USC in CO every 2 to 5 years? Pinch me

Could USC football be coming soon to a stadium near me — i.e., the University of Colorado’s Folsom Field, just up the road in Boulder — not once every eight years, as under the anticipated Pac-16, but rather once every 2 to 5 years? It’s looking more and more that way:

In a bombshell development that could bring a halt to seismic changes in college realignment, sources tell Orangebloods.com Texas is at the table with the 10 remaining Big 12 schools working on a TV deal put forth by commissioner Dan Beebe that would hold the conference together.

If there’s consensus to the deal, and it appears there is, it could be announced as early as Monday, sources said. …

The deal brokering puts on hold a courtship between Texas and the Pac-10, which all but seemed solidified as of Friday when Nebraska announced it was heading to the Big Ten and Colorado had a press conference with its new commissioner – Larry Scott of the Pac-10. …

If the Big 12 is able to work out a deal with its 10 remaining teams, it’s likely Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott would look to add Utah as the 12th member of his league and launch a conference network in 2012, sources said.

If this happens, the exact frequency of USC-Colorado games would depend on how the Pac-12’s six-team divisions are aligned. The most “natural” setup would seem to be a “Pac-12 South” of the California and Arizona schools, and a “Pac-12 North” of the Oregon, Washington and Rocky Mountain schools. This would result in each “South” schools playing each “North” school every other year (if the league reverts to an 8-game schedule) or twice every three years (if it maintains the current 9-game schedule). So we’d have USC at Colorado either every third year or every fourth year. Not bad.

However, it has been reported previously that the Pacific Northwest schools would balk at such an arrangement, as it would limit their access to the fertile recruiting ground of California, not to mention the TV exposure of playing USC and the other “South” schools. Thus, “zipper divisions” have been proposed, which would intentionally split the “natural rivals” (but keep them playing each other annually), in an alignment that would look something like this:

* Arizona State, UCLA, Cal, Oregon, Washington and Utah in one division.

* Arizona, USC, Stanford, Oregon State, WSU and Colorado in the other.

The nine-game conference football schedule would involve playing every team in your division, plus your natural rival, plus three teams in the other division.

The best-case scenario, for me personally, is the exact one proposed above, whereby Colorado and USC are in the same “zipper” division. This would mean they’d play each other every year, and the Trojans would visit Boulder every other year. OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!1!!

On the other hand, if you arbitrarily “flip” Utah and Colorado in the above alignment, and maintain the nine-game schedule, USC would play Colorado thrice every five years, and would play at Colorado thrice every ten years. (So, on average, that’s one Trojans @ Buffaloes game every 3.3333 years.) Alternatively, if you cut the schedule down to eight games, and keep the Trojans and Buffaloes in opposite “zipper” divisions, we’d be looking at a USC-Colorado game in Boulder every five years. That’s the worst-case scenario, for me, in a Pac-12 setup. But it’s still a helluva lot better than once every eight years, as in the proposed Pac-16!

Of course, as David K. notes, the 10-team Big 12* would arguably be hanging on by a thread, and could easily fall apart a few years down the road, blowing everything up again and disrupting the long-term math. But for now, if this whole Conference Realignment Apocalypse^TM ends at Pac-12, with just Colorado and Utah added, that’s awesome for me — and it could get even more awesome, if the Trojans and Buffaloes are grouped together in the same division, which would have a 50% chance of happening.

So, in other words, DON’T GOOOO TEXAS!!! STAAAAAY IN THE BIG TWELVE*!!!

*[sic]