Last week, it seemed that things were beginning to slightly cool down from all the expansiopocolypse talk of Florida State and another ACC team (Clemson, Miami, VT, GT all being mentioned) fleeing to the Big 12. The FSU president put out a pointed statement talking down the Big 12. The details about media contracts were better explained.

Then this:

The champions of the Big 12 and SEC conferences will meet in a New Year’s Day bowl game annually beginning with the 2014 season, the conferences said Friday in a news release.

The five-year agreement calls for the champions of each conference to be in the matchup “unless one or both are selected to play in the new four-team model to determine the national championship,” the statement said.

“Should that occur, another deserving team from the conference(s) would be selected for the game,” the release said.

The style of the agreement will be similar to the one the Rose Bowl has with the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences.

This was a largely symbolic gesture, but one that was immediately treated with deeper meanings.

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I’ll get to more on the increasingly insane latest bit of expansiopocolypse and what it means for Pitt in a bit. This is just a short thing that’s been gnawing at me.

One of my dad’s favorite cliches that he reaches for when trying to decide on a big economic thing  — buying a new car, moving, changing jobs, replacing large appliances, etc. — is: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” My father, as you can imagine, is very financially conservative.

That phrase, though, keeps echoing in my head as expansiopocolypse continues. Albeit in a flipped on its head to be: “Better the devil you don’t, than the devil you know.” Everyone is completely willing willing to risk the devil they don’t know for the money. And because they feel that they know the devil they know just that well.

Beyond the money there is no football school in the Big East that wouldn’t run screaming to another conference, because they know that Providence-based leadership just that well by now. They know how incompetent, late to react, and how little they actually care about football — and thus the conference doesn’t provide any help, support or growth for the football schools. If the Big East was able to get $20 million/year for football schools I would still want Pitt out of that conference.

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