With football season just around the corner, I believe now is a good time to evaluate the proposal that has the biggest potential to reshape the college football world as we know it. I’m talking, of course, about the Big Ten’s rumored plans to expand to 12, 14 or 16 teams from its current 11.

To start, let’s go through the most likely scenarios and see how expansion would affect the five other power conferences and Notre Dame, as well as the four biggest non-AQ schools—Boise State, Utah, TCU and BYU.

In what is perhaps the ideal scenario for the Big Ten, Notre Dame would finally shed its status as an independent program in football and join the conference, bringing the rest of its athletic program from the Big East along with it. The Fighting Irish would (almost literally) bring pots of gold to the conference, instantly expanding the Big Ten’s footprint and the amount of revenue flowing to each school.

The addition of Notre Dame would also elevate the Big Ten Network, which brings in a large chunk of the conference’s revenue. The network could negotiate better rates from cable providers and could expand the number of homes that it reaches, considerably boosting its cash intake. Notre Dame’s nationwide fan base, which would watch pretty much any Irish-related coverage on the network, would put the BTN in an excellent bargaining position.

However, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick has repeatedly said that the Golden Domers are committed to maintaining the football program’s conference independence. Aside from keeping its rich tradition, Notre Dame would have to forfeit some of its more lucrative endeavors, like its contract with NBC to televise all Fighting Irish home games and its rivalry games against opponents outside the Big Ten (like Stanford and USC).

The most likely scenario then becomes a three-team expansion to 14 schools, since no single school aside from Notre Dame can bring in enough money to justify expansion. The Big Ten would raid the Big East and the Big 12 to add members; so far, the three names most often mentioned have been Rutgers, Syracuse and Missouri. Rutgers and Syracuse would bring the lucrative New York City television market with them into the conference, while Missouri would push the conference further into the Midwest region. Added revenue would come from the network pushing into more markets, as well as the ability to hold an annual championship game to determine the school’s Rose Bowl team.

This expansion might spell the death of the Big East as a football conference, as it would be reduced to a mere six teams. It’s not entirely clear how that conference would wind up after losing two of its programs. On the other hand, the Big 12 would almost certainly go after one of the four non-major conference programs—most likely TCU or Utah—to fill the gap left by Missouri.

Though indirectly, such a change could also prompt the Pac-10 to expand to 12 teams, in order to keep up with the other power conferences and stage a championship game. BYU, Colorado, Utah and Boise State are all possibilities to be added to the Pac-10, although the ramifications of expansion would continue to affect other conferences.

The only possibility left, a 16-team superconference, is highly unlikely. The only way I can see that happening is if Texas is convinced to leave the Big 12, bringing Texas A&M along with it. However, Texas has been the target of overtures from other conferences before (including the Pac-10), and there is no indication that it is leaning toward jumping out of the Big 12.

In the end, I believe conference expansion will happen, and that it won’t be such a bad thing. Bigger conferences would bring the Boise States of the world into the BCS system, so they can play full schedules against major, conference competition and earn berths into the BCS National Championship game without any doubts as to their qualifications. For us at Stanford, it would also be nice to see some new teams every year. With nine out of 12 games on the schedule against the same schools year after year, it gets a little boring.

In an ideal world, we would ditch this BCS system altogether and come up with something better, like a playoff. Unfortunately, that proposal isn’t happening anytime soon, because the BCS, just like conference expansion, is driven by a single factor: money.

Kabir Sawhney considers three full months “around the corner.” Complain about how far away football season really is at ksawhney “at” stanford.edu.