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Now that Nebraska has been taken, you can almost see the Big Ten commanders standing over their maps, stickpins marking their next targets.

Notre Dame.

Missouri.

The East.

The Big Ten loves the smell of television contracts in the morning. It smells like victory (with apologies to Robert Duvall and his famous line in "Apocalypse Now").

As was forecasted only a month ago, the Big 12 is now all but history as Nebraska departs for the Big Ten.

That's 12 teams down, four more to go for a Big Ten that will more likely be a Really Big 16 by the time all the continental drift has come to a halt.

Do not for a moment believe Nebraska's commitment is a nice, tidy balancing act that finally makes for an even number of teams in a conference that got out of whack when Penn State came aboard.

Next on the Big Ten's list is the team it has wanted all along:

Notre Dame.

And don't be misled by all the bravado and "give me liberty or give me my own payout that doesn't have to be shared with other schools" cries of the Golden Domers who say Notre Dame will never, ever, become part of any conference, let alone the Big Ten.

Not everyone agrees that's the way to go. There are executives in South Bend who believe it is wise to "listen," as they are at least doing. And there are alumni and fans who aren't so sure Big Ten membership is the worst thing for their football legacy since Gerry Faust.

One big reason the Irish are "listening" to Big Ten sales people is because of their other sports, which is a full boat of men's and women's teams who participate in the Big East. It's very expensive traveling to Big East sites.

It's also tough to travel within a conference that might not exist in another year. The Big East is on footing no firmer than the Big 12.

Elsewhere, what was seen earlier this year is, predictably, happening at the speed only money and security can generate.

Most of the re-shuffling should take shape, at least in its contours, by this autumn. Big conferences with huge TV contracts and heavy payouts to member schools are driving this reconfiguration of the college sports landscape.

For the Big Ten, bringing aboard Nebraska is the first of the dominoes to tumble. Big schools leaving big conferences is a gravitational pull that can't be resisted. In a couple of years, as has been envisioned for some time, we'll be looking at super conferences of 16 teams or so.

The Big Ten will move to add another Big 12 school, probably Missouri, as cold as the trail has gotten in recent weeks. That pathway can warm in a hurry, all because the Big Ten wants St. Louis and Kansas City's television markets.

Meanwhile, the conference will be fighting in the eastern theater:

Connecticut, Syracuse, Pitt, Rutgers, maybe Maryland.

Several will fall.

Television markets will be captured.

The Big Ten's colonial empire will expand, absolutely.

Notre Dame figures to be at the heart of it.

It simply makes too much sense.

Fundamentally, there is geography to consider. Less travel is in every conference member's interests, as it is for an independent open to common sense and convenience. Notre Dame is no exception, not in the executive offices, anyway.

Academic reputations in the Big Ten are nothing Notre Dame needs to fear. And neither does a school's football program, which deserves all the financial comforts it has earned the past 100 years, have anything to lose in a conference where top-shelf football is played and member schools earn bountiful annual payouts.

Those paydays will only increase, you can bet.

And one reason is because the day is coming -- as it must -- when college football abandons its hypocritical, Stone Age disposition toward a playoff and gets on with the business of championing in college football everything it professes to celebrate with "March Madness."

So, keep your eye on troop movements.

The Big Ten is about to become a 16-team superpower.

Teams from the East and from the Midwest are destined to be added, with none more likely, or more necessary than Notre Dame.

lynn.henning@detnews.com