It's not good, but we weren't too far from being in their position. There are teams that know they are going to get shut out. They are doing everything they can to retain their BCS status and honeslty, I can't blame them for that. The problem with the Big East isn't as much them as everyone else taking teams from them. We are one of those conferences. Where I feel the Big XII is a little more just ified because it meant survival, not expansion, just like us, the Big East is doing what ever they can to survive.
I really think there are only 2 (maybe even just one) conferences you can blame for how big of a mess this became: Pac-12 and SEC.
-I think the Big Ten legitimately just wanted to eliminate it's quirky 11-team make up once and for all and didn't really intend for things to blow up like they did.
-The Big 12 has only reached out to new teams when necessary and has never been an aggressor.
-The ACC sort of looks like a bad guy, but I think adding Syracuse and Pitt was done out of fear that it was only a matter of time until the SEC came after 2 of their teams to make it 16. I don't think they are really all that different from the Big 12.
I still don't get why the SEC bothered to entertain A&M's interest at all. They are already the most "national" of all the conferences because of all their success this decade. I think if they wanted to launch a "SEC Network" they could do it easily, but they don't even appear to be considering that.
The real obvious villian thought is Larry Scott who really seemed to cause a lot of the instability during both of the re-alignment crisises.