Funny Stuff New Conference re-alignment thread - Page 135

The old one has AIDS.

Anyways, Chip Brown from Orangebloods.com reports OU may apply to the Pac-12 by the end of the month.

Oklahoma will apply for membership to the Pac-12 before the end of the month, and Oklahoma State is expected to follow suit, a source close to OU's administration told Orangebloods.com.

Even though Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said Friday the Pac-12 was not interested in expansion at this time, OU's board of regents is fed up with the instability in the Big 12, the source said.

The OU board of regents will meet within two weeks to formalize plans to apply for membership to the Pac-12, the source said.

Messages left Sunday night with OU athletic director Joe Castiglione and Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder were not immediately returned.

If OU follows through with what appears to be a unanimous sentiment on the seven-member Oklahoma board of regents to leave the Big 12, realignment in college athletics could be heating back up. OU's application would be matched by an application from Oklahoma State, the source said, even though OSU president Burns Hargis and mega-booster Boone Pickens both voiced their support for the Big 12 last Thursday.

There is differing sentiment about if the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors are ready to expand again after bringing in Colorado and Utah last year and landing $3 billion TV contracts from Fox and ESPN. Colorado president Bruce Benson told reporters last week CU would be opposed to any expansion that might bring about east and west divisions in the Pac-12.

Currently, there are north and south divisions in the Pac-12. If OU and OSU were to join, Larry Scott would have to get creative.

Scott's orginal plan last summer was to bring in Colorado, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and put them in an eastern division with Arizona and Arizona State. The old Pac-8 schools (USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State) were to be in the west division.

Colorado made the move in June 2010, but when Texas A&M was not on board to go west, the Big 12 came back together with the help of its television partners (ABC/ESPN and Fox).

If Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were accepted into the Pac-12, there would undoubtedly be a hope by Larry Scott that Texas would join the league. But Texas sources have indicated UT is determined to hang onto the Longhorn Network, which would not be permissible in the Pac-12 in its current form.

Texas sources continue to indicate to Orangebloods.com that if the Big 12 falls apart, the Longhorns would consider "all options."

Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe held an emergency conference call 10 days ago with league presidents excluding Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M and asked the other league presidents to "work on Texas" because Beebe didn't think the Pac-12 would take Oklahoma without Texas.

Now, it appears OU is willing to take its chances with the Pac-12 with or without Texas.

There seemed to be a temporary pause in any possible shifting of the college athletics' landscape when Baylor led a charge to tie up Texas A&M's move to the Southeastern Conference in legal red tape. BU refused to waive its right to sue the SEC over A&M's departure from the Big 12, and the SEC said it would not admit Texas A&M until it had been cleared of any potential lawsuits.

Baylor, Kansas and Iowa State have indicated they will not waive their right to sue the SEC.

It's unclear if an application by OU to the Pac-12 would draw the same threats of litigation against the Pac-12 from those Big 12 schools.

Stay tuned.
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Good read from Dave Matter... (no new info, just a good read)

Originally Posted by :
What's the latest on Missouri's conference situation? Glad you asked. It's crunch time for the Big 12. New interim Commissioner Chuck Neinas is coming out of the bullpen to try and save the Tigers from leaving. I'm told Neinas will be making pit stops to all the Big 12 campuses in the next few weeks and his first stop will be Columbia early next week. On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Neinas was asked about his sales pitch to Missouri. Here's what he said:

Originally Posted by :
"I had a very interesting conversation with Andy Coats, dean emeritus of the Oklahoma law school and lead attorney for Oklahoma and Georgia when those schools sued the NCAA in 1984 and won an anti-trust decision. He pointed out that if Oklahoma had gone to the Pac-12 that the school would play games on the West Coast but the big loser would have been the state of Oklahoma. He asked would the Pac-12 baseball tournament be played in Oklahoma City, would the Pac-12 basketball tournament be played in Oklahoma City. He said the citizens of Oklahoma would have lost out on a number of events. Missouri would lose the rivalry with Kansas. And where's the Big 12 basketball tournament? Kansas City. Where are Missouri's roots? The Missouri Valley Conference, that became the Big Six and the Big Eight. There's always a pretty girl who walks down the aisle and you'd like to take her to the prom but there's also that girl who is tried and true you know is going to be there."
In his analogy, the SEC is clearly the pretty girl and the Big 12 is the "tried and true" sure thing. Halloween is about a month away, so I'm going to put on my devil's (advocate) mask: Neinas might have miscast his two gals. Three members have parted ways in a span of 15 months. A week ago, the two powerbrokers in the Big 12 had their foot out the door and were headed west — until Larry Scott put out the "No vacancies" sign. Last Thursday, the Big 12 fired the commissioner who pushed for many of the reforms that are now being seen as last-ditch efforts to salvage the league. Then, on a conference call between Big 12 CEOs, they couldn't even agree on what they agreed on, after which one school president upstaged the league's chairman/appointed spokesman with a press conference 15 minutes before the press conference that was supposed to announce what came out of the conference call. I haven't covered the SEC, so I can't accurately describe its inner workings or political culture. But maybe "tried and true" isn't the best way to describe the Big 12 after all the backstabbing and scapegoating that's gone on the last few years/months/weeks/days.

Sad, isn't it? A few months ago I was at an antique mall with my wife trying my best to avoid decisions about which china cabinet would look best in the dining room and instead wandered into the book section. I found John D. McCallum's "Big Eight Football: The story, the stars, the stats of America's toughest conference." It was a near mint condition of the 1979 hardbound book, which reads like a love letter to the conference's glory days. It's a shame the last few years have barfed all over a time that once inspired these words, words that seem beyond nostalgic:

Originally Posted by :
"Forget all that stuff about Princeton and Rutgers and the first college game in 1869. In the land of the pickup truck and cream gravy for breakfast — down there in the old dirt-kicking Big Eight territory — the natives think they invented football. And they believe with a passion that their big ol' boys play tackle better than anywhere else in the world. Why, football out there is bigger than cowboy boots and the Stetson hat — it's bigger than country music — bigger even than the girls. … Tradition and rivalry are words that belong almost exclusively to the vernacular of college football. Old as the two words are, they are irreplaceable, for it is what they suggest that specifically separates the college game from that of the professionals. Sophisticates with their double drag-outs and their post-and-gos may not like it, but college football is Nebraska playing Missouri with the Big Eight championship hinging on the outcome. It is also a street brawl in downtown Dallas the night before Oklahoma plays Texas, and Colorado students stealing the Kansas mascot. … Out in the corn belt they grow them bigger, stronger, and tougher. In his Civil War memoirs, General William T. Sherman pointed out that though the Southerners usually beat the Easterners on the battlefield, it was the hard-bitten farm boys from what is today Big Eight territory who broke the back of the Confederacy. 'Our corn belt pioneers had not forgotten how to use their legs,' General Sherman said. 'They could really march.' "
Now, those were the days when Missouri and its conference roots were tried and true. Those words were written in 1979, but that era seems so ancient, they might as well have been chiseled on a cave thousands of years ago. Those were Nebraska's roots, too, but the Huskers now have their first Big Ten game Saturday at Wisconsin and 30,000 NU fans are expected to make the trip to Madison. That experience might not feel very tried for the Sea of Red, but I bet it feels true … especially with the Big 12's machinations well behind them.

http://ht.ly/6JXed
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