Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

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.

Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are bound for the Pac-Integer. Probably. Unless they’re not. Texas is looking everywhere from the Big Ten to the ACC to independence. Unless they’re not. Florida State is setting up its own bunker. Missouri has plenty of options, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A Kansas writer thinks the Jayhawks can look east or west.

An SI columnist wonders if everyone in the Big 12 has lost their minds, with a backhand at those who haven’t: “Iowa State and the Kansas schools would act out of self-interest, too, if they were allowed to act. Instead they are desperately putting frosting on cupcakes for their annual athletic department bake sales.”

Five Rivals.com writers were unanimous in kicking out Iowa State from the BCS, even in “blow it up and start over” mode. Three were quite frank about TV markets being the reason. One of the other two said of the remnants of the Big 12, “Kansas State’s the only team that has appeared in a BCS game. So the Wildcats survive, while Baylor and Iowa State are the last two cuts.”

I missed what Athlon Sports did a week ago – setting up a playoff through superconferences – but it was the same story: “Baylor, Kansas State, Iowa State, Boise State and BYU will all find themselves on the outside looking in.” Which is an interesting thing to say, considering that Boise State and BYU were never in in the first place. A more recent story from there focuses on the what-if scenarios.

ESPN’s Andy Katz focuses on the business angle, especially how it relates to the contract everyone thought the Big 8+4-2 was happy with last summer:

Iowa State went ahead with projects after the Fox contract was completed and took out $40 million in bonds based on the deal. Iowa State has invested $5 million in a new video board, $20 million in a football building and an estimated $15 million in a sports complex for track, soccer and softball. The video board project began in July for this football season and the other two projects are under construction.

“The taxpayers of Iowa can’t pay if those bonds fall through,” a source said Wednesday. “These are real questions, real situations. I’m not sure how (Iowa State) could waive those (legal) rights (to sue the SEC).”

This whole thing is so bad that a Texas fan is starting to have second thoughts.

“Imagine for a moment being an Iowa State fan,” the American-Statesman article starts out. Then it goes into the obvious: Currently 2-0, two stadium sellouts, and “viewed simply as one of the weak links of the Big 12.” Read the whole thing; it sums up the situation pretty well.

The Oklahoman reports, well, not much of anything from the Texas-Oklahoma meeting Sunday, but the American-Statesman says that Oklahoma was already intent on heading for the Pac-Number TBA.

Cyclone Fanatic interviewed Kristi Dosh of BusinessofCollegeSports.com about the situation. The short version: TV money means everything, and TV markets mean everything. Big money big money no whammies…

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.”

Sigh. It was nice while it lasted. Back to scrambling for the lifeboats. Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

A statement by Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive, acknowledging plans to have a 13-team league that includes Texas A&M in the 2012-13 school year, marked that league’s first indication that it will not sit still and let the Aggies’ desired move be stalled by the legal threats of Baylor and other Big 12 schools.

Also, Oklahoma regents have scheduled a Sept. 19 meeting in Claremore, Okla. The agenda will not be finalized until Friday but multiple Big 12 sources said Monday that a likely item will be realignment. One regent told the Tulsa World that “sensitive” negotiations are expected.

The official statement from the SEC is here. Notice the sentence “When Texas A&M joins our conference, we don’t have immediate plans for a 14th member.” But Google knows all and sees all:

Texas tried to talk to Oklahoma in an apparently fruitless effort. And where Oklahoma goes, Oklahoma State goes.

Andy Staples says this has escalated from a game of chicken to a Mexican standoff, and it’s all in Oklahoma’s hands:

But Oklahoma and the Pac-12 won’t make a move unless Texas A&M and the SEC make a move. Texas A&M and the SEC won’t make a move unless Oklahoma and the Pac-12 make a move. Either act would tip the domino that destroys the Big 12 as we know it, and neither side wants to be considered the responsible party and open itself to lawsuits from Baylor, Iowa State and any other school that stands to lose its seat at the financial grown-ups table.

Staples, if you’ve been following along, has already kicked Iowa State out once. (Alternate link here; I was having trouble with that one.) The Omaha World-Herald kicked Iowa State out in its version, too. So did Oklahoma’s KOTV. And the Macon Telegraph (“Any takers? No, not really. Didn’t think so.”).

CBS Sports’ Ray Ratto was a little more colorful in his language:

All I know is that every moment spent debating Iowa State’s legal rights not to be abandoned to the apparent hell of Conference USA, or to watch Baylor desperately trying not to be forcibly ram-rodded into a reconstituted Southwest Conference, is a moment not dedicated to the greater PR disasters at Miami and Ohio State and etc. etc. etc.

The Oklahoman’s Jenni Carlson says Oklahoma City shouldn’t be hitting the panic button yet in regards to the city losing conference tournaments, but “they’ve hit it in Ames, Iowa, where Iowa State could be left without a home.” The Kansas City Star, though, if not pressing the button for what it will do to Kansas City’s college sports scene, is really, really leaning on it.

The Star’s Blair Kerkhoff says the fact that Iowa State could be left hanging “borders on insulting” (read the whole thing):

Iowa State finds itself in the line of realignment fire. If the Big 12 dissolves, the Cyclones could end up outside of a major conference, the chatter goes. … Somehow, a program that just defeated Iowa — and one that is averaging more fans at home this season than eight schools in the Pac-12, seven in the ACC, five in the Big Ten, plus Oklahoma State and Texas Tech — doesn’t cut muster in the major-college football world.

But it’s not the Iowa State that just defeated Iowa that’s the subject here. It’s the Iowa State that lost 15 straight to Iowa and is singlehandedly responsible for more than 10% of Nebraska’s all-time wins. It’s the Iowa State that, from 1963 to 1999, only had more than six wins three times and then went 55-68 in the 2000s.

Oh, and by the way, a previously scheduled Missouri Board of Curators meeting Monday had a “mystery item” on the agenda.

This liveblog from the Lawrence Journal-World goes through Monday’s events.