I like college football and basketball and find the current news of the breakup of the Big 12 Conference. Colorado goes to the PAC 10, with Texas, A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State possibly following. Nebraska will probably go to the Big 10, to be it’s 12th member.
What happened to this conference? Many of the football and basketball teams were the best in the nation. The geography seemed a good fit. Why didn’t the BIG 12 themselves try to gobble up some extra schools for themselves instead of being the victim of defections?
I think the old Southwest Conference should be reserrected minus Arkansas and Rice with Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Take in New Mexico and New Mexico State, and that would be an excellent conference.
The SEC and the ACC should look into a merging of some kind, or try to poach several schools, such as Georgia Tech, Florida State, Clemson, even North Carolina and NC State.
But I am off the subject. Why is a football conference in the heart of the most diehard football maniacs in the country falling apart like a cheap suit? Is this Obama’s fault?
I heard a radio analyst discuss that it is TV revenues, period. The Big 12 just does not include the big TV markets and that’s what brings in the money.
There are a couple of issues here: The member schools of the Big 12 were not making as much TV money as other conferences. The ties of some of the schools were not that deep - the league formed in 1996, when Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech joined the Big 8. Even before that, there had been a slew of changes in the conference’s makeup as it fluctuated between six and ten teams. There were also resentments over the perceived influence of the Texas schools - UT in particular.
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Something like an hour and a half later, they were accepted.
The posters mentioning TV money as the reason for all these moves have nailed it.
Mizzou does appear to have completely mis-handled their part in all this, and is likely to wind up in the Sun Belt Conference if they’re not careful.
The Big 12 appears that Missouri, Kansas, Kansas St, Iowa St, and Baylor will remain. It could keep going, in a way, if it can poach maybe the New Mexico and Louisiana teams from the WAC, and maybe somebody from the Mid-American, but it will certainly no longer be a major conference.
football money - the midwest can’t compete with the higher populations on the coasts no matter how good texas, oklahoma, texas tech, and nebraska are. regional conflicts will always favor local teams despite a better team playing in the heartland.
i’d like to see how the minor sports adjust to this.
Damn, I missed that.
I was really hoping for some prolonged, nail-biting drama over the switch; Nebraskans wringing their hands, wondering if they’re good enough, rebels rooting to join the southeast conference instead, maybe protests in Madison… It coulda been *a whole summer of fun!
*
Wonder what the impact of the super conferences will have on the MAC and other Div. 2 groups? They have knocked off division one teams lately and appear to be getting better. But it seems to me ,they will be shut out. How many out of conference games will go on after the super-conferences are finally formed ?
It is about programs not teams in a year. Purdue has knocked off Notre Dame in good years. MSU can turn a good team into a mess better than any team in football. Colorado has many times been in the top 10 in the country.
The Big 12 is dead, or it will be as soon as Texas accepts the Pac-10 invitation and takes whatever schools it pleases with it.
As for who’s to blame, you can trace it back to the 1996. The Big 12 was a shotgun marriage of the Big 8 and Southwest Conference. From the beginning it skewed toward the Texas teams. The imbalance has gotten steadily worse, and Nebraska and Missouri, in particular, both had a long list of greivances. Colorado, even though it was a long-time member, really didn’t identify with the flatland schools.
Missouri thought its balance of pretty good football and basketball programs would be more appealing to the Big 10 than either Nebraska’s football dominance or Kansas’ basketball dominance. They miscalculated.