No one is in charge.

For all the billions of dollars, millions of fans and boundless passion that surround college football, that has always been its glaring and bizarre flaw. No one is looking out for the greater good of the game. No one is guiding the sport toward long-term prosperity and short-term sensibility. No one is building consensus and channeling all of the ratings, financial success and popularity toward an outcome that is positive for everyone in the sport.

And with the conference plate tectonics poised to shift with Texas A&M’s possible move to the Southeastern Conference, the college sports world finds itself, yet again, panicking about a major paradigm change.

Imagine if the Kansas City Chiefs could cause upheaval in the N.F.L. or the Baltimore Orioles could force a major realignment in Major League Baseball. That is the situation college football appeared to find itself in Friday, just hours after Mark Emmert, the president of the N.C.A.A., proclaimed that the university presidents, not the conference commissioners, were calling the shots in college athletics.

Will the great conference land rush that nearly happened in 2010 come to fruition in 2011? No one is sure. But the relative calm of the past nine months ended on Friday, with Texas A&M finally finding national relevance by preparing to sprint out of the Big 12 like a kindergartner whose lunch money was taken. That means the SEC will probably search for another team — Virginia Tech? Florida State? Clemson? — and the Big 12, the Big East and the Atlantic Coast Conference will be circling the wagons and reaching for the antacid.