The coming 9-game conference football schedule in the Big Ten is nice, but ...

It's six years away. And I don't get too excited about things that are six years away, even things that are genuinely exciting.

If someone told me I could have free use of their condo in Maui for a month in the winter, and the refrigerator, cupboards and wine cellar are fully stocked, I'd be stoked. If they told me it was the winter of 2017 ... not so much. (By the way, I'd settle for a week if you have such a thing to offer, and I'll buy my own groceries).

So the Big Ten going to a 9-game league slate for football in 2017 is good and all, but, it's a long way off. Who knows what the league will even look like by then? There's going to be more expansions and contractions among major-college conferences, and the Big Ten is unlikely to watch from the sideline. The pot of gold known as the Big Ten Network lacks only one thing, and that's total saturation of the U.S. television market. How does a league get into other regions? Hmmm. More expansion, perhaps?

I like the nine-game format, but it will come with a cost. It's being done to give the BTN more upper-crust programming. What it will do is reduce the already-small number of good nonconference matchups. All the league's teams will schedule little but designated routs at home with smaller programs. They won't play five Big Ten road games every other year and also go on the road to play a nonconference team. They just won't.

And with a 9-game league schedule, they won't be playing games like we'll see on Sept. 3 with LSU-Oregon and Boise State-Georgia. They just won't.

That said, I'd still rather see league teams play as many of each other as possible to determine as true a champion as you can without ever having a truly true one. If it means Iowa will play Wisconsin or Ohio State or Penn State or Illinois more often than twice every four years, I'm for it.

The Big 12 is doing it right now. The Pac-10 is doing it right now. The SEC ... well, no. Not doing it now, not likely to do it in 2017.