This is such a fascinating story. Comparing the different possible scenarios is so fun, I almost don't want to find out the actual result. It's like Risk: NCAA Edition.

Here's my (I'm sure totally unfeasible for a thousand different reasons) pipe dream shakeout:

The new Red River Conference is OU, OSU, Texas, A&M, Tech, and Baylor from the Big XII; UTEP, Houston, SMU, Rice, and Tulsa from C-USA; and TCU from the MWC.

The Big Ten adds Iowa State, KU, KSU, Mizzou, and Nebraska to become the Big 16.

Along with Colorado from the Big XII, the now-Pac-12 picks up Hawai'i from the WAC.

The MWC loses TCU but picks up most of the WAC: Idaho, Boise State, Utah State, New Mexico State, Fresno State, San Jose State, and Nevada. Montana moves up from dominating the I-AA Big Sky.

(Not that you care about I-AA, but the five-team (um, what?) Great West sends UC Davis and Cal Poly to the Big Sky, and North Dakota, South Dakota, and Southern Utah to the Missouri Valley.)

Expanding from eight teams (in football) the Big East adds Memphis, Marshall and UCF from C-USA and Temple from the Mid-American.

The nine-team Sun Belt absorbs the four remaining teams of C-USA plus Louisiana Tech (sorry, WAC; you never made sense anyway).

Notre Dame, loathed and shunned, gets to stay independent.

Conference (# of teams)
ACC (12)
Big 16 (Duh)
Big East (12)
MAC (12)
MWC (16)
Pac-12 (Also duh)
Red River (12)
SEC (12)
Sun Belt (14)

So? Whaddya think?