George Ferguson: Thankful we still have our Griz and Cats, because bigtime college football is getting to be nothing but a money-grabbing circus

I wasn’t going to care too much about the latest shake ups in college football. After all, I’ve known for some time now that, to so many powers that be, Power 5 college football is now nothing more than just a gigantic money grab. That’s been that way for a while. It isn’t about collegiate athletics anymore, and it sure as hell isn’t about education.

So, while I don’t just look the other way, and have strong feelings about what major college football has become, I try my best to just enjoy the games for what they are, and take comfort that I still have the Montana Grizzlies, Big Sky Conference football and the Football Championship Subdivision to enjoy each week, and while that isn’t pure as the driven snow anymore either, it’s still much closer to what college football was once about then the Power 5 is now.

Still, what’s going in presently with the major college football conference is absolutely insane, and I can’t stand it.

You see, no matter how much things have changed, one thing that has always been consistent when it comes to Power 5 football is traditional conferences and conference rivalries. Sure, there’s been some expansion and movement, but, geographically speaking, the SEC has always been the SEC, the Big Ten and Pac 12 have always been the same, and while the Big 12 has generally seen the most movement, geographically, things were still pretty cool.

But with UCLA and USC moving to the Big Ten, and Texas and Oklahoma bolting for the SEC, the geographical and traditional conferences are now also gone forever.

And it’s only going to get worse.

The Pac 12 looks dead in the water, and for those of us who have always prided ourselves on college football in the west, that’s just sad. Now, west coasters like Washington and Oregon are likely going to play in a the Big 12 or Big 10 and so are the Arizona schools. So pouffe, just like that, west coast football is gone. Pac 12 after dark, gone. Rivalries like the Apple Cup and the game in Oregon formerly known as the Civil War — for all intents and purposes, those are gone, too. God that’s sad to think about.

You, I, a few years, we’ll have a traditional late-season Big Ten game between the Minnesota Golden Gophers and UCLA Bruins, in sunny SoCal, instead of snowy Minneapolis. Sorry, but that isn’t Big Ten football. Meanwhile, instead of Bedlam in November in Oklahoma, we’ll have the Oregon Ducks new rivalry game against Oklahoma State or Kansas Sate. That’s really fun to think about.

And, of course, all this will have a domino effect, and one that’s starting to emerge really bothers me, and has nothing to do with college football.

It looks as though the super conferences being formed are going to now only bring an end to the Pac 12, but also the ACC. The schools that the Big Ten and SEC and Big 12 want from those two conferences are going to go, and the ones that aren’t wanted will be left to fend for themselves. And in the case of the ACC, someone is going to want North Carolina long before they want to give the same deal to Duke. Does that put the greatest rivalry in all of college basketball in jeopardy? Yes it does.

I’m sure that no matter what happens, North Carolina and Duke will always find a way to play each other, that part will not go away. But I shudder to think of the days when it’s a one-time non-conference game, when Carolina/Duke isn’t for the ACC title. That thought sickens me, but it certainly sounds like we’re headed down that road, and all this Power 5 realignment is going to just screw up college hoops as much as it is football.

Another domino effect will be, will FCS schools like Montana get to play FBS money games anymore? With super-conferences, the answer is, probably not, and that will hurt budgets for schools like Montana and Montana State. That of course, is of no concern whatsover to the Power 5 or the NCAA, for that matter. They don't care about the FCS, never have, never will.

Yes, all that’s going in college football and eventually college hoops is getting ridiculous, and it will not stop until what we knew of big-time college football is unrecognizable. Will it even be fun to watch anymore? I have no idea. But, I know it won’t be the same. I know traditions will be gone, rivalries will be no more, and nothing that we once loved about it will be preserved.

Oh, but wait, the money is pouring in, and that’s all that matters, right?