Expansionpalooza is driven by four things: practical economics, fear, greed and football. For fans it's that last one - football - which is the driver. But the end result will have far reaching consequences on the other sports. Those other sports are ones which are often subsidized by the football program, though basketball is a different animal. Basketball is often self-sufficient, and at a few institutions it turns accounting on its head and kicks down cash to the (usually awful) football programs.

For the Kansas Jayhawks, this could mean many things. Kansas has the premier basketball program in the Big 12. Texas has all of the resources to be able to match them, but hasn't. The Jayhawks have won the Big 12 regular season title in eight straight seasons (shared twice), and haven't finished worse than 2nd in thirteen years. That's the most dominant conference team in the nation.

But now the Big 12 looks to be expanding. A journalist with really good ties to Florida State claims that their move is inevitable. The other two most talked about teams are Clemson and Louisville. Regardless of who is right, the consensus seems to be that somebody is moving.

Already, TCU and West Virginia are in. TCU's basketball program is underwhelming, but West Virginia is solid. And they have the finances to remain competitive with the upper echeolon of the Big 12. Their overall athletic budget isn't anything special, but their hoops budget is. It's not on the Texas/Kansas level, but it's only one level down. Swapping TCU and West Virginia for Texas A&M and Missouri will probably be about a wash in basketball terms.

A new Pepsi campaign featuring former Duke guard Kyrie Irving as an old man schooling people on the court.

Unlike college football, college basketball actually rewards difficult schedules. The NCAA Committee repeatedly states that RPI doesn't play a major role in their decisions, and then they promptly put forth a field of 68 in which RPI is obviously the far most important determining factor. Of course, RPI is a lousy way of tracking individual team strength, but in composite rankings like SOS it does a fairly decent job. Still, we're not dumb, so we'll stick with Pomeroy unless we absolutely have to talk RPI.

And in that light, the University of Virginia's schedules under coach Tony Bennett have been awful. You would think that at Virginia - a school of supposedly bright people - that someone would figure out that he's harming his chances at the post-season.

Last year the Hoos home games included Michigan (scheduled by the conference for the ACC/Big Ten Challenge), George Mason, Wisconsin Green Bay (ranked No. 180 by Pomeroy), Winthrop (256th) and four schools ranked worse than 330th. Their road schedule was slightly better with trips to Oregon, Seattle and LSU. Overall, their non-conference strength-of-schedule was pegged by Pomeroy at 286th. The previous season? 291st. His first season? 218th.

Shaka Smart meanwhile - who lives up to his name - has had two straight years of top-50 non-conference SOS.

Today some news leaked that UVA's schedule might be improving, and it's right in line with VCU's strategy.

#VCU coach Shaka Smart said today that he and #UVa's Tony Bennett agreed to a home-and-home a while back, but haven't found dates that work.

— michael phillips (@michaelpRTD) May 18, 2012

Each March, come the Big East Tournament, I spend plenty of time making fun of the stupid format of their conference tourney. With 16 teams, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out how to run a 4-day tournament with no byes. Yet the Big East (and a few other conferences) not only has byes for the top teams, but they have double byes.

Apparently, focus groups and bean counters have determined that the Big East can make more money if they format their tournament as they do. And since this is 2012, and this is college sports, if something makes more short-term money than that automatically qualifies it as a good idea.

Well, apparently the ACC has been paying attention. Because today the ACC "announced" that they will be going to double-byes once Syracuse and Pitt join the conference. The "announcement" came in the form of a sentenence buried at the end of an unrelated story.

So rather than having the top two teams gets byes and everyone else begin on Thursday - now seeds 11-14 will begin on Wednesday, seeds 5-10 will join the fray on Thursday, and 1-4 will chime in on Friday.

Oh joy.

@amilejefferson welcome to a long line of mediocre big men in Duke Blue

— hunter biggs (@biggs099) May 15, 2012

@AmileJefferson ...Good luck sitting on the bench cuz theres no playing time....#gopack

— Jason A. Jarrett (@roxiesdaddy2012) May 15, 2012

@AmileJefferson....By the end of the season, he will transfer due to lack of playing time....

— Jason A. Jarrett (@roxiesdaddy2012) May 15, 2012

@AmileJefferson You are a BEAST....you look awesome in the red and black of NCSU....

— Jason A. Jarrett (@roxiesdaddy2012) May 4, 2012

@AmileJefferson Your a bitch for pickin Duke over Kentucky , good luck when Nerlens smashes you this year whore#BBN

— Eminem = GOAT (@KirbyRay24) May 15, 2012

Wolfpack head coach Mark Gottfried seemingly can't miss right now (aside from losing some depth with transfers). He improbably reached the Sweet-16. He's bringing in a top-10 recruiting class (top-5 if Amile Jefferson heads to Raleigh). CJ Leslie returned to school. And now he's working on the following season. And the first piece of that puzzle is LSU transfer Ralston Turner.

Turner was a fringe consensus top-100 prospect (coming in at No. 100) out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and had been recruited by Mark Gottfried. His size (6-6) at SG causes all sorts of problems on the perimeter, and while at LSU he was called upon to score. A lot.

Which is the troubling part. He was recently quoted as saying "my shot is the strongest part of my game." Huh?

However, as a freshman he was asked to partially carry the team. And in doing so he ended up taking a ridiculous 27.5% of the shots when he was on the floor (CJ Leslie didn't even reach 26% this year). So it's understandable that he was a high volume, low efficiency player. It's rare that a freshman (or anyone for that matter) can carry that big of a load and still play efficiently. That year he made 32% of his 3s and 42% of his 2s.

As a sophomore he no longer had to be the man. So it was expected that his metrics would improve. After all, he would be taking shots in the flow of the offense rather than being the offense. And he ended up taking fewer than 20% of the shots.

Lost amid all of the discussion of FSU to the Big 12 (?) was the release of the matchups for this November's ACC/B1G Challenge. The ACC won the first 10 of these Challenges, and now the Big Ten has won three in a row.

Here are the three most intriguing games to watch:

No. 3: Minnesota at Florida State

This game has very little name value, as these are both smaller players in hoops hungry conferences. But FSU is the reigning ACC Champion and will be looking to replace four starters. Michael Snaer broke out as a junior and will be the undisputed leader of this team. His development curve has closely mirrored that of former Seminole greats Al Thornton and Toney Douglas, who both had huge senior seasons. Plus, Coach Hamilton calls him the best defender he's ever coached. FSU won't get that much press in the preseason other than their loss of 6 seniors being repeated ad nauseum, but those six seniors also had the six highest turnover rates on the roster. Leonard Hamilton's squad is deep and talented, and still have two scholarships to offer.

Minnesota returns just about everyone from a very good team. Ralph Sampson is gone, as is reserve guard Chip Armelin, but those losses will be more than made up by the return of Trevor Mbakwe. Mbakwe has 1st Team All-Conference talent, and his return should make Minnesota a fringe top-25 team. FSU's bigs are either undersized or inexperienced, so in an early season game Mbakwe should be a force inside. Couple that with multiple 3-point threats and Minnesota will be a very dangerous team.

The official NCAA attendance figures have been released, and as usual, the Big Ten remains the most popular conference. However, attendance overall was down 64,886, or about 50 people a game.

The power conference schools dominated the attendance figures, with only Creighton slipping into the top-10 (No. 6). Memphis (No. 11), BYU (No. 12) and UNLV (No. 17) were all in the top-20.

The least watched college basketball team? Chicago State, which averaged 429 fans per contest.

Later, I'll post a more thorough analysis based on capacity, but for now - before conferences go haywire in the race to become super-conferences - here's a look at trends in the BCS conferences.

It's that time of year when there's not that much to talk about in the college basketball world. When stories do happen, bloggers jump on them because they're happy to have something to cover. So there aren't as many stories, but they're well covered. The only people reading this time of year are basketball junkies. Not much news - but they can immerse. It's a good system.

What bloggers/national sites do to fill this space is create meaningless way-too-early predictions, and of course they include the caveat in the text self-describing their work as "way-too-early," as if the reader didn't already know that.

So in that vein I'm offering up this, which is a way-too-early prediction at who the next no-name coach will be to hit the big time.

Remember this name: Andy Enfield.

1. He's young, and seemingly has the chops. Enfield, 42, just completed his first season as a head coach at Florida Gulf Coast University. The school has only been around since 1997, and they've fielded a basketball team for ten years. This was the first year in which they were eligible for post-season play. Not that it matters, because they've always been horrible. Plus, the best two players on the team transferred following the coaching change. Enfield began with seven new players.

The best pre-season basketball guide - the Blue Ribbon Yearbook - stated that "it's hard to imagine anything but a rough start to the Enfield era."

In the ten team Atlantic Sun, only the top-8 make the post-season tournament, and the Eagles were no lock. Then, with a starting lineup featuring only one returning starter, Enfield led FGCU to their best ever record - both overall, and in the Atlantic Sun. And in their inagural post-season tournament they did the improbable by advancing to the A-Sun finals. There, they were knocked off by Belmont for the conferences automatic bid.

The seventieth birthday. It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. - Mark Twain

The 70th birthday is one of note. Though, f you're reading blogs then there is a pretty good chance that you haven't thought that far ahead. And neither have I. But it's there, looming, in front of us all.

If we're lucky.

Jim Calhoun joins that club today. Jackson State's Tevester Anderson (75), SMU's new hire Larry Brown (71), and Jim Calhoun. That's it. Jim Boeheim? He's next.

Coming off a disappointing follow up to their improbable Championship, Calhoun is losing a ton of talent. Jeremy Lamb and Andre Drummond jumped to the NBA. Alex Oriakhi transferred. And Calhoun is 70. How long is he going to last?

No one knows. At least, no one besides Calhoun.