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The college sports world was flipped on its head once again last week when news broke that the University of Southern California and the University of California Los Angeles would be joining the Big Ten Conference in 2024. The announcement marked yet another cataclysmic shift in college sports, which was already changing at a rapid pace.

Nobody is questioning the motives behind the move. This will bode better for all parties involved – both USC and UCLA will get a much larger financial cut than they were getting in the PAC 12 Conference, and the Big Ten gets access to the exclusive L.A. media market. Everybody wins here, because money talks.

Most college sports fans don’t really care about the financial standing of their school of choice’s conference, though. Nonetheless, the money is driving every decision these days because it’s just simply where we’re at. If there is more green to be made, any university is going to chase it, conference allegiances be damned.

This is the new arms race in college sports. The Southeastern Conference last summer landed massive gets with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma, and everyone was left waiting to see where the next big move would come from. We found out last week and there will no doubt be more movement to come.

News broke this week that Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado were set to meet with Big 12 representatives sometime soon. Other reports said Oregon and Washington might be in the mix for the Big 12 as well. Down is up, up is down; where this all goes, nobody knows.

Regardless of where everyone lands, college sports – and college football, specifically – is headed into the age of the Super Conference. Whether there will be four leagues, three or two is yet to be seen, but one thing is certain – this ain’t your grand daddy’s pigskin.

If the Big 12 does land four or more teams from the PAC 12, it would be a huge boon. The loss of OU and UT had some fearing the end was nigh, but the conference doubled down with the impending additions of BYU, Central Florida, Houston and Cincinnati. Any additional gains from the PAC 12 would solidify the conference’s future, no doubt – the media markets are all there and so is the money.

There are several downsides to all of this. Smaller schools like Northern Iowa pump their athletic departments with cash by playing larger schools like Iowa and Iowa State. They get a large payday for traveling to Iowa City and Ames, but those days might be gone in the Age of the Super Conference. Non-conference games with teams like UNI would likely be slashed in favor of more marquee in-league matchups. What will happen to programs like the one in Cedar Falls when that revenue dries up? The answer probably isn’t good.

Speculation, speculation, speculation – that pretty much sums up the state of college sports right now. At the very least, Iowa won’t have to wait decades on end to earn a trip to the Rose Bowl now – that’s where UCLA plays. Still, this is going to get weirder.

Could Super Conference realignment be the death knell of the Cy-Hawk Series? Very possibly, yes, because of the aforementioned point about UNI. With so many more teams in a single conference, said conference will very likely expand the number of in-league games each season (TV revenue, folks). Will it be to 10 games? Eleven games? A whole season of conference games? Again – speculation, speculation, speculation. But there’s no way Iowa or Iowa State is playing the same amount of non-conference games as they do now if things expand further. The Cy-Hawk matchup is one of the few in-state rivalries between foes in opposite conferences, and if it doesn’t make financial sense to keep it alive, it will go the way of the dodo.

Suffice it to say, college sports fans are in for one heck of a ride in the coming years. The landscape is going to shift drastically, whether you like it or not. Iowa can thank its lucky stars it’s already in the Big Ten Conference, and ISU fans can be equally grateful if the Big 12 keeps itself relevant post-OU and UT. One thing is certain among all this uncertainty – if the money is there, you will survive and thrive; if it isn’t, good luck.