I just can’t see most teams leaving to form a new super conference. There’s just too much provincialism in college football. Ohio State and Michigan leave the precious big ten? Never. USC and UCLA leave the ‘conference of champions’? Alabama, Georgia, and LSU leave the SEC...SEC...SEC? Just not seeing that.
That leaves cutting the dead weight from conferences and I agree that that’s unlikely to happen (especially in the big ten) because there are too many schools that would think ‘we could be next’. There just won’t be enough votes.
The only conference I could see maybe make that move would be the SEC. The number of ‘producers’ in that conference is higher than most and they could jettison Missouri, Vandy, and the Mississippi schools and then try to get Oklahoma and Texas to join.
If I am a B1G West team (someone like Iowa, Purdue or Minnesota), my biggest fear in the realignment game is Notre Dame. More specifically, Notre Dame going 11-1 some year but missing the playoff, with their lack of a 13th game on their resume being specifically called out.
That gives Notre Dame football a kick in the ass to (kicking and screaming) consider joining a conference.
Now, Notre Dame football could always join the ACC. The invite is there. But Notre Dame is an elitist bunch of snobs. They like
some of the ACC's current members. They don't like
all of them. Olympic Sports are fine but Notre Dame doesn't really want to be full conference members with the likes of NC State, Virginia Tech or Louisville. They're "beneath" them (in ND's eyes). Clemson is "beneath" ND too but they would tolerate them. Pedestrian academically but their football is absolutely elite.
So, what if Notre Dame starts thinking about engineering their own conference? What if they could pick the best of the ACC and meld it was something else?
A conference made up of Notre Dame, 8 B1G teams, primarily from the East (say: U-M, MSU, OSU, PSU, RU, Mryld, IU and Northwestern) and 7 ACC teams (pick 7 from BC, Syracuse, Pitt, Virg, UNC, Duke, GT, Clemson, Miami and FSU) would look pretty darn good to Notre Dame.
It would also look pretty good to all those other schools too. That conference makes us more $ than the current B1G. No more visits to the "corn states" west of Chicago.
That's a not-overly-ridiculous scenario which involves teams leaving the B1G, while also leaving others behind. And gets us onto the path to consolidation into a more "elite" group of teams at the top of college football.