Big 12 Reading Room: Good stuff from Joe Posnanski and others
Posted on Jun 10, 2010 by Mike Hlas.
Some are looking back, some are looking ahead. Here are a few linked essays from columnists around the country on the impending demise of the Big 12 Conference, with excerpts included here:
Joe Posnanski, SI.com:
But the conference has never felt like a conference. It has always felt like two conferences — North and South — and there was always a lot of resentment between the two. The North teams have long felt, not without reason, that the conference was being controlled by Texas. The South teams have long felt, not without reason, that the North teams were holding them back. Such are the politics of the Super Conference.
Of course, North-South tensions are just another by-product of the biggest factor. The biggest factor is money — and the simple truth is that even with all those Texas television sets, there’s simply more television money to be made per school in the Big Ten and PAC-10 and SEC. The latest numbers indicated that Big 12 schools made $8-to-$12 million this year in television money. The Big Ten will pay its schools closer to $20 million.
Tom Shatel, Omaha World-Herald:
The Big Ten can transform NU in ways that the Big 12 could never dream.
This is about money, sure, but it’s as much about academic money as football money. This would be a rare opportunity — a winning lottery ticket — for a school located in the flyover zone and long known as a football factory. Yes, we know about the academic All-Americans, and academicians will tell you that NU has a growing rep as a research player.
But the potential for research money in the Big Ten — millions — would put NU on a whole different level. A plain-looking campus dwarfed between a football stadium and downtown Lincoln could blossom, to say nothing of a research park where the old State Fair used to live. They might have to start growing ivy.
If he can gain entrance into the club with Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio State, Penn State — and perhaps Notre Dame — chancellor Harvey Perlman will be hailed as a hero by alums, professors and students.
(Nebraska Athletic Director Tom) Osborne already has his statue. But this move would be his greatest legacy, and that’s saying something.
Berry Tramel, The Oklahoman:
Forming this league is much more complicated than was the formation of the Big 12. Here are the heavyweight questions:
→Officiating. Does all the officiating for football and basketball flow through the Pac-10’s current Walnut Creek, Calif., office? And if so, can someone pass Bob Stoops the smelling salts?
Four years ago, Stoops was talking about never again taking the Sooners to a Pac-10 port, after the Oregon debacle (a disputed Oklahoma loss at Oregon in 2006). Now Norman will be a Pac-10 port.
Michael Rosenberg, SI.com:
Does anybody think this makes college sports better?
It makes the Big Ten and Pac-10 bigger and stronger. It makes most of the schools that are involved wealthier.
But better? Are we better off with Nebraska playing Iowa and Michigan instead of Iowa State and Oklahoma? Who wins when Texas, Arizona State and Stanford are all in the same league? How can it be good that Kansas, one of the top five basketball programs in history, is scrambling to find a league, any league?
Fault (or credit, if you prefer) is hard to assign here — so many entities are acting out of self-interest. Nebraska didn’t just decide to get up and bolt and Oklahoma and Texas aren’t trying to screw Kansas basketball. But I will say this: when this all ends, Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe might not have a conference to run, which is just as well, because he has shown no ability to run one.
Ray Ratto, CBSsports.com:
Nebraska’s sensibilities are pretty much those of the rest of the Big Ten. Oh, maybe those wacky kids at Northwestern are a little out of the mainstream, but not much. But if you can find the common thread that binds the 16 projected members of the new Pac-10 without mentioning the word “money” or any of its 300 or so synonyms, then you are 110 years old. Or a history major.
Or nuts.
Texas A&M and Cal? Let’s see, they are both attended by carbon-based life forms …
http://gazetteonline.com/blogs/the-h...ski-and-others
