| KcMizzou |
06-13-2010 10:34 PM |
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Originally Posted by billay
(Post 6819331)
Kc Star has an article about how its likely the Big XII stays together.
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Breaking up the Big 12 is a Powers play
BLAIR KERKHOFF COLLEGES
So we’re clear:
The Big 12 would dissolve despite the potential to make more money on its football contracts than the Pacific-10, leave behind its ultrasuccessful football championship game and basketball tournaments, open the fertile Texas recruiting grounds to another conference, have the Longhorns surrender their considerable influence and possibly their in-house television network and plunge as many as five schools into athletic oblivion because Texas president Bill Powers, a Cal graduate, would rather be associated with the academic powerhouses of the West Coast.
This according to some close to the situation.
OK, just wanted to know where it stood. One man’s academic ambition wrecks multiple schools’ athletics. Check.
But finally, some sense may have entered the dialogue.
A Big 12 source told The Star that commissioner Dan Beebe had made individual pleas with Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M over the weekend, the key players in keeping the conference together.
Beebe hit all of the above notes and undoubtedly played the travel-lunacy card as well.
We’ll know in the next day or two as regents meet at these schools whether Beebe’s efforts were enough. Clearly, the five schools that haven’t been part of the Pac-10 conversations sit on the edge of their seats.
The warp speed of potential change has warped everybody’s thinking in our part of the world. To the many who have sent e-mails, left messages and contacted me to say if Texas, Oklahoma and company leave their relocation, thrill will melt into regret in about five years, I say you’re wrong. Three years tops.
Still, it all may be too little, too late. Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott seems like a chap who doesn’t play to lose, though the developments at College Station are intriguing. Are the Aggies in the Pac-10 or SEC — or are they now the key to holding the Big 12 together? Sunday’s Twitter and unidentified-source wars were fun, though nobody from A&M was talking.
Sunday also brought some Internet airline tracking. Scott’s expansion tour comes courtesy of former Oregon athletic director Pat Kilkenny, the Eugene Register-Guard reported. According to flightaware.com, the plane was scheduled to fly to Kansas City on Sunday night. Unless Scott had a hankering for barbecue before returning home, he figured to be meeting folks at Kansas, speculated as a Pac-10 target.
But the plane stopped in Salt Lake City, home of Utah and another Pac-10 possibility, two days ago.
If the Big 12 doesn’t survive, the 2010-11 season figures to be full of awkward moments and angry gestures between Big 12 schools in what’s shaping up to be the conference’s final chapter.
We’re taking about in the courtroom.
The stuff on the field will be bizarre enough when schools in neighboring states, only hours away from each other, meet for perhaps the final time.
The real competition and drama, however, could be between the university attorneys arguing over the penalties of leaving the conference.
Big 12 bylaws require a two-year notice for leaving, and that school forfeits 50 percent of its revenue, derived mostly from television contracts, bowl games and the NCAA Tournament for those two years.
For instance, if a school receives $10 million from the conference in each of those two years, the $20 million total would be cut in half and the penalty money would be distributed to the remaining schools.
The penalty escalates if notice is given in fewer than two years, but Nebraska made it known Friday at its Big Ten party/Big 12 mortgage burn that it had no intention of paying one penalty dollar even though it will join the new league after next season.
Chancellor Harvey Perlman said it would be “inappropriate” for the Big 12 to enforce the penalty because of the conference’s impending doom. Beebe wasn’t going to let the Cornhuskers off the hook.
“That’s contrary to our bylaws to me,” he said.
On this matter, Beebe will have considerable support from Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and Baylor, the five schools that as of the moment aren’t being openly courted by another conference.
Say seven schools jump ship and penalties are enforced. The Big 12 will have handed out $139 million to its 12 schools this year. Under the league’s bylaws the lion’s share of that money will be withheld from the lease-breaking seven and awarded to the leftover five.
As much as $20 mil a pop. Nice seed money to start a new life, yes?
Ah, but there’s a snag. The Big 12 is incorporated in Delaware because of the state’s friendly corporate laws.
And where it takes nine votes to change any Big 12 bylaw, there’s nothing on the Big 12 books about dissolution. In Delaware, majority rules, and seven votes could dissolve a conference.
A lame-duck season could give us several interesting matchups like University of Nebraska vs. Big 12 Conference. Make the Big 12 a six-point favorite if the conference somehow stays together.
If that happens, they should take the Huskers’ share and throw a party.
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