Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

“Missouri Board of Curators votes to explore leaving Big 12”. This is what Nebraska did before leaving. This is what A&M did before leaving. This is what Oklahoma, Texas, and Oklahoma State all did before the Pac-12 decided to stand pat.

Nebraska to the Big Ten happened in a week — really, less than 48 hours. The SEC presidents meet tomorrow.

An SEC with three Tigers and two Columbias. A Big Ten with 12 and a Big 12 with a number TBA. The end to the longest football rivalry west of the Mississippi and three others over 90 years. The destruction of Kansas City’s historical position in college athletics. This is quite possibly the near-future state of things.

UPDATE: Longer/updated version of first linked article here.

Texas was Texas again, and Iowa State…was Iowa State. There hasn’t been a dumpster fire like that in Ames since the 2004 Veishea riot.

For a little light in the tunnel, Holly Anderson at SI said the game was “the Longhorns’ first complete win over a quality opponent in 2011.” So there’s that, contra ESPN Big 12 blogger David Ubben, who says Texas is undefeated “without playing any serious competition in the season’s first month.”

Meanwhile, the Big 12 agreed in principle to revenue sharing of first- and second-tier rights, but only when everyone agrees to stay, and Missouri is still flirting with the SEC. The Tulsa World looked at revenue-sharing’s effects in other conferences.

A Grantland writer says the most miserable fanbase is … Oklahoma State? Seriously? You’re not even the most cursed or ignored fanbase in your conference. An additional deduction for using the word(?) “squink” in an article about college football.

This first week of October is Missouri’s “bye week” in more ways than one: The Missouri football team is off today, and Tuesday the Board of Curators will decide if it’s time to begin saying “bye” to the Big 12. Until then, ISU waits, and plays Texas, which is why the Austin American-Statesman is talking about Steele Jantz.

In other football news, for the first time since 2007, North Tama lost a regular-season game. NT was using a new quarterback after a serious injury last week vs. Valley (the other one) way up in Fayette County.

Saturday, one of the losingest programs in college football history takes on one of the winningest. It’s a crude (and perhaps ungrammatical) way of putting it, but it’s an ugly truth. The numbers don’t lie.

And with Missouri’s conference future still up in the air, perhaps it’s time to pause and look back.

The NCAA FBS (Division I-A) 2011 record book is 128 pages long (PDF). The phrase “Iowa St” appears 68 times, including in the cumulative lists. A lot of those are directly attributed to Troy Davis in 1995 and 1996. On the other hand, a lot of those also involve the 1998 Texas game, with Ricky Williams setting yards and TD records and two ISU extra-point attempts returned by the defense.

To cut down on the length of this post, I’m going to limit this to the ISU team as a whole and also create a “More after the jump” link. (I will also be adding this to earlier posts retroactively.) Continue reading →

So, besides the fact that members of the Big 12 are supposed to be mending things up but instead are engaging in dueling press conferences, what do we know? Not much.

USA Today put everybody in the up-for-grabs conferences on a Monopoly board. Iowa State ended up on Baltic Avenue.

The Register had a look back at ISU’s conference history. From the MVIAA split until last year, Iowa State’s conference always grew. But now… “You look at the Big 12, you’re not going to want to hear this, but nobody wants to be the last guy in the club with Kansas State and Iowa State.” Continue reading →

So by the conventional doomsday clock, we were probably at 11:59, if not 11:59:15, and by my “Titanic clock” as I was using in my Night to Remember snippets we were at about 2:17:30 (right before/at the breakup). Either way, it was close, assuming nothing worse happens.

Unlike the Titanic, though, we’re throwing the captain overboard before the ship sinks (again)(ish). But that’s long after making the fans exhausted and concerned about the whole thing, as the Kansas City Star also reports.

Showing how fluid the situation has been, the Kansas Board of Regents moved its emergency meeting up from Thursday to Wednesday, and still was a little late. The board wants Kansas and Kansas State to stick together in the Big 12. Continue reading →

From the Atlantic, but possibly written before Tuesday night’s events:

Saving the Big 12 would help him in Iowa. Among the biggest losers of Big 12 disintegration would be Iowa State. The Cyclones haven’t been very good at football since the 1990s rushing heydays of Troy and Darren Davis.* They appeal to no major TV markets. If the Big 12 folds, Iowa State will probably end up in the Mountain West — a step down that will only lead to suffering and mockery at the hands of Iowa Hawkeyes fans.

If Perry tries to keep the Big 12 together, he will win the gratitude of every Iowa State fan on the planet. It’ll make for great stump material. Nobody will care about Social Security anymore. But as far as a political windfall goes, that’s about it.

Read the whole thing, although with the current state of things Perry might just have avoided the situation entirely.

*Actually, we weren’t very good at it then, either.

But it’s not really alive yet, either.

The Pac-12 is staying put, shutting down that escape hatch. Both the Longhorn Network and the academics of Oklahoma State and Texas Tech appear to have been issues. But the AP article also says “A person familiar with the schools’ discussions said Texas and Oklahoma officials are expected to meet in the next few days to negotiate an agreement to keep the universities in the league for at least the next five years.”

The Big 12 and Fox set up a 13-year deal last year. The ABC/ESPN contract expires in five. This could happen all over again in half a decade. (Assuming, that is, we get through this first.)

Oklahoma now says it’s committed to the Big 12.

Before the Pac-12’s announcement late Tuesday, the Mountain West reportedly reached out to Iowa State among others. Even if all other factors were equal, the nearest MW team to ISU is Wyoming, 579 miles away.

(A side travel note: Ames and Columbia are both closer to Morgantown WV than Austin or College Station.)

End result as of the noon hour Wednesday: We can breathe. Slightly.

By the way, if you parse the SEC’s statement Monday, there was nothing in there that didn’t say “…but we will be more than willing to look at Missouri if and when the Big 12 collapses.”
— Me, September 14

I hate it when I’m right.

The Southeastern Conference has an offer on the table for Missouri to join its league, and SEC officials are willing to wait for an answer from Missouri until the future of the Big 12 is decided.

UPDATE: The SEC denies this.

I was going to write something about Missouri, and it looks like my hand has been forced. But instead of just looking at the past 18 months or so, here’s a more inclusive timeline: (EDIT: Broke this up and added a “jumpline.”) Continue reading →