Just when you thought college sports couldn’t get any nuttier, someone actually came to their senses.
It might be the biggest surprise of this whole ordeal.
Late last night, the Pac-12 announced it would remain a 12-team conference. No Texas and Oklahoma. No Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. For the second year in a row, a lot of hype and worry and noise — and no major shift in the landscape.
The shuffle isn’t over yet, of course, not completely. Texas A&M is still probably headed to the SEC, which will have to take a 14th team eventually. That might cause another domino here or there. The Big East is going to have to figure out how to rebuild its league.
But the notion that college football is headed toward four, 16-team “super conferences?” That’s over. Probably for a good, long time. Address your thank-you notes to the presidents of the Pac-12.
They really did a number on Larry Scott, didn’t they? The Pac-12 commissioner had been gallivanting around the country the last couple years, making everyone believe his league was going become the biggest, best conglomerate of television markets and college football powers in the country. Once the dust settled, what was once the sleepy Pac-10 would add Texas and Oklahoma – the biggest prizes available this side of Notre Dame – with some nice tagalongs in Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. The Big 12 would be finished, the new Pac-16 would bathe in riches and college sports would change forever.
Instead, Scott went through realignment twice – and all he got was Utah and Colorado.
Don’t mess with Texas? You better believe it.
Because it turns out that for all the complaining Oklahoma has done about Texas recently – from the ESPN-fueled Longhorn Network trying to show high school games to the unequal revenue distribution in the Big 12, to the belief that commissioner Dan Beebe is nothing more than a Longhorn puppet – last night finally pulled back the curtain on who’s really the heavy in that relationship.
Oklahoma didn’t have enough juice with the Pac-12 to get an invitation without Texas. And Scott didn’t have enough juice to convince his presidents to make the concessions that would have been required for Texas to accept. Oklahoma, it turns out, just wasn’t worth it. And neither was Texas – not to a group of college presidents who, maybe, just maybe, decided they didn’t want any more blood on their hands.
And there’s no doubt, it would’ve been bloody. The ACC, which added Syracuse and Pittsburgh last weekend basically as a defensive move to ward off a raid by another conference, would have probably taken UConn and Rutgers to effectively kill off the Big East. The SEC would’ve taken Missouri to further pillage the Big 12. Whatever schools were left over would have fought for the scraps.
It was unnecessary, and it didn’t really make any sense. The SEC was perfect as it was; it didn’t need to add Texas A&M in the first place. The ACC wasn’t a very good football conference before poaching Syracuse and Pittsburgh, and it’s still not a very good football conference after poaching them. The Big East, steeped in basketball tradition, might have been forced to split the football schools from the non-football schools like Georgetown and Villanova, which gave the conference its character and relevance for so many years.
This doesn’t mean things are perfect, or that realignment is finished. The Big East has been terribly weakened, and there’s no doubt UConn and others will be actively looking to leave now that Syracuse and Pittsburgh could reportedly be replaced by the likes of Navy and Air Force. The Big 12 will have to mend fences, set aside egos and solve the soap opera relationship between Texas and Oklahoma once and for all. The SEC may now wait awhile to figure out Team No. 14, which means some of this craziness could resume again next year.
But for now, anyway, this is a win for sanity. It’s a win for restraint. It’s a win for academic leaders in the Pac-12, overruling a commissioner whose hubris caused instability in college athletics for a second time in two years. Enough was enough. It’ll be awhile before they let Scott try something like this again.
And if that’s what it took to end the total chaos we’ve seen the past few weeks, then good for them. If Texas standing firm on its terms of engagement forced Oklahoma to come back to the Big 12 table to work out a compromise that lasts for the next 20 years, maybe all this angst was worth it. At least we now know where everybody stands.
It’s impossible, of course, to hit the reset button college sports. We can’t go back to the way things were a month ago or a year ago. But the damage isn’t irreparable. The Pac 12 came to its senses just in time.
It might be the biggest surprise of this whole ordeal.
Late last night, the Pac-12 announced it would remain a 12-team conference. No Texas and Oklahoma. No Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. For the second year in a row, a lot of hype and worry and noise — and no major shift in the landscape.
The shuffle isn’t over yet, of course, not completely. Texas A&M is still probably headed to the SEC, which will have to take a 14th team eventually. That might cause another domino here or there. The Big East is going to have to figure out how to rebuild its league.
But the notion that college football is headed toward four, 16-team “super conferences?” That’s over. Probably for a good, long time. Address your thank-you notes to the presidents of the Pac-12.
They really did a number on Larry Scott, didn’t they? The Pac-12 commissioner had been gallivanting around the country the last couple years, making everyone believe his league was going become the biggest, best conglomerate of television markets and college football powers in the country. Once the dust settled, what was once the sleepy Pac-10 would add Texas and Oklahoma – the biggest prizes available this side of Notre Dame – with some nice tagalongs in Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. The Big 12 would be finished, the new Pac-16 would bathe in riches and college sports would change forever.
Instead, Scott went through realignment twice – and all he got was Utah and Colorado.
Don’t mess with Texas? You better believe it.
Because it turns out that for all the complaining Oklahoma has done about Texas recently – from the ESPN-fueled Longhorn Network trying to show high school games to the unequal revenue distribution in the Big 12, to the belief that commissioner Dan Beebe is nothing more than a Longhorn puppet – last night finally pulled back the curtain on who’s really the heavy in that relationship.
Oklahoma didn’t have enough juice with the Pac-12 to get an invitation without Texas. And Scott didn’t have enough juice to convince his presidents to make the concessions that would have been required for Texas to accept. Oklahoma, it turns out, just wasn’t worth it. And neither was Texas – not to a group of college presidents who, maybe, just maybe, decided they didn’t want any more blood on their hands.
And there’s no doubt, it would’ve been bloody. The ACC, which added Syracuse and Pittsburgh last weekend basically as a defensive move to ward off a raid by another conference, would have probably taken UConn and Rutgers to effectively kill off the Big East. The SEC would’ve taken Missouri to further pillage the Big 12. Whatever schools were left over would have fought for the scraps.
It was unnecessary, and it didn’t really make any sense. The SEC was perfect as it was; it didn’t need to add Texas A&M in the first place. The ACC wasn’t a very good football conference before poaching Syracuse and Pittsburgh, and it’s still not a very good football conference after poaching them. The Big East, steeped in basketball tradition, might have been forced to split the football schools from the non-football schools like Georgetown and Villanova, which gave the conference its character and relevance for so many years.
This doesn’t mean things are perfect, or that realignment is finished. The Big East has been terribly weakened, and there’s no doubt UConn and others will be actively looking to leave now that Syracuse and Pittsburgh could reportedly be replaced by the likes of Navy and Air Force. The Big 12 will have to mend fences, set aside egos and solve the soap opera relationship between Texas and Oklahoma once and for all. The SEC may now wait awhile to figure out Team No. 14, which means some of this craziness could resume again next year.
But for now, anyway, this is a win for sanity. It’s a win for restraint. It’s a win for academic leaders in the Pac-12, overruling a commissioner whose hubris caused instability in college athletics for a second time in two years. Enough was enough. It’ll be awhile before they let Scott try something like this again.
And if that’s what it took to end the total chaos we’ve seen the past few weeks, then good for them. If Texas standing firm on its terms of engagement forced Oklahoma to come back to the Big 12 table to work out a compromise that lasts for the next 20 years, maybe all this angst was worth it. At least we now know where everybody stands.
It’s impossible, of course, to hit the reset button college sports. We can’t go back to the way things were a month ago or a year ago. But the damage isn’t irreparable. The Pac 12 came to its senses just in time.
