About this time of year, when things are slow and sports fans get stiff in their chairs, someone starts talking about potential conference shakeups. Before we know it, ESPN, CBS Sportsline, TSN, and CNNSI throw their hat into the ring and, like a game of Plinko on the Price is Right, it inevitably filters down to the masses like those who frequent UDPride. Every year however, little changes in the way of speculation and what we learn from one offseason to the next isn’t a whole heck of a lot. This summer is no different, but it hasn’t kept the conversation quiet. If anything, it’s growing louder.

For Flyer fans, nothing really matters in this equation until the Atlantic-10 is brought up and shoved through the Sledge-o-Matic machine of one part prediction, one part informed reason, and one part pure guesswork. Sure, the A-10 is just one piece of a complex, integrated puzzle of conference alignment and geographical networking, but we’re all bright enough to realize that the A-10 will ultimately end up in a reactionary position once the big boys make their move. They are the Nike of the athletic world and we’re Fubu — or Fubar if things go really wrong. Those chances are slim, but anything is possible when you’re dependent.

The timeframe for shakeup is carried on the watch of the D-I football schools who find the economic engine of the pigskin the driving force in the ultimate success or failure of an athletic department. No other sport dumps 105,000 fans into the bleachers on a weekend afternoon, and even if the football stinks — perhaps like Notre Dame of late — the price of the ticket remains constant and the money continues to roll in when the seats remain full. And they usually do in the BCS conferences. The monkeywrench in all of this isn’t the BCS however, it’s rogue schools currently outside the BCS football alliance who desperately want to hang with the in-crowd. Schools like UAB, UConn, Central Florida, Marshall, and others have made the jump to D-I, and institutions like Temple want to ramp up their otherwise stale program to national acceptance. But it takes a coffin-full of pocket change to make it work, and if your nationally-prominant football aspirations crash and burn, certain athletic directors might as well hop in and close the coffin lid.

The current BCS schools are working the shell game too. Nobody is dropping out, but everybody’s looking for better strategical and geographical alignments to fix the quick-handed moves of the 80s and 90s. Back then, the Southwest Conference bit the dust and changed the landscape of the SEC, while the WAC fell to much the same variables. The Mountain West formed, the Big East reshuffled to include former independent Miami (FL), and Penn State joined the Big-10. Conference-USA migrated into a hodgepodge of schools from several former conferences as well. Some of those alignments survived, many did not, and some are doomed to change. The question is who and when.

Miami (FL) appears out of place in the Big East and the ACC would love a second Florida school in the conference. Temple remains a football-only member of the Big East, but their overall athletic department is so disappointing it’s hard to imagine them making it in football, nevermind at a level the Big East expects long-term. And who knows what the future of UConn football will bring.

But when all of this gets settled — and that’s probably longer than people think or want — basketball will iron itself out and those schools without IA football may be forced to stick together. That’s not to say those Utopian thoughts of a conference pitting Dayton with Xavier, Villanova, Marquette, St. Louis, St. John’s, Seton Hall, Providence, DePaul, and others is going to happen. It will probably take an act of God to pull that one off. Geography will play a vital role in all of this and so too will the greenback. Private schools as they are must climb uphill against the fat-cat state schools and it remains to be seen if an exclusively private club can be sustained — or in the very least — respected by the state schools. Can 8,000 students be expected to compete with 30,000? Can a conference built on private schools without IA football be heard at the roundtable? Can private schools even agree to band together and find strength in numbers? In the end, the enemy may be the private schools themselves who find no middle ground to make it all happen.

So Dayton fans must sit tight and wait it all out. It’s interesting to discuss the possibilities to be sure, but chances are we’ll be here next summer talking about the same thing.