For years, college football was its own strange, self-contained ecosystem. You knew money was coming in and going out, but the sources, and the amounts, were always a bit of a mystery.

That's no longer the case. The business of college football has been shoved to the forefront in recent months by the continuing national soap opera known as conference realignment. Last time we checked, Nebraska had jumped ship to the Big Ten from the Big 12, Colorado had vacated the Big 12 for the Pac-10 and upstart Boise State had made a leap...