A couple of football seasons ago, the Big 12 was the toast of the college football world as Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were all in the national title hunt and their games became must-see TV in primetime.

Now, the Big 12 just might be toast.

The 11-team Big Ten is gnawing around the northern perimeters to see if it can pry away Missouri and Nebraska from the soon-to-be extinct Big 12. The Pac-10 has offered spots to Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Colorado, according to several reports.

With all of this growing more likely by the day, it will be a cataclysmic shift in the college football landscape. The Big 12 will be as dead as Janet Jackson’s career after her wardrobe malfunction. Another conference, be it the Big East or the Atlantic Coast Conference, could be gobbled up as well in a feeding frenzy of expansion.

It could have been averted if Notre Dame had done the logical thing, ended its long-time status as an independent and joined the Big Ten, giving it the 12 teams it needed to host a conference title game.

Either way, it’s going to be a wild few weeks.

What does this mean for the Southeastern Conference? A magic eight-ball would be as accurate as predictions on what happens at this point.

If the 16-team megaconference is the future of the college football landscape, does the SEC need to join the crowd? The cons are many. Traditional rivalries would be jeopardized, especially such cross-divisional ones as Auburn and Georgia. Travel costs for the non-revenue sports would rise, especially if the conference expands its geographic footprint like the other two possible 16-team leagues. Just imagine the travel costs in an expanded Pac-10 that stretches from Texas to the Pacific.

As for the pros, it would allow the SEC to get an even bigger portion of the revenue pie from TV contracts and disperse more money to its member institutions.

The conventional wisdom is that the expanded Pac-16 and Big 16, with all of the penetration in all of the big media markets, would crowd out the SEC because of the expanded numbers of eyeballs watching the broadcasts.

That is true, on the surface. SEC country, population-wise, can’t compete with either one of those possible megaconferences.

But this conceit covers up one key fact: all of those other markets have other distractions. Major League Baseball, the NBA and, of course, the NFL are part of a busier sports landscape.

Down here, SEC football is king. You can’t drive five miles in the South without seeing a car with some kind of allegiance on the bumper or on the back window or flapping in the breeze from a window.

The religious fervor is what separates SEC football from the rest of the pack. In few other places do 93,000 folks pack the seats for a spring scrimmage. And with the ink dry on the ESPN and CBS TV deals, the best football in the country, despite its regional affiliation, is available in nearly every home in the country — unless you’re living in a van down by the river.

Diluting the brand that has won the last four national titles is not the way to go for the SEC. Besides, students of history will recall the case of the Western Athletic Conference, which expanded to 16 teams in 1996 and split up in 1999.

A dozen is delicious, but 16 is four teams too many.

•

Steve Wilson is sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. You can follow him on Twitter at vpsportseditor. He can be reached at 601-636-4545, ext. 142 or at swilson@vicksburgpost.com.