First chink in Big 12’s armor with Colorado’s exit

The Pac-10 Conference announced Thursday that the University of Colorado has accepted an invitation to join the league, the first change in the conference in 32 years and the first in what could be sea change in college athletics.

“The University of Colorado is a perfect match — academically and athletically — with the Pac-10,” said Colorado President Bruce Benson.

Larry Scott, the Pac-10 commissioner who has been in office 11 months, called it a “historic moment” for the conference.

“The Pac-10 is poised for tremendous growth,” he said. “The University of Colorado is a great fit for the conference both academically and athletically, and we’re incredibly excited to welcome Colorado to the Pac-10.”

Pac-10 TV contracts, among the lowest-paying for large conferences, will expire in 2012. Negotiations begin in 2011, by which time Scott hopes to have resolution on the makeup of the conference.

News outlets in Nebraska have reported that Nebraska will apply for Big Ten Conference membership as early as today. The Executive Committee of the Nebraska Board of Regents meets today at 1 p.m. at Varner Hall on the Nebraska campus.

Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Athletics Director Tom Osborne are on the agenda to speak about a resolution regarding athletics conference alignment.

Missouri, another possible Big Ten candidate, is worried. Missouri curator Warren Erdman told the Associated Press the school has not been asked to join the Big Ten.

That — coupled with more teams joining the Pac-10 — could leave Missouri joining Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State on the sidelines, scrambling to salvage a process that school leaders hoped would result in an upgrade rather than awaiting an invitation that may never come.

“Anything could happen, but we’re working hard to stay together,” said Missouri Chancellor Brady Deaton, who added he had called Texas President William Powers to discuss the conference’s future after learning of Colorado’s departure.

Texas, the big target among Big 12 members, has said it won’t be idle during any shake-up, so a dissolution of the Big 12 seems imminent.

Judy Haggard, chairwoman of the Missouri governing board, suggested that Missouri’s fate remains unclear.

“It’s too soon to say,” she said before a closed meeting. “We’re going to be getting a lot of information these next two days.”

Despite repeated references to a carefully crafted statement pledging loyalty to the Big 12, Missouri seemed more than ready to join an expanded Big Ten should an offer have been made. Tiger fans are starting to worry.

Quinn Schortal, a 28-year old project engineer and 2005 Missouri graduate, said he would welcome a move to the Big Ten.

“The way this is being reported now I’m afraid they’re going to be left out in the cold,” he said. “They might have burned their bridges (with the Big 12).”

Wednesday, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver pledged support to Iowa and Iowa State. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said his staff is looking into possible non-profit and antitrust angles.

Thursday, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, an Iowa State graduate, addressed the topic during a weekly conference call with reporters.

“Well, while I am opposed to the kind of mischief that’s going on with the Big 10 and the Pacific conference,” Harkin said, “I just don’t know if this is a proper place for Congress to get involved unless there is something dealing with antitrust or something like that, like interstate commerce.”

“It’s interesting that those who are always going after the long arm of the federal government, that the federal government is too intrusive, the federal government is too big, now they are calling on the federal government to get involved in sports.”

“The citizens of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma and all of the Big 12 all ought to get together and say we have a good Big 12 Conference and we want to keep it that way,” he said. Where things stand

Colorado — Gone. Sure, every road trip will be a long one. But the Buffaloes are trading Waco, Columbia and Manhattan for Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle.

Nebraska — See ya. Cornhuskers have no aversion to cold-weather football in November.

Texas — Has the bidding closed to get this high-end property? Is there a last-second play call the Big Ten or SEC (or Big 12?) might make to keep the Longhorns from going to the Pac-10?

Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State — They’d be delighted to be in the Pacific-16 East, which would be the funniest division name of all time.

Baylor — Pleading with Texas for help worked when the Big 12 was formed. This time? Sorry, Bears.

Kansas — Is it possible for one of the three or four elite college basketball programs in the nation to end up in the Mountain West Conference? Oh, it’s possible.

Kansas State — Kansas does have some small mountains, so the transition to the Mountain West wouldn’t be completely awkward for K-State.

Missouri — It wants to dance with the Big Ten. But does the Big Ten want to dance with the Tigers?

For those on the outside I can see some suffering as traditional fall schedules will be gone, but at the end of the day it will still be great college football.

One of the things that make college football great are the pagentry, the rivalries, and the traditions. The rivalries and traditions are being tossed right under the bus in favor of a big payday.

One look at the “tough SEC’s” non conference schedules gives plenty of evidence that there are plenty of schools like Northwestern college of computer geeks and St Mary’s school for the nerds that they can schedule as long as the SEC doesn’t mind someone copying their model...

The SEC isn't alone in prefering easy out-of-coference schedules. But if that's all you want then why should Alabama or LSU want to be in the SEC to begin with? Imagine what their record over the last few years would be if all they did was schedule the Northwestern college of computer geeks and St Mary’s school for the nerds of the world?

Missouri was a mover in getting this started when they started flirting with the Big 10. A few weeks ago, former Baylor coach Grant Teaff did an interview and the big topic of discussion was whether Missouri would bolt the Big 12 for the Big 10. Mizzou is the weakest of the Big 12 schools, in terms of on the field performance across all sports. They thought they might be able to get into the Big 10 with the better football payoff from the television contract.

Once that happened, it turned into a small town high school dating scene. When one couple breaks up, everybody breaks up an changes partners.

In the Big 12, Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska are Marcia. Oklahoma State, Tech, and A&M are Jan. Everybody else is Ugly Betty, hoping to latch onto Marcia and get a come along invite. Now, it appears that the Big 10 was flirting with one of the ugly Betties (Mizzou) as a distraction to get one of the Marcias (Nebraska.)

This situation came about because of poor management in the Big 12. On the field, the Big 12 was the second best conference in the nation, following the SEC, and had teams with nationwide followings. Yet, their TV contract was anemic and the payout to teams was less than their earning potential.

Now, it's probably too late to keep it together.

The economic impact on the teams left out of the major conferences will be huge. Take Baylor, for example. McLennan county has about 230,000 residents, and is rural for miles in all directions outside of the metro area. Floyd Casey Stadium seats 50,000. Baylor makes it's athletic dollar by being the Washington Generals for visiting teams. Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, A&M, and Oklahoma State games seem like home games for the visiting team. Where Texas can sell out a hundred thousand seat stadium playing against Air, Baylor only draws 20,000 or so to games against no name teams.

As to television money, Baylor will never be on national television, except for maybe ESPN 2 on a Wednesday night in September.

Beyond this, even with all the talk about how football is too important, a lot of people don't realize that football is even more important than just the football revenue. Football funds all the Title IX sports for women that lose money. Every televised football game is a three hour commercial for the University. When Baylor won the old Southwest Conference in the seventies, applications to the University doubled the next year. When the football team wins, alumni contributions go up. Applications go up. For a smaller city like Waco, those 25,000 Nebraska fans that buy tickets, eat at restaurants, buy gas and maybe spend the night at a hotel bring a lot of money into the Waco area. When Baylor played Northwest Louisiana last year, there were maybe 500 people that came with the team. Without these visiting fans and the shared bowl money, Baylor takes a hit not just in athletics, but across their entire infrastructure.

This may be the wave of the future, and the beginning of a consolidation, not just in sports, but across universities. Costs of a college education have been rising faster than inflation since the sixties. If, as I suspect, the conferences shake out into four sixteen team super conferences and then everyone else, you may see some colleges dry up and blow away. This won't completely happen to Baylor, but they could be facing some rough, rough times. A few years ago they made a power play to get away from the Southern Baptist Convention. This created some hard feelings, and a lot of Baptist Churches have quit having fund raisers for the school. They just had an underreported but nasty battle with their alumni association. This cost them millions in contributions. They have recently completed an aggressive building program. We're in a big recession, and contributions to all colleges have dropped substantially. Now, the big athletic money may be going away.

I'm using Baylor as an example because I'm familiar with them, but this scenario is getting ready to be played out at a lot of other colleges. It could be good. It could be bad, probably a little bit of both. However, there's getting ready to be a huge shake out of the colleges, and things will not look the same in a couple of years.

One of the knocks against the UW for not getting back on the winning train was that they traditionally play one of the toughest schedules in the nation each year.

Of course all of this weak team scheduling started in 1984 when BYU was “crowned” Nat’l Champs when they were playing in the old WAC and beat a weak 7-5 Michigan team.

UW was 11-1 and beat both Michigan in Ann Arbor and an undefeated Oklahoma and Brain Bosworth in the Orange Bowl that year.

Other teams sat up and said what the heck we might have a good shot if we schedule like that and the rest is history. The swing of all this was because FSU coach Bobby Bowden voted his undefeated team number 1 in the coaches poll even though his team was serving a NCAA Probation ban that year.

The UW Coach Don “the Dawgfather” James stated something to the effect that give me a suitcase full of money and I would win a national champoinship too!

And don’t tell me that is what ended up happening to the UW after the 1991 season when the UW got hit with “lack of institutional control”. Yeah Billy Joe Hobert got a $50,000 loan but the other charges were for free fruit baskets and one was for Lincoln Kennedy (OT) giving his visiting recruit $20 to go watch a movie... Big difference compared to Reggie Bush, USC, et al...

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