The Golf Mega-Conference Could Be Real With the Pac 16

College golf fans, you can now shout with glee. (Not like the FOX show.)  With Colorado's announced and Nebraska's expected diaspora from the Big 12, the dominoes are set to fall such that the greatest collegiate golf league ever assembled could come in the form of a hypothetical Pac 16. 

Take USC, Arizona, Arizona St, OSU, Texas, and Washington - put them together.  Add in '09 national champion Texas A&M.  UCLA and Texas Tech are good.  Stanford has always been great.  Of the rumored schools to make up the megaconference (that word reminds me of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers), ten are in the top sixteen of Golfweek and Sagarin's college rankings.

The ACC and SEC are next on the list.

The new Pac 16 could basically be its own mini-tour.  Nine of the top twenty ranked college players are in the conference.  A slew of moderately-ranked players fill out almost every roster in the league.  The Hooters Tour could get a run for its money. 

In the money grab that college athletics has become, the opportunities for the Pac 16 to make golf into a revenue sport are almost spellbinding.  Imagine the number of sponsors that would line up to get behind tournaments where the players make zero dollars and they get all of the positive PR exposure for "advancing the game."  Like Pavlovian dogs, the athletic departments at these schools would salivate at the prospect.

Sure, conference defections and realignment may mean buku bucks to football programs and schools, but golf programs in these sixteen schools could stand to gain tremendously as well.