[ArrowheadHawk]

Is Texas still fighting to save the big 12?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/sp...0colleges.html

Nebraska Said to Be Leaving; Officials Scramble to Save Big 12
By PETE THAMEL
Officials from Texas and Texas A&M will meet Thursday morning in Austin in a last-ditch effort to save the Big 12 Conference. The regents, presidents and athletic officials from the universities are scheduled to meet with the hope of figuring out how to keep the conference together now that the departures of Nebraska and Colorado appear imminent.

Two Big 12 athletic directors, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the topic publicly, said that Nebraska was expected to join the Big Ten Conference when its board of regents meets Friday. The agenda of that meeting was amended to include conference realignment.

Nebraska’s departure would leave the Big 12 in a fragile state. League powerhouses like Texas and Oklahoma have reiterated that they would prefer to stay together. But the loss of Nebraska to the Big Ten and perhaps Colorado to the Pacific-10 would leave the conference vulnerable.

In a telephone interview Wednesday evening, Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe said there was “nothing official” to report on Nebraska. He said there had been a lot of misinformation throughout the months of rumblings of conference realignment and said there was a will within the conference to remain together.

“I think there’s a strong, strong interest to ensure that the Big 12 exists, regardless of any kind of possible departures,” Beebe said.

He added that the conference would not rule out carrying on without a conference football title game; N.C.A.A. rules require 12 members for such a game.

“It would be one less obstacle to getting into the national championship,” Beebe said. “I think television value would still be there. I’m not talking about any specific school that would be departing. It would still be an extremely strong conference and player in the national landscape.”

The Big Ten declined to confirm if it had issued an invitation to Nebraska. The Big 12 issued the Cornhuskers a deadline of Friday to essentially declare their interest in staying in the conference. That deadline and the imminent threat of the Pac-10’s expanding to 16 teams has seemingly made the colleges involved hurry.

“Everyone is picking up the pace,” the Ohio State president, E. Gordon Gee, said in a telephone interview Wednesday evening. “We can’t sit there in uncertainty.”

He added, “There’s no sense to how this ultimately will be resolved.”

Nebraska had emerged as the linchpin of the future of the Big 12, and now it appears gone. Colorado’s potential move to the Pac-10 would not cause frantic meetings, because its value as a member in football is limited compared with that of Nebraska.

If Nebraska departs as expected on Friday, that would force the remaining teams in the Big 12 to decide their next steps. The Pac-10 is expected to invite Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Colorado and Texas Tech to its league. With those invitations yet to be issued, the remaining teams in the Big 12 are scrambling to see if they can salvage their league.

“I think people realize that there’s something still viable, whether it remains at 11 or 10 or we look to expand back to 12 to keep this going,” a third Big 12 athletic director said. “We have a lot of equity and prestige and competitive balance.”

Beebe said that he was doing everything he could to save the league.

“It’s certainly been the most challenging time of my career,” he said. “Whatever occurs, and hopefully it will be a good result, I will have wanted to have left it all on the field. There’s no stone left unturned or bullet in the chamber. I’m doing everything that I can.”

Maybe they can still get that TV deal if they add the right schools. Since this is Football Driven why not add a couple of Boise State, BYU, UTAH, TCU, Houston and see if you can still get that TV contract.