Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

(Iowa State vs. Kansas State, 2011, and the world’s largest use of Comic Sans)

CBS’s Dennis Dodd:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Welcome to the Big Doughnut Hole.

This used to be the center of the college universe. At least one of them. This city still has hosted more Final Fours (10) than any other. It’s a Chiefs town first and a Jayhawks town second. Most of all, it’s a melting pot with a sizable amount of Iowa State, Nebraska, Missouri alums here as well. …

Conference realignment goes on unabated. Traditional rivalries are being cut down like rainforests. Our natural habitat is being destroyed. Is this a good thing for college athletics? No, that’s not really the point.

Kansas City used to be headquarters of the NCAA. It used to be headquarters of the Big Eight. It used to have a pro basketball team and a baseball team before the Royals that both migrated to California. With the University of Kansas a short hop away, it earned a reputation as the capital of college basketball. Missouri’s move to the SEC could be a devastating blow. Sam Mellinger, Kansas City Star:

This is financial. This is emotional. This is more self-esteem than a region should probably put in a flimsy affiliation of college sports teams, but this is also the way it is in Kansas City. This is real.

Without Missouri in the Big 12, there’s no reason for the Big 12 to be in the state of Missouri. All the basketball arenas are within two miles of the border, but Missouri none the less. Any attempt to use that as a bargaining chip in the new Big 12 — that is, keep the basketball tournaments permanently in KC with the potential future football championship game in Texas — is severely weakened. That hurts not just the Kansas City area, but the conference as a whole. No more “Hilton South” or “Phog Allen East.” The remainder of the Big 12 North would be even more out in the cold. Geographically, the loss of the state of Missouri makes Iowa an island in a four-state conference.

And through it all, Missouri still pines for the Big Ten.

Kansas City’s fall in prominence is similar to the emptying of the Great Plains as a whole. Maybe we have gone about as far as we can go.

(An explanation of the title, for the non-musically-inclined. The Sprint Center, obviously, is very up to date.)

The Huffington Post’s Hank Koebler thinks the lack of TV for the Missouri-Iowa State game is a reason for Missouri to jump to the SEC (that and, of course, the Longhorn Network):

For a conference with a future currently contingent on Missouri’s membership, the Big 12 hasn’t placed anywhere near as much of a priority on keeping Missouri as it did Texas last year.

Columbia Daily Tribune reporter Dave Matter reported Tuesday the University of Missouri’s Homecoming game against Iowa State will not be televised. The Big 12 offered to broadcast the game at either 11 a.m. or 6 p.m. on Fox College Sports, but Missouri declined in favor of starting at the traditional 1 p.m. start time, according to Matter. …

Interim Big 12 Commissioner Chuck Neinas has said the Big 12 wants to keep Missouri, but actions speak louder than words. If the Big 12 cannot even be bothered to televise the 100th anniversary of Missouri’s first Homecoming, the conference doesn’t want the Tigers’ membership badly enough for Missouri to justify staying despite the turmoil.

Unbelievable. Has Missouri not noticed that nobody televises 1 PM kickoffs anymore? The offer was Fox College Sports (higher tier), but it was television. Missouri said no. That is not the Big 12’s fault, unless you want to fault the conference for putting top-5 team Oklahoma on ESPN2 against Kansas. Missouri and Iowa State have PLAYED for more than 100 years, before television and radio were invented. Isn’t that a direct counterargument for staying in the Big 12?

The writer’s upset because the Big 12 didn’t want to show a team that just laid an egg against Texas. If the situation wasn’t so tragic it would be funny.

“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 →