With apologies to R.E.M., the end of the college football world as we know it could be coming soon.

Will the Big Ten, currently comprised of 11 schools, add one or three more? Or five?

Will the Pac-10 raid the Big 12?

Will the Big 12 counter by looting other leagues?

And what happens to the Mountain West Conference?

Not since Y2K has there been so much speculation about and hand-wringing over what might happen.

“There’s so much information out there it’d make your head spin,” Colorado State athletic director Paul Kowalczyk said. “Nothing’s reality until it happens, and until then, it’s all rumor.”

But unlike Jan. 1, 2000, don’t expect a whole lot of nothing. College football’s landscape could begin to change as soon as the next few days.

On Sunday, the presidents of schools in the Big Ten will meet in Chicago, and the-much publicized topic of expanding the league certainly will be discussed. While the Big Ten’s decision makers meet, their counterparts in the MWC — including Air Force superintendant Lt. Gen. Michael C. Gould — will meet in Jackson, Wyo. And expansion will be on their agenda too.

According to reports, no official decisions are expected to be made at the Big Ten meetings. But there is widespread speculation that the MWC will approve extending an invitation to Boise State of the Western Athletic Conference to join the league. Such an invitation would require approval from seven of the MWC’s nine member schools.

Adding Boise would give the MWC — which is hoping to become an automatic-qualifying BCS conference — another powerful football school. But it could cause scheduling headaches and would force schools to take a smaller slice of league revenue.

Still, with many expecting the Big Ten to expand and a Thursday web report indicating the Pac-10 might target six Big 12 teams, some in the MWC want the league to be proactive.

New Mexico president David Schmidly told the Albuquerque Journal he’d rather the conference to be aggressive than reactionary. Kowalczyk shares that opinion.

“I always think being proactive is better than sitting around and waiting for something to happen,” Kowalczyk said. “The presidents will meet this coming weekend, and they’ll make a decision which they feel is in the best interest of the conference, and as an athletic director, I’ll be supportive of that decision, whatever it is. … I think what we have to look at is what’s going to make the conference better and stronger in the long run and whether adding one or three or whatever the magic number is, you always have to keep that in mind.”

Kowalczyk admitted he has concerns about what could happen to the MWC if there are massive conference shake-ups.

“I love the Mountain West Conference and what we’ve been able to build over the past decade,” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t want to see it compromised or dismantled.”

Andrew Romanoff Photo by