The Atlantic Coast Conference has officially decided to raid the Big East, adding Boston College, Miami, and Syracuse to the mix to create an SEC/Big 12-style “superleague” with a conference title game in football.

What does this mean for college football? It might put some pressure on the Pac-10 and Big Eleven Ten to add enough teams for a conference title game, a potentially problematic proposition for the Pac-10 due to geography and team quality (Boise State? Fresno State? UNLV? San Jose State?), but well within the abilities of the Big Ten (Pitt, Notre Dame, or Virginia Tech). It opens up the field a little for the BCS title game; with the rump Big East essentially demoted to mid-major status in football, no matter what conferences (C-USA, the MAC?) they try to raid in response, they’ll probably lose their automatic bid.

More importantly, it may prompt a more immediate shakeout in the lower end of Division I-A as the mid-majors react to the new alignment; new eligibility rules for I-A schools were likely to force some serious realignments in 2004 (principally in the Sunbelt and the 16-team MAC) anyway, but with the Big East probably fragmenting (with the basketball-only schools going their own way and the remaining schools likely to break up C-USA to get back to a reasonable size) there may be a knock-on effect as mid-major conferences like the MAC try to “move up” a notch and bring in up-and-coming programs like Southern Miss and USF. The coming two years should be very interesting both on and off the field.