They say you can't tell the players without a scorecard. That's just as true about major college football conferences.

After Nebraska joins the Big Ten next year and Colorado bolts to the Pacific 10 in 2012, the Big Ten will be 12, the Big 12 will be 10, and the Pac-10 -- which also will pick up Utah in 2011 from the Mountain West Conference -- will be 12 as well. Got that?

Mountain West, which wisely doesn't have a number in its name, will lose Brigham Young University next year. The Mormon university has decided its football team should become an independent, at least in football.

But not to worry: The conference actually will grow from nine to 10 members with the addition of Western Athletic Conference teams Boise State in 2011 and Fresno State and Nevada in 2012. Did we mention that BYU evidently thinks it's Notre Dame?

The WAC has to be feeling like a medieval village after a visit by the Vikings. And not the Diablo Valley College Vikings -- although they changed conferences this year, too. Down to six teams by 2012, the conference is considered by many to be on life support.

Contrary to appearances suggested by the misnomered conferences, it really is about numbers. Not dollars and cents; that's chump change for $100 million football programs.

It's about the millions of dollars to be made, especially from the new championship game the 12-member, two-division Big Ten (which includes Penn State, of course) will play starting next season. That's why Nebraska -- which has played some Big 12 rivals for more than 80 years and has faced off against perennial powerhouse Oklahoma a mere 60 years -- is on its way to the Big Ten, without a glance in its rear-view mirror at the traditions it is leaving behind.

The philosopher Hank Williams Jr. asked: Are you ready for some football? We propose a corollary: Do you have a scorecard?

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