Here we are, as the dust settles. The Big 10 is a coast-to-coast division. The Big 12 is our most important basketball conference. The Pac-12 is but a memory, and the ACC is likely looking mighty tasty for a suddenly (strangely? surprisingly? not-at-all?) vulnerable SEC.
Smarter people than your humble narrator can give you better perspective on What It All Means, and I implore you to seek out their musings on the subject. In an all-too-simplistic view, what it means is that a dozen football weekends each autumn matter more to the powerbrokers in college athletics and their TV partners more than every other intercollegiate sport combined. The softball team red-eying from Jersey to Eugene on a Sunday night to get back to class on Monday morning does not matter to the people in charge, so long as USC and Michigan can occupy the same televised sporting coalition or, as they used to be known, conferences.