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Message: [QUOTE="billybud, post: 4017075, member: 3850"] This is just Billy's opinion, but... In the old days it was about regions and similar culture. Now everything is driven by getting the best matchups for the available bandwidth on any given Saturday. This is what drives ratings, which is what drives advertising, which brings in the money. ESPN and Fox make the ad money and payout the tv contract money to the conferences. They don’t care about population base. They care about marquee matchups that drive ratings. The SEC is mostly in small college towns but they have a huge ratings each Saturday because of the quality of the teams. Otherwise big city schools would dominate, but they don’t. It’s about having top teams playing each other. ESPN doesn’t care if they all are in the same state or thousands of miles apart, as long as the matchups are good. That’s, I think, what’s going to be the catalyst for realignment. [/QUOTE]