Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott may be a smart guy, but I'm starting to wonder.
The reason for my opinion is that Scott announced this week that the league will change its name to the Pac-12, next year, after adding Utah and Colorado. That seems logical enough, unless you buy into the theory that soon there will be several 16-team "superconferences," thus rendering the Pac-12 obsolete, too.
The era of naming conferences after the number of members is outdated. There's too much change to keep changing the names. The Big Ten will soon have 12 members; at the same time, the Big 12 will have 10. The Pac-10, formerly the Pac-8, will thus be the Pac-12. The Big 8 has gone into history.
Clearly, using numbers doesn't work. But even naming conferences after regions (Mountain West, Southeastern, Big East, ACC) could be a thing of the past. I suggested in a Rock On column earlier this summer that they should name conferences after planets: Saturn Conference, Mars Conference, Jupiter Conference, etc. or maybe after constellations.
The smartest people on Earth must be the folks at Conference USA. They got it right. Unless the NCAA expands into Canada or Mexico, naming your conference after a country is a pretty smart move. It fits, no matter who joins up. Or maybe they could start naming conferences things like The Really Big Conference, the Giganto Conference, or Conference Everybody.
Compared to the NCAA basketball tournament, this football conference stuff is child's play. I don't think I'll ever figure out how a team can be playing in Milwaukee, but be in the West Regional, or playing in Tucson and be in the Mideast Regional. But don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Just give me a second to get my bearings and check my Rand McNally.