This "split" is so much more complicated than many seem to believe. It's not as simple as "The SEC and Big Ten take their ball and go (to a new) home." As
stevo said, it gets more complicated just with basketball. Once you factor in the non-revenue sports, it goes off the charts.
Football is the easy part. Travel isn't an issue here. Even FCS and (some) D-II programs don't have a problem flying 3,000 miles for a football game once or twice a season. Even when a school is alone on a deserted island (like FIU in CUSA) and has to fly to literally every single away game, they just pony up the extra few hundred grand and do it. TV is the driver for the new cross-country mega-leagues, but the comparatively low cost of football travel is what makes it possible. So the smart thing for the P4+2 would be to break away in football only, keeping everything else in a different league. It sucks from a fan standpoint. Anyone who was around JSU when we played football in the SFL and OLY sports in the TAAC can tell you that. Not seeing the same teams in all sports takes away from the whole experience. But since when does anyone care about the fans? We're talking money here.
Before moving on to other sports, though, one needs to ask how many current P5s would be on board with the costs associated with becoming a semi-pro league. Sure, the TV money looks great, for now, but what happens five years down the line, when coaching salaries have skyrocketed and players start holding out for a bigger slice of the pie? Are schools like WVU, Rutgers, Wake, and Vandy going to be able to keep up? (We all know the answer.)
At some point, once football has separated itself from the other sports, the P4 itself is going to fracture. It's inevitable.
Then there's basketball. Specifically, men's hoops. It's the NCAA's cash cow, and as
stevo pointed out, many of the "Power" teams in hoops are non-football or non-FBS schools. There are currently something like 371 NCAA D-I programs (about to be 372 when West Ga completes its transition). There is no plan out there which would appease all of these schools. I mean, the Alabama Crimson Tide is in the same division as the Stonehill College Skyhawks. How much can these two schools agree on?
So another split of some type seems likely here as well. It won't split along the same lines as football, though. It'll be a separate league, much as the NFL and NBA are separate leagues. Will women's hoops tag along? That's an excellent question for your local Title IX compliance officer.
So whatever happens here, let's assume football and basketball are off the table. All that's left in what remains of the NCAA are non-revenue sports. (Baseball is a revenue sport only for a select few programs.) These same sports tend to play multiple games/matches per week, so travel is a consideration. Jax State could easily play football in a revamped PAC, geography be damned. But there is no way on God's green earth we'd be able to do the same in softball, volleyball, or tennis.
This means NCAA conferences would be forced to become more regional. You could still have cross-country conferences, but geographical divisions would be a necessity. Without football and basketball driving conference alignment, though, these mega-conferences wouldn't last. It's not like ESPN would be dangling an extra million or two per school to land the CUSA golf championship on the condition that CUSA adds a school in the Pacific time zone.
This will lead to major realignment, with conferences beginning to look like they once did before TV came along and wrecked everything. It wouldn't be a simple merger, either. The Sun Belt and CUSA would each split in two, with the two halves merging. UTEP and NMSU would likely end up in a western-based conference. If it weren't for football (and maybe hoops) FIU would be in the ASUN right now. They would almost certainly be in the ASUN when all this plays out. Meanwhile, some other ASUN schools -- EKU, UNA, Peay, UCA -- may end up in regional OLY sports conferences, potentially even landing with us.
In 15-20 years, the college athletics landscape will be completely unrecognizable. I dread a lot of the changes, but I'm looking forward to others. The biggest question remaining, and I don't really have an answer here, is what happens to the current G5 programs? They obviously won't turn semi-pro as a group. But will they be able to survive as "amateur" programs? What happens to TV revenue? Coaching salaries? What happens when athletes at this level decide they need to be paid? I have no idea.
