The trip home is already turning out to be epic. Friends, family, and lotsa food did not do me wrong. It’s already been epic for college football, too. I just watch Iowa State and Iowa play an instant classic battling for the recently re-redesigned Cy-Hawk Trophy. That led me to wonder, with all of the new and improved conference realignment disaster, how will tradition be handled?

Tradition is the foundation of college football. Just witnessing Texas A&M walk away from a 100 plus year rivalry clued me into that foundation on the brink of crumbling. It sucks to think about how many of these college rivalries are up for grabs. But that’s the way things are heading. I can only hope that whatever legal maneuvering Baylor is doing will let everyone take a breath and think about things.

Sure, the way the money flows these days, athletic departments can have enough in their budget to fly teams to games, but how will the fans get there? That’s what made rivalries so great. You can talk trash about the rival while being in the same geographic region of each other. It seems with the inevitable change, that kind of tradition will go away. Is there anything that could replace that?

I guess the obvious answer is taking it all online. But even then, it’s alot easier to get nasty and not keep things good natured. Then you have the sheer volume of fans on both sides jumping in. Trying to swim through all of the information at once can take too much time. So, yeah online smack talking could take the place of regional rivalries going away, but it’s not gonna be the same.

Hopefully, calmer minds will let this blow over. Texas A&M is going to go away from the Big 12. I don’t know what the Big 12 will do to remedy that loss. Whatever happens, the conferences and television outlets should remember that going to watch rivals play in person is way more exciting than watching it on television. Please, guys, don’t take that away.