Depending on your perspective, the landscape of college sports got brighter or darker with the announcement that USC and UCLA are departing the Pac-12 Conference to join the Big Ten Conference.

This follows on the heels of last year’s announcement that Oklahoma and Texas were leaving the Big 12 Conference to join the mighty Southeastern Conference.

The net effect is the creation of two monster conferences – the SEC and the Big Ten.

If you are one of the 32 teams in those conferences, you might be happy, especially when you get your TV check every year. You might not be so joyful if your football schedule has only Top 25 teams in the fall.

And you are probably upset if you are a Pac-12 member who relied on USC and UCLA for prestige and funding, especially in football and basketball. That is the same way the remaining Big 12 members felt when OU and Texas made their announcement after weeks or months of secret negotiations.

Almost every school is affected. The Big 12 recruited three teams from the American Athletic Conference who signed away schools from Conference USA. The shifting of conference ties continues.

The result is two formidable conferences (SEC and Big Ten) and Power Five leftovers – the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Schools like Oklahoma State, Baylor, Cincinnati, Clemson, Miami, Oregon and Notre Dame are out of the top echelon.

This wasn’t done to enhance football, basketball or the other sports. This was done for hard cash and the ability to push around the NCAA. In fact, these new conferences will make it very expensive for teams to travel, with USC going to Pennsylvania and UCLA going to the East Coast.

TV contracts and demanding fan bases are forcing these changes. Along with the ability for star athletes to market their advertising worth, the NCAA is starting to look a lot like a minor league for the NFL and NBA.

It’s great for some schools and terrible for most.