State or Boise State to Houston but with 8 teams in each division - long flights should be minimized.