| KcMizzou |
09-30-2011 06:26 PM |
Good read from Dave Matter... (no new info, just a good read)
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What's the latest on Missouri's conference situation? Glad you asked. It's crunch time for the Big 12. New interim Commissioner Chuck Neinas is coming out of the bullpen to try and save the Tigers from leaving. I'm told Neinas will be making pit stops to all the Big 12 campuses in the next few weeks and his first stop will be Columbia early next week. On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Neinas was asked about his sales pitch to Missouri. Here's what he said:
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"I had a very interesting conversation with Andy Coats, dean emeritus of the Oklahoma law school and lead attorney for Oklahoma and Georgia when those schools sued the NCAA in 1984 and won an anti-trust decision. He pointed out that if Oklahoma had gone to the Pac-12 that the school would play games on the West Coast but the big loser would have been the state of Oklahoma. He asked would the Pac-12 baseball tournament be played in Oklahoma City, would the Pac-12 basketball tournament be played in Oklahoma City. He said the citizens of Oklahoma would have lost out on a number of events. Missouri would lose the rivalry with Kansas. And where's the Big 12 basketball tournament? Kansas City. Where are Missouri's roots? The Missouri Valley Conference, that became the Big Six and the Big Eight. There's always a pretty girl who walks down the aisle and you'd like to take her to the prom but there's also that girl who is tried and true you know is going to be there."
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In his analogy, the SEC is clearly the pretty girl and the Big 12 is the "tried and true" sure thing. Halloween is about a month away, so I'm going to put on my devil's (advocate) mask: Neinas might have miscast his two gals. Three members have parted ways in a span of 15 months. A week ago, the two powerbrokers in the Big 12 had their foot out the door and were headed west — until Larry Scott put out the "No vacancies" sign. Last Thursday, the Big 12 fired the commissioner who pushed for many of the reforms that are now being seen as last-ditch efforts to salvage the league. Then, on a conference call between Big 12 CEOs, they couldn't even agree on what they agreed on, after which one school president upstaged the league's chairman/appointed spokesman with a press conference 15 minutes before the press conference that was supposed to announce what came out of the conference call. I haven't covered the SEC, so I can't accurately describe its inner workings or political culture. But maybe "tried and true" isn't the best way to describe the Big 12 after all the backstabbing and scapegoating that's gone on the last few years/months/weeks/days.
Sad, isn't it? A few months ago I was at an antique mall with my wife trying my best to avoid decisions about which china cabinet would look best in the dining room and instead wandered into the book section. I found John D. McCallum's "Big Eight Football: The story, the stars, the stats of America's toughest conference." It was a near mint condition of the 1979 hardbound book, which reads like a love letter to the conference's glory days. It's a shame the last few years have barfed all over a time that once inspired these words, words that seem beyond nostalgic:
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"Forget all that stuff about Princeton and Rutgers and the first college game in 1869. In the land of the pickup truck and cream gravy for breakfast — down there in the old dirt-kicking Big Eight territory — the natives think they invented football. And they believe with a passion that their big ol' boys play tackle better than anywhere else in the world. Why, football out there is bigger than cowboy boots and the Stetson hat — it's bigger than country music — bigger even than the girls. … Tradition and rivalry are words that belong almost exclusively to the vernacular of college football. Old as the two words are, they are irreplaceable, for it is what they suggest that specifically separates the college game from that of the professionals. Sophisticates with their double drag-outs and their post-and-gos may not like it, but college football is Nebraska playing Missouri with the Big Eight championship hinging on the outcome. It is also a street brawl in downtown Dallas the night before Oklahoma plays Texas, and Colorado students stealing the Kansas mascot. … Out in the corn belt they grow them bigger, stronger, and tougher. In his Civil War memoirs, General William T. Sherman pointed out that though the Southerners usually beat the Easterners on the battlefield, it was the hard-bitten farm boys from what is today Big Eight territory who broke the back of the Confederacy. 'Our corn belt pioneers had not forgotten how to use their legs,' General Sherman said. 'They could really march.' "
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Now, those were the days when Missouri and its conference roots were tried and true. Those words were written in 1979, but that era seems so ancient, they might as well have been chiseled on a cave thousands of years ago. Those were Nebraska's roots, too, but the Huskers now have their first Big Ten game Saturday at Wisconsin and 30,000 NU fans are expected to make the trip to Madison. That experience might not feel very tried for the Sea of Red, but I bet it feels true … especially with the Big 12's machinations well behind them.
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