Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

On the football field, the Big 12 Conference is a combined 23-2. In fact, by one metric right now it’s the nation’s best conference. Iowa State is undefeated after three fourth-quarter comebacks and will face undefeated Texas in a game on FX that might be called by Gus Johnson. Iowa State got more votes in the AP poll than Ohio State or Notre Dame, and even got one from Mike Hlas.

And nobody is talking about it. The joyful air of football season has been sucked out of the room by one dreadful word, almost a euphemism really – “realignment”. Forces from within and without are picking at the Big 12 like a wounded buffalo on the Great Plains. (OK, enough with the tortured metaphors.)

In retrospect, we should have known the whole thing was doomed when it was based on something that historically has been very difficult: Getting Texans to show humility. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
— W.B. Yeats

Yeah, it’s like this, only a thousand times worse.

To all of you who stumbled here after reading my column in the Des Moines Register: Hi. Take a look around. Main site link is under the title picture.

Stuff is going to happen today. The board of regents for the state University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas board of regents both have “conference alignment” on their agendas. The Austin American-Statesman says a Pac-16 format is already being hammered out. See also this story from the Register about ISU and the Big East.

I’m a pessimist at heart, and with everything I’ve read about this situation, it’s hard not to be. Unless the University of Iowa has a change of heart and tells the Big Ten “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” Iowa State is at serious risk of being swallowed up by the shifting tectonic plates of the college sports world. As someone who bleeds cardinal and gold (see bottom), it’s hard to think positive after repeatedly reading stuff like this:

Unfortunately, a few others like Iowa State and Baylor will be looking for someone to take them into the fold and may find that the WAC, MWC, or Conference USA will be their only options. Continue reading →

Buzz: This is not the time to panic.
Woody: This is the perfect time to panic!
— Toy Story

Pete Thamel of the New York Times talked to a representative “from a state with a university potentially negatively impacted,” who said “I think the situation is rising to a level where getting Congress engaged may be unavoidable.”

There are only so many states that fit that category. Right up until yesterday, in fact, there were arguably only three: Iowa (Iowa State), Kansas (Kansas/Kansas State), and Texas (Baylor). Missouri could be added in there, but of the Forgotten Five Mizzou has the best chance of survival.

Pitt and Syracuse, as it happens, are the only two members of the Big East that are AAU schools. Only four AAU universities are left in the lurch, all in the Big 12: ISU, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas. (A&M also became an AAU member in 2001.)

And there are rumblings that the ACC could go after UConn and Rutgers next, making the Big East even more feeble. (There goes the idea of regular-season ISU-UConn men’s and women’s basketball, which wouldn’t have been a great consolation prize, but something.) Continue reading →

So to all of you out there dreaming up the next big conference shakeup … do yourself a favor and take a couple of deep breaths. The seas of change have calmed for the foreseeable future, which is probably for the best.
— Stewart Mandel, Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls (2007)

So much for that prognostication, Mr. Mandel.

The Big East commissioner found out about Pittsburgh and Syracuse’s defection to the ACC while in the press box for the Maryland-West Virginia game. (Pitt celebrated this development by blowing a 21-point lead against Iowa.) Somehow lost or immaterial in this so far is the conference bylaw requiring 27 months’ notice.

The NBC article linked above — read the whole thing, and hey, someone else went to the apocalypse metaphor! — also says this:

Should the Big 12 get whittled down to four members, which is certainly a very real possibility depending on how many dominoes fall, the Big East would be in prime position to pluck that conference’s carcass by adding some combination of Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and Baylor.  In fact, the latter two schools have already reportedly made overtures to that conference in case the Big 12′s demise is not exaggerated this time around. Continue reading →

Big East: “Are you frightened?”
Big 12: “Yes.”
Big East: “Not nearly frightened enough. I know what hunts you.”
— Brendan Loy, one of the few other people nerdy enough to mix “Lord of the Rings” and college sports

ESPN says – and now the AP does, too – that not only did the Big East’s Pitt and Syracuse reach out to the ACC, they straight-up applied – and more:

In addition, amid a “fluid landscape” in conference alignment, the ACC presidents have unanimously approved to increase the buyout for schools to leave the conference from $10 million-$13 million to $20 million, the source said, making it a highly unlikely scenario that any ACC teams defect from the conference.

From the ESPN article: “Baylor and Iowa State have already reached out to the Big East as a backup in case the Big 12 falls apart.” This is, I think, the first report that Iowa State has done anything in the past two months.

Pitt and Syracuse make 14 for the ACC. Who’s next? The cannibalization is on. If the remnants of the Big 12 joined the Big East, would that be enough?

(Radical, pie-in-the-sky pipe dream with absolutely no basis whatsoever: Notre Dame gives up, Jim Delaney gets his brass ring, and then he says “The Big Ten is, technically, a nonprofit.* We can take a charity case. Hi, Iowa State.**”)

*Stop laughing.
**OK, resume laughing.

Tick…tick…tick…

The University of Texas Board of Regents – each university has a separate board in that state – has hastily put up a “special called telephone meeting” (PDF) that, coincidentally or not, will happen approximately two hours after the Oklahoma Board of Regents meeting begins Monday afternoon:

U. T. Austin: Discussion and appropriate action regarding potential legal issues related to athletic conference membership and contracting – 3:15 p.m.

The American-Statesman reports the regents “might authorize UT President William Powers Jr. to take unspecified steps regarding conference affiliation.” Continue reading →

Continuing the WWI theme from an earlier post, because no one wants this to happen yet everyone is compelled to participate.

The people who cover college sports for a living, like this reporter from St. Louis, hate it:

Missouri and Arizona State were playing one of the best games in the country.  And nobody cared. … I hit my breaking point.

Yahoo’s Dr. Saturday says history is repeating itself, and it’s not good:

Texas A&M is about to follow Arkansas in the opposite direction, setting the stage for a replay of the drawing-and-quartering of the old SWC. Only this time, it will [be] Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State left for the vultures, just like their discarded predecessors in the Lone Star State.

CBS’s Dennis Dodd looks at who’s doing the real moving and shaking – members of the various university board(s) of regents. Plus this:

It’s no longer about geographic or (puh-leaze) academic fits. You’re either a market or a brand. Nebraska is a brand. Georgia Tech, rumored to be a hot property, brings along the Atlanta market to some enterprising raider.

Southern California, Texas and Michigan are both. Woe to Baylor, Kansas State and Iowa State, which are neither. Good to know some university’s future is being decided by a media consultant analyzing its Q rating.

And no pressure tonight, guys, but Dodd also says Paul Rhoads “may be single-handedly holding the program at the BCS level.”

A Pitt blogger sends a Big East love note to Missouri, Kansas, and Kansas State, but he’s apparently still upset about the 2000 Insight.com Bowl:

P.S. Don’t tell Iowa State. I know we said last year that they could come too but Ames sounds about as exciting as watching Depaul play basketball.

Another columnist kicks Iowa State out of the BCS, this one in Georgia.

In every boat all eyes were glued on the Titanic. Her tall masts, the four big funnels stood out sharp and black in the clear blue night. The bright promenade decks, the long rows of portholes all blazed with light. … It seemed impossible that anything could be wrong with this great ship; yet there they were out on the sea, and there she was, well down at the head. Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.
— Walter Lord, A Night to Remember

The Oklahoma Board of Regents has put out the agenda for Monday’s meeting (PDF; see second-to-last page).

The Board of Regents will discuss potential legal ramifications of athletic conference realignment options and/or consider new athletic conference membership and take any appropriate action. An executive session may be proposed pursuant to Section 307B.4 of the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act.

The Tulsa World reminds us this happened before:

A&M regents called a special meeting and authorized university president R. Bowen Loftin to act on realignment, basically authorizing him to process the Aggies’ transition from the Big 12 to the SEC. Two weeks later, Loftin announced A&M had withdrawn from the Big 12. Last week, SEC presidents voted to accept A&M as the league’s 13th member, contingent on the resolution of legal issues involving the other nine Big 12 schools.