Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

He’s upset about trying to stop the inevitable – and makes an SMU comparison in the process:

Instead of a giant leap toward further consolidation of power and money, major college football is getting there through with a series of agonizing half-steps and missteps.

Change isn’t coming too fast. The process of conference realignment is actually happening too slowly. The Big 12 is being whittled into extinction …

Baylor and the other ugly ducklings in the Big 12 such as Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State are facing the possible downgrading of their athletic programs. What if there are no spots left in BCS automatic-qualifying conferences for them?

Just go ask SMU, which currently resides in Conference USA and has been practically begging for an invite to the Big 12, how important it is to live in the right neighborhood….

Nebraska and Oklahoma, once one of the great rivalries, has gone from dying to dead. The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry is heading down that road, too.

But at this point we’d all be better off if they just got there already — because this trip is excruciating.

Well, forgive us for not wanting to go gently into that good night. But really, Iowa State hasn’t done anything yet. In what may be the first public comment since Aug. 31, ISU hasn’t said it intends to sue, it just hasn’t waived its right to do so:

John McCarroll, an Iowa State spokesman, told the Des Moines Register on Wednesday that the school has not waived its rights to sue either the SEC or Texas A&M for the involvement in that university’s decision to leave the Big 12 Conference.

Buried in a column by SI’s George Schroeder about Baylor “tilting at windmills” is this:

Fifteen months ago, when it looked as though [Pac-10 Commissioner Larry] Scott was about to slice the Big 12 in half, I ran into an administrator from a Big 12 North school. He knew what was coming, and what it might mean. “We’re going to Conference USA,” he moaned. The Mountain West was more likely, but his point remained. I felt sorry for him. Even when it didn’t happen last summer, we all understood it would happen sometime, and that it would create a much wider chasm than already exists.

Let’s see. It’s definitely not Nebraska or Colorado and probably not Missouri. That leaves three likely suspects, and guess who’s still on the list.

Tulsa, 493 miles: Closest C-USA school to Iowa State, and only one of four 1-A football teams within 500 miles that’s not in the Big 10, Big 12, or named Notre Dame.

Today, we are also reminded that these sports teams have academic institutions attached to them:

Iowa State University enrolled a record number of students this fall. … A total of 29,887 students enrolled this fall, a 4.2 percent rise over last fall’s record of 28,682. …

[Admissions Director Marc] Harding said the university did what it has always done to enroll students at ISU — recruit aggressively, tout its academic programs and show off its social draws, such as student groups and Big 12 conference athletics.

And, while grasping at straws for positives, this column from a Wisconsin student about improving the Big Ten may be as good as it gets:

Step 3: Add Missouri and Iowa State

Adding these two schools makes sense. Before the Big Ten announced Nebraska was to become its 12th member, Missouri’s name was all over the rumor mill.

A natural fit because of the high level of their sports programs, academic prowess — ranked in the top 50 of public universities — and geographical location, Missouri is a promising school to add to the Big Ten. Iowa State is an odd pick I admit, but they will be one of the easiest pieces to grab once the Big 12 ceases to exist. Our conference already has one team in Iowa; why not bring in another?

Because Iowa State doesn’t give you any more TV footprint, that’s why they won’t. But thanks for the thought.

For Baylor, Ann Richards isn’t walking through that door, but Ken Starr is:

A threat of legal action by Baylor has, at least temporarily, held up Texas A&M’s move to the SEC. The SEC’s presidents voted unanimously Tuesday night to extend an invitation to Texas A&M to become the league’s 13th member, but that invitation is contingent upon all of Texas A&M’s Big 12 counterparts waiving their right to a legal challenge.

A source said Baylor had broken ranks with the remaining Big 12 members, which decided last week to waive their right to legally challenge a move by Texas A&M.

What changed? It’s a little hard to tell without exact time stamps, but:

• The Big 12 commissioners met Sept. 1 and told the SEC Sept. 2 (PDF) that neither the conference nor its member schools would pursue legal action. UPDATE: Or not? (Yet the letter’s text clearly states “the Big 12 and its members will not take any legal action,” emphasis added.) Also see followup posts.
• Late afternoon Sept. 2, before the Baylor-TCU game, Oklahoma’s president said that his university would decide its conference affiliation in the next three weeks. By Sept. 4, Oklahoma’s “sole focus” was on the Pac-12 – and Oklahoma State would be along for the ride. Maybe Texas and Texas Tech, too.
• Reportedly, Oklahoma was fine with a 10-team Big 12…until A&M made its move to disassociate with the conference Aug. 31.
• Oklahoma’s sudden eye-wandering created the impression that the Big 8+4-2-1 was certainly not going to expand, and the remaining glue was falling off.
• Kansas and Kansas State still have each other’s backs. Probably.

Which leads to this today from Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel:

Once A&M bolts the Big 12, the league is likely to fall completely apart. Scenarios and alliances change by the moment, but the four previous mentioned schools are likely to go west. Missouri is said to be on the SEC’s radar as a 14th member. If not, the Big East is reportedly interested in Mizzou, as well as Kansas and Kansas State.

Baylor and Iowa State may be left holding the (empty) bag.

Of course, Baylor had no problem ditching its old Southwest Conference partners back in the 1990s to join the newly formed Big 12. So don’t shed too many tears for the Bears.

Baylor is being ripped for getting lawyers and politicians involved. But Iowa State didn’t in the 1990s, and appears not to be doing so now. (Why not???) Right now, everyone at ISU and related governing structures are quiet. Very quiet. Too quiet.

As for the Big East situation it MIGHT still work out if the SEC goes after West Virginia as Team #14, reopening a space. (The other Big Integer, meanwhile, is sitting back and counting its money.)

I want to be wrong on this. I want to be horribly, completely, absurdly wrong. I will be the first to look back on these posts and breathe a sigh of relief and shake my head at the paranoia. But all I know is what I read in the (online) newspapers. Unless ISU and the Big Ten are running ships more leak-proof than the space shuttle, things look bleak.

It was 2:05 when Captain Smith entered the shack for the last time: “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Abandon your cabin. Now it’s every man for himself.”
— Walter Lord, A Night to Remember

Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

An official announcement of Texas A&M’s move to the Southeastern Conference is expected today [Wednesday] in College Station.

School officials spent Tuesday preparing for a news conference at Kyle Field to celebrate the move, pending a favorable vote from SEC presidents to extend an invitation. The SEC presidents met Tuesday night and approved an invitation to A&M, said sources with knowledge of the situation, but the SEC made no formal announcement.

The Columbia Missourian has put together a helpful Q&A with a map of the landscape (although the University of Iowa has been moved to Muscatine).

Kansas City Star:

One scenario has Missouri, Kansas and Kansas State joining the Big East, bringing the conference to 12 football schools, split into divisions with a championship game, and 20 basketball schools separated into scheduling pods.

But speculation also finds Missouri joining Texas A&M in the SEC, and if that happens, a Big East spot could open for Iowa State.

Wichita Eagle:

That’s especially the case for Kansas State, which finds itself being mentioned in the same breath with Iowa State and Baylor. If there are schools you don’t want your name associated with during this potentially-seismic shift in college sports, it’s Iowa State and Baylor. …

The same article, comparing the Big 12 to teenagers at a high school dance:

Iowa State is … Iowa State should probably just drop out and find a job somewhere.

Kansas is a little prettier than Kansas State, but not by much. Kansas might live in a slightly better neighborhood, but K-State has really spruced up its place over the years. They both want to be sure that when they’re asked to boogie, they’re ready. They don’t want to be pretentious, like Missouri. They don’t want to be too eager, like Baylor. They don’t want to be ignored, like Iowa State.

A visual representation of what’s likely going to happen in the next month or so:

We’re on the Island of Misfit Toys
Here we don’t want to stay…

The answer to the question asked in a blog post yesterday: Yes. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, and the words “Iowa State” don’t appear in here at all:

So when you hear Big East and wonder why schools such as Missouri, Kansas and Kansas State are being mentioned, think Midwest TV markets. Maps are just a piece of paper with lines. …

The Big East has studied the creation of four five-team divisions in basketball and two divisions — East and West — in football, The Post has learned. …

Football would split along geographical lines with Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Cincinnati, Louisville and TCU in the West Division, and UConn, Rutgers, Syracuse, Pitt, South Florida and West Virginia in the East.

Quite possibly, the only way this doesn’t happen is if the SEC goes after Missouri as its 14th team. But maybe not even then.

Houston Chronicle:

Those schools reportedly talked to the Big East last year when the Big 12 appeared on the verge of splitting up. Those three schools were then set to join with Iowa State. But with TCU joining the Big East next season, the conference reportedly now isn’t interested in either the Cyclones or Baylor.

The telling Mack Brown quote: “Our school will be OK regardless of what happens, and that’s not the case for everybody.”

San Jose Mercury News:

If massive realignment occurs with the Oklahoma schools, Texas and TTU joining the Pac-12 … and with A&M and Missouri headed to the SEC … then Kansas probably goes to the Big East, likely in tandem with Kansas State.

The Big 12 schools in the biggest trouble would be Baylor and Iowa State. “They might have to go backwards,” said a source — meaning Conference USA or the Mountain West.

Idaho Statesman:

The Mountain West could make an attempt to lure some or all of the remaining schools — programs like Baylor, Iowa State and Kansas State. Or those schools, perhaps with Missouri and Kansas, could attempt to rebuild the Big 12 by poaching teams from the Mountain West.

The Kansas City Star’s Blair Kerkhoff has a column about the potential effects on MU, KU, and K-State. Missouri and Kansas have a hatred that was born out of the buildup to the Civil War – will that dissolve?

The only thing that went even close to right for Iowa State the past three weeks is that we didn’t lose to UNI. Because — although this has been the case for approximately ever — Iowa fans despise playing us (Omaha World-Herald):

The Big Ten’s imminent move to nine conference games could endanger the series; several Iowa media types have told me that Iowa fans would like nothing better than to drop Iowa State from the schedule. If ISU doesn’t land in a BCS league, that could hasten that move.

That’s true no matter how many capital letters Bill Fennelly uses. (The impact of conferencepocalypse on ISU basketball, men’s or women’s, will not be pretty.)

If we’re on the Island of Unwanted Toys
We’ll miss all the fun with the girls and the boys…

A glance down the emergency stairway told Lightoller the water was now on C Deck … rising fast. But the lights were still bright … the music still ragtime … the beat still lively.

Only two more boats.
— Walter Lord, A Night To Remember

(Three of ISU’s bowl opponents in the 2000s have gone on to win BCS bowl games.)

This year, the Big East has eight football teams and 16 basketball teams. Next year, TCU will become the ninth/17th. That leaves, realistically, three spots, maybe five.

The New York Post:

According to multiple sources, the most likely scenario — should Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas and Texas Tech leave the Big 12 for the Pac-12 — would bring Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri to the Big East.

When the Big 12 nearly lost five members to the Pac-12 last year, the Big East had an agreement in principle with Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State. The Big East has since added TCU, making Iowa State expendable.

The nation’s first land-grant university, the birthplace of the electronic digital computer, a university that has close relationships and does serious research with both the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture, is about to be thrown on the scrap heap because its football team sucks.

The Houston Chronicle quotes a recruiting consultant making the obvious shot: “The good players want to play the best competition, and no one is arguing that the SEC isn’t the best conference. So from A&M, the talk track will be that you can stay in Texas, play as many home games as you’re playing now, and then when we go out of state, you’ll go to Auburn and Alabama and LSU and Tennessee instead of Iowa, Kansas State and Missouri.”

Funny, I didn’t think the Aggies played the Hawkeyes.

[Second Officer Charles] Lightoller had a more tangible yardstick – the steep narrow emergency staircase that ran from the Boat Deck all the way down to E Deck. The water was slowly crawling up the stairs, and from time to time Lightoller walked over to the entrance and checked the number of steps it had climbed. He could see very easily, for the lights still gleamed under the pale green water. His gauge showed time was flying.
— Walter Lord, A Night To Remember

I really hate to compare the Big 12 to the Titanic. I’m not the first. But from where it stands right now, early Monday morning, the boats are dwindling, and Iowa State is still in steerage.

The Orlando Sentinel (via Chicago Tribune):

Baylor, Iowa State and Kansas State, the remaining three members of what was the Big 12 Conference, would most likely end up in the Mountain West Conference, giving the league some much needed boost.

That’s trying to make the MWC look good, although it may not need the help. The MWC handed the Cyclones their first overtime loss in history (9/7/96, Wyoming 41, ISU 38). And it’s home to a New Mexico team that went 1-11 last year but gave up fewer points to Utah than ISU did (56-14 vs. 68-27).

Matt Tait of KUSports gets it:

That leaves K-State, Baylor and Iowa State. It’s likely that each is panicking big-time and, at this point, may very well be hoping for major conference expansion beyond 16-team conferences. If the leagues grow to 18 or, gasp!, 20, as some have suggested, that dramatically increases K-State, Iowa State and Baylor’s odds of remaining in a major conference and keeps them — for now — from having to face the music of what life might be like in the Mountain West.

But K-State has an out: Kansas, at least publicly, has its back. Again, Mike Hlas:

On its own, Kansas State might struggle to find a good conference fit. But if linked with Kansas and Missouri, K-State could work its way into the Big East. Baylor and Iowa State could have the most difficult situation staying relevant.

Baylor’s name keeps popping up, but its situation is different, both by circumstance of being in Texas and being a private school:

Baylor, a Baptist school of 14,000-students just keeps getting better and better. There are new facilities all over campus. The athletic complexes are state of the art, opulent and undeniably big-time in basketball and baseball and softball and track, where they’ve won and regularly compete for national titles. [For what it’s worth – and it’s not worth much – Baylor won the women’s basketball tournament in 2005.]

A Big 12 basketball blog goes straight for the jugular:

ISU just doesn’t have enough to warrant admission into a power conference. The[y] split the Iowa market with a B1G school and just don’t have a footprint outside of the state. I hate to dog a conference school like this, and Clone fans tend to hate my world view, but if the Hawkeyes don’t campaign for ISU (and they won’t) then who does? If nobody, what does ISU bring to a power conference that would make them extend an invitation?

But maybe, maybe, the Texas Legislature will swoop in…

Multiple league sources confirmed Sunday that Texas lawmakers, including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, are preparing to take a more active role in determining whether Texas A&M should head to the Southeastern Conference and whether Texas should join Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech as part of a four-school move to an expanded Pac-12….

If the Big 12 implodes, there has been speculation about the Big East seeking to bring in the five remaining Big 12 schools (Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and Iowa State) as part of an expanded football league in 2012. Another scenario could include the Big East going after only Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri.

…or not.

First, from the Oklahoman, it’s oh [double expletive deleted]:

OU’s sole focus now on joining Pac-12 (well, that headline just exudes optimism)

The Pac-12 preference is to add four schools – OU, Oklahoma State, Texas and Texas Tech.

OU president David Boren stepped out of a cloak of secrecy Friday and said the Sooners were being proactive in deciding their conference future, had interest from multiple conferences and expected to make a decision soon, from 72 hours to two weeks.

But it’s Bryan Burell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who’s gone ahead to “Bring out your dead”:

Tick, tick, tick. Two weeks to get your stuff together; two weeks to find three new conference members with some true gravitas who aren’t afraid to walk into a mine field; two weeks to solve the troubling fiscal imbalance that has already caused Nebraska, Colorado and Texas A&M to bolt over the past 15 months. Two weeks to do what Beebe has consistently been unable to do since this whole thing began unraveling like a cheap suit. Two weeks to live or die. My money is on death, quick, embarrassing and forever. …

Beyond all the very relevant academic credentials that [Missouri] can showcase, among the stragglers left behind — Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor and Iowa State — the Tigers have the most to offer any conference shopping for new members.

And I heard a Fox Sports radio guy slip and say “Pac-16” when talking about Saturday’s games.

The thunderclouds of doom that interrupted the Iowa game today (and Notre Dame, and Michigan) would have been more appropriate hanging over Ames.

When Texas governor and A&M alum Rick Perry was in Iowa recently, he didn’t do much to answer questions asked about A&M’s role in destabilizing the Big 12 Conference. But, as the Boston Globe points out, he may have to:

To fans of other Big 12 schools like Baylor, Texas Tech, and Iowa State, the fear now that the departure of Aggies will cause the Big 12 to implode — and that when the dust settles, their teams may wind up in a second-tier conference. …

Perhaps the most vulnerable member of the Big 12 if it breaks up is Iowa State. … Further, Iowa State’s fan base is concentrated in the more conservative western third of the state, where, incidentally, there are also a disproportionate number of GOP caucusgoers. …

In these vast stretches of rural Iowa, Iowa State sports, be it football, basketball, or wrestling, is the only show in town. But while Western Iowa may be devoted to Iowa State, it’s not exactly considered a promising market or exciting television for the rapacious athletic conferences that will feed off the remnants of the Big 12.

The Globe is a little off on its perceptions. I think at best, western Iowa is divided into thirds between the Huskers, Hawkeyes, and Cyclones, and the Omaha media market plays into that. And I don’t think there’s anywhere, even Ames, where Iowa State is the only show in town; you can’t drive too far on any Iowa road without seeing a Hawkeye flag flying.

Maybe Iowa State’s presence in a BCS conference should replace ethanol subsidies as the alleged litmus test for Republican candidates. But maybe instability will stay in the background as long as there aren’t any other…

University of Oklahoma president David Boren says multiple conferences have shown interest in the Sooners recently and he expects to decide whether to leave the Big 12 or not within the next three weeks.

Oh [expletive deleted].