As the power brokers of the college football world steered their sport toward a brave new world featuring a four-team playoff, it was widely believed that most conferences would slow down a bit on the expansion and realignment front.  Instead, the Big Ten craftily nabbed Maryland from the ACC and Rutgers from the Big East last month, setting off yet another wave of changes, long before the new playoff format and revenue split had even been fully fleshed out.

After the Big Ten’s shocking move, it was only a matter of time before more dominoes began to fall.  And with seven Big East basketball schools deciding last week that they would break away from the Big Whatever, we believe the Big Bang is here.  We mean the big, Big Bang, too.  Super-conferences rising.  Small leagues folding or partnering with one another for survival.  A super-division of the richest four or five conferences separating itself along a haves and have-nots border.  Television executives dropping stone dead from exhaustion as they negotiate, renegotiate, and then renogotiate again major TV deals worth billions of dollars.

In other words, we’re on the brink of a full-on, A-1, top-drawer madhouse.

We’ve examined conference expansion at MrSEC.com dating back three-plus years now.  We’ve taken a by-the-numbers approach each time because that’s what all this mess has been about — numbers.  Last October we put together a 10-part series on the math of conference expansion/realignment and you can find the final summary to that series here (as well as links to all the other nine parts).

But this latest burst of expansion is an even simpler breakdown.  This time, you can just follow the money.  Schools are looking for new homes because they want to guarantee themselves larger revenue streams.  Many would like to find some stability, too, but the key factor is the cash.

A seat is nice.  A comfy throne is better.

Meanwhile, conferences are trying to cash in on television deals and playoff revenue.  With the Big East on the verge of being adios’ed, it’s already been snipped from the list of major football conferences.  Instead of six big conferences splitting the lion’s share of postseason cash, in the future just five leagues will dominate the playoff era.  And that’s only if the ACC survives.  If it gets picked apart a la the Big East — and money suggests it will be — then there will be but four big-time leagues to horde the majority of playoff cash.

Those four conferences will also dominate the television landscape.  For half a decade, folks have debated whether the SEC got things right by inking huge contracts with CBS and ESPN or whether the Big Ten made the shrewdest move in launching its own TV network.  Turns out, they were both smarter than the rest of the pack.  To make the haul of greenbacks as big as possible, a conference wants both huge, national television contracts and its own network.

So this round of moves comes down to much simpler math than anything we’ve seen before in the expansion/realignment game.  It’s about revenue and it’s about cable households.  Sure, some leagues won’t take schools if they don’t fit a certain academic profile, but now more than ever academics are taking a bigger backseat to cash and television ratings.

With that in mind, this week, we’re going to provide you with some very simple data.  Today, we’ll look at the schools that might be interested in switching conferences.  It’s not hard to figure out which schools would listen to another league’s offer.  Just look at the revenue.

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During Kentucky’s coaching search, it became clear that there was a vocal group of Wildcat supporters who wanted their school to hire ex-Louisville and ex-Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino.  Instead, only Auburn among SEC schools reached out to Petrino at all.  And Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart selected Florida State defensive coordinator Mark Stoops as his school’s new leader.

Stoops’ first game with the Wildcats will come next August 31st at LP Field in Nashville against Western Kentucky.  Across the field on the opposite sideline he’ll see none other than Petrino.  The Hilltoppers will name Petrino their new coach later today.

It’s a helluva fall from the head coach at Arkansas (where Petrino had gone 21-5 in his last two seasons) all the way to the Sun Belt Conference.  Already, some are saying WKU will win football games but lose its soul by hiring Petrino.  (Actually, I think a few ministers out there might point out that the soul in better shape is the one that offers forgiveness to someone else’s.)  But make no mistake, this is a nightmare scenario for Barnhart.

If Kentucky’s athletic director watches his football program lose two years in a row to Western Kentucky, well, that’ll be bad enough.  But if Petrino can thump the man Barnhart chose instead of him?  Over him?  Oh, the Cats’ AD will most assuredly hear about that one on talk radio stations across the state.

For Cat fans looking for an upside to this odd twist, it could be that Barnhart will now be sufficiently motivated to provide anything and everything Stoops needs to build Kentucky’s football program.  Vanderbilt has invested in its program and James Franklin has taken advantage.  Stoops might be able to do the same if Barnhart starts backing his program financially.  Petrino might provide the right motivation to make sure that happens.

Or… he could just come back to bite Barnhart right in the rump.

UPDATE – Petrino could actually cause some discomfort for Tennessee AD Dave Hart, too.  As noted above, Kentucky and Tennessee both decided not to chat with Petrino this offseason.  While UK hired Stoops, UT brought in Butch Jones from Cincinnati.  After looking over WKU’s schedule, guess who the Hilltoppers face in Knoxville the week after they play Kentucky in Nashville?  Yep, Hart’s Volunteers.

The open to the 2013 season could be a real “You Shoulda Hired Me When You Had The Chance” tour for Petrino.