It is time to look at a side issue to conference realignment with overtones far more significant than teams changing dancing partners on their schedules.

The persistent rumor of super conferences has been around for decades. The idea is that the top conferences might split off and form a new league. The conferences involved in this idea? The same ones operating the BCS. After the jump I will outline how a shift might come about.

The real question is would this be a bad thing?

The NCAA is instituted to protect the student athletes and promote amateurism in collegiate sports. This has become overly bureaucratic and often the NCAA focuses on minutia of their rules while dragging their feet while investigating institutions too big to fail.

The NCAA constantly harasses the strongest teams with rules that require federal anti trust exemptions to be legal. Scholarship limits, restricting teams to playing only NCAA members and the strict interpretation of amateurism itself are ideas that can not be enforced as the NCAA does in any other market.

If a push is made to bring the FBS postseason in line with the NCAA systems used for other leagues this might be the final straw that pushes the big conferences over the tipping point. An NCAA postseason takeover would bring a far more egalitarian revenue sharing system than the bowls, which are already highly progressive when measured as a percent of football operations revenue. In short, the NCAA would take from the teams that create the market for the sports to subsidize those teams that wouldn't make it otherwise.

The top 60 or so teams subsidize the entire NCAA. If they did not have to share the TV revenue their sports teams generate they would have plenty of revenue to become financially independent of the parent institutions. If they were not paying for all other colleges to support their programs they would not be costing themselves or their tax payers to run their athletic departments.

European athletes in non revenue sports often have difficulties transferring to NCAA institutions due to cultural differences in athletes between the US and the rest of the world. The BCS could become the front for a collegiate sports reform effort to bring US sports to the club league concept used by most of the world.

To break away from the NCAA the BCS leagues would need to break free of the legislative ties that bind them politically to the whims of state politicians. The BCS leagues would have to commit themselves to running athletics on their own profits. Athletics would help fund the academic missions of the BCS institutions. The ability to meet this requirement would be the most fair way to determine which leagues and teams would be invited to participate. If you can't commit to a plan to forge a financially independent athletic department in the next decade you should not be invited.

NCAA members wishing to make a jump at a later time would need to demonstrate they can operate for a profit first. The days of taking on debt to build facilities that outpace the growth of the athletic departments for a division upgrade would be over.

A substantive move in this direction would put the NCAA on their heals. They would be forced to decide to allow force them to leave or compromise on their long standing views. A compromise allowing football to break away but maintaining all other sports could be a viable middle ground.

The BCS would then face tough issues like whether the new arrangements should include stipends for some players, possibility of independents, and a tournament format.

The best chance for a playoff between the top teams in the land might just be for the BCS to break away from the NCAA.