Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

“If a man wants to divorce me and says our relationship has no value to him, and then he asks me if he can sleep with me, the answer is, ‘No.’ We’re not going to play them any more because they decided that playing us was not important to them.”
— Baylor women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey, Oct. 19, when asked about playing Texas A&M in the future

“KU-Missouri is a great rivalry. The University of Kansas is a great Midwestern school, loyal to our Midwestern conference and to our Midwestern roots. The KU-Missouri rivalry belongs in the Big 12 Conference. Should Missouri decide to leave the Big 12, we would wish them well.”
— Kansas AD Sheahon Zenger, Oct. 21

“Missouri forfeits a century-old rivalry. We win.”
— Kansas athletics department, Nov. 6

The 1,000th Iowa State football game was played October 28, 2000, against Missouri. ISU won 39-20. (The ticket above is from four years later, when a missed field goal cost ISU its chance at an outright Big 12 North title.)

The first Big 12 women’s basketball game tipped off at noon on January 4, 1997, in Ames. ISU defeated Missouri 61-50 in front of what was then the 10th-largest women’s crowd in Hilton history (2,134).

In each of Iowa State’s Big Three sports, the same four teams have challenged the Cyclones the most. And now one of them is out the door and one is going.

It’s hard to over-emphasize what’s disappearing here. If you tack on the 11 Texas A&M games to the records against Colorado, Missouri, and Nebraska, those four departing/departed Big 12 teams account for one-fourth of the football games Iowa State ever played through 2011. The Big 12 as it existed in 2009 accounts for about 55% of ISU’s games overall. (Another 10% belongs to Iowa colleges that are mostly D-III now.)

Ties binding five universities in four states in the heart of America, with more than a century of shared athletics history, have been torn apart by television and ego.

Ironically, if Missouri does leave next year as planned, the last team from Iowa to defeat Missouri in football will be…the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Ainsworth, Iowa — It’s official.

When I entered Missouri this weekend, it was a Big 12 state. Before I left the state, that future lay elsewhere.

There is still the minor technical detail that Missouri has never left the Big 12, and therefore shouldn’t be able to join another conference. But they’ve been dancing at the door long enough it may not really matter.

Missouri and A&M each play a men’s and women’s basketball game at Iowa State this season. I want Hilton Coliseum to be the northernmost place anyone has ever heard the “S-E-C” chant, and hopefully it will be as the Tigers are being chased out with their tails behind them.

Jason Kirk, SB Nation:

While nobody’s crying about the dead Mizzou-Iowa State series, that’s a whole lot of history to heave out the window in the name of money, prestige and a BCS system that’s not going to be the same anyway after just two more seasons.

*raises hand* Sigh.

I suppose the Telephone Trophy is doomed to end up collecting dust in a storage closet in Columbia.

Mason City, Iowa — The defending Class A state champions are out of the playoffs. For the second time in three years, the North Tama Redhawks’ season ended at the hands of the Mason City Newman Catholic Knights.

The results of North Tama’s first five drives: punt, fumble, interception, punt, interception. There was one first down in the first quarter. A drive at the end of the second quarter that ended in a touchdown was the only sustained action for the Redhawk offense. Newman, on the other hand, did not complete a pass in the entire game.

Defending champion Solon lost too.

Some statistics about NT’s second-round/round-of-16 playoff loss:

• First time in four years the season did not end in the UNI-Dome.
• First time the season has ended in October since 2007 (Wapsie Valley 47, NT 0), which was also a loss on Halloween.
• Eighth loss of any kind since the beginning of the 2006 season, playoff losses in italics (Riceville 2006, Postville 2006, Lisbon 2007, Wapsie 2007, Southern Cal 2008, Newman 2009, Postville 2011, Newman 2011). That’s two to Newman, two to Postville, and three to schools that aren’t playing Class A football anymore (Riceville to 8-man, Southern Cal merging, Wapsie up to 1A).

Congratulations to the Redhawks on their fine season.

The Big 12’s website put up a press release welcoming West Virginia around 10:50 AM Friday. Second article here.

But buried at the bottom were two sentences conspicuous in what they didn’t say:

Beginning with the 2012-13 season it is expected that the Big 12 Conference will be comprised of 10 Universities – Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas, Texas Tech and West Virginia. The Big 12’s footprint will encompass five states with over 36 million people.

Ten universities, not including Missouri. Five states, not including Missouri.

I really hope that the Big 12 comes to its senses and creates a football schedule that’s not the same set of weeks every year. (Or gives ISU Kansas for Homecoming. Please?) And moves back to 12 teams, but one hope at a time, I suppose.

But that scheduling depends on whether the Big East will actually let WV go:

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Cause and effect, chain of events
All of the chaos makes perfect sense
When you’re spinning ’round, things come undone
Welcome to Earth, third rock from the sun
— Joe Diffie, “Third Rock From the Sun”

When the Big 12 was being torn apart at the seams and universities in four states (two especially) were in deep trouble — TWICE — the affected states’ DC delegations stayed on the sidelines.

In the Big East, though, the calculations are different. Charleston (WV) Daily Mail:

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin is calling for a congressional investigation to see if political interference is to blame for West Virginia University’s now not-so-done deal to join the Big 12 Conference.

The state’s congressional representatives — including Manchin, D-W.Va., Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. — were all enraged by media reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., may have used his influence to at least temporarily block WVU’s move.

Why McConnell? Louisville, of course.

The obvious solution is to take both of them. Even if when Missouri leaves, 11 teams are perfectly doable, even if as a stopgap. I seem to remember a conference that lived with that arrangement for quite a while.

The problem is that about half a dozen things need to happen at the same time yet in a specific order. The Big 12 finally acts instead of reacts, and still manages to have the plan blow up in its face.

UPDATE: Headline kudos to the Kansas City Star’s “Now it’s political football in Big 12”.