Fox and the Big 10 might have grossly overplayed their hand here. ESPN already has the ACC and SEC, if ESPN can help cause the remaining Pac to collapse and jump ship to the Big 12 and ESPN is able to swoop in for the Big 12 media rights ESPN would have completely flipped the Alliance on the Big 10 and Fox. The ACC needs to keep ND in their current semi joined state, the SEC wants to keep ND out of the Big 10, the Big 12 wants to keep ND independent so the Big 10 hold fast at 16 teams and the Big 12 can grab a homeless Oregon and Washington. At that point the Big 10 and fox are completely boxed in, the SEC throws some bones to the ACC and Big 12 with auto bids for the conference champs and use the deeper SEC to squash the Big 10 with unfavorable match ups. Have the ACC, Big 12 and ND eating up playoff spots the SEC can then get 4 teams like Bama, Georgia, OU, or LSU/UT/UF/AU and stack that up against OSU, UM, PSU, USC, but then there is the big drop off to Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska which just can’t match the SEC in fire power.