Seen and unseen, the great and unknown tumbled together in a writhing heap as the bow plunged deeper and the stern rose higher… . The muffled thuds and tinkle of breaking glass grew louder. A steady roar thundered across the water as everything movable broke loose.
— Walter Lord, A Night to Remember
The Oklahoma State University Board of Regents is meeting Wednesday. Can’t be good. (I was mistaken in thinking that OU and OSU had the same board.)
Here’s a reminder that the NCAA has no control over any of this. There is no commissioner of college football.
Post-Dispatch: Is Missouri-Oklahoma the beginning of the end? Missouri coach Gary Pinkel says it’s “naive” to think about saving the Big 12.
A Lawrence Journal-World sports reporter spells out doom:
The truth is, Kansas University is on the brink of ranking as one of the biggest losers in the conference realignment musical-chairs game it had nothing to do with setting in motion.
Dallas Morning News (via S.F. Chronicle): The Pac-16 will happen. Or it won’t.
Jennifer Floyd Engel uses, um, colorful language:
Give the ACC credit for winning the inevitable-since-realignment-began showdown with the Big East. This leaves the Big 12 losers to join with the Big East left-behinds to form the Big Ten-uous Conference, with Desperate and Scared to Death divisions. … All the Baylor lawyers in existence cannot stop this snowball rolling straight toward hell; an atrociously ill-conceived and not-properly-vetted blueprint for expansion started to become reality with Pitt and Syracuse and will not stop until every inch has been affected.
A basketball perspective gives ISU a couple of scraps:
Lest we forget, the Big East as it currently is (minus Syracuse and Pittsburgh, and let’s throw in UConn and Rutgers, too) is not a bad basketball league. It’s still pretty good, actually. Now throw in Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Baylor and Iowa State. That’s a viable hoops conference, kids.
But when it comes to the Big East, look at this from last year, where a poll discussed at the New Republic of all places points out how little the Northeast cares about college football.