Big 12 re-alignment: not going to happen

A topic of way too much discussion on the internet the past couple of weeks has been Big 12 realignment. With the South division again far and away better than its North counterpart, a lot of unpaid experts on national college football board message boards and even some paid experts on national sports web sites are suggesting it’s time upset the fruit basket in terms of Big 12 alignment. Move the current teams around arbitrarily or even change the membership altogether.

The fans who post on the message boards can be forgiven for being clueless on the subject. The national columnists, not so much. For both, here’s a reality tutorial on the how and why of the current conference alignment and membership and why the plans drawn up on the back of Hooters napkins every Saturday won’t happen.

The biggest mistake that football fans make in discussing Big 12 realignment is forgetting that the Big 12 is not just a football conference. There is a full line-up of 14 varsity sports and some of those include both a men’s and women’s flavor, pushing the total number to 20 or more. Even though football is the straw that stirs the drink, it’s not the only game in town. Decisions pertaining to conference membership and alignment can’t and won’t be made unilaterally on the basis of football alone. It’s just not going to happen. What might be good for football won’t become reality if it’s bad for most or all of the other sports.

And that’s even on the presumption that realignment would be good for Big 12 football when there’s no proof that it would be. The Big 12 Championship game is a cash cow regardless of how lopsided the match-up might seem. And in case you haven’t noticed, big time college football is a cash business.

One national columnist suggested east and west divisions for the Big 12, indicating that he had never actually viewed a map of the central portion of the United States. Something that can’t be ignored is the natural geography of the North and South divisions as they are laid out now. Think about the travel involved in college sports and the expense that goes along with it. Not only in money but also in time. Most sports operate in the red and some literally have no revenue.

Almost every dollar spent on soccer (for example) is a dollar taken away from football and men’s basketball, the two revenue sports that underwrite all the others. And every hour spent on a plane or on a bus is an hour not spent in study or in class. The Big 12 schools do still need to at least appear to care about academics.

And in reality, they do, which brings us to the non-athletic part of the discussion. Not only is football not the only sport affected, but there’s an entire non-sports element to consider. One of the favorite plays of message boards numbskulls is to “boot” this school or that school because they haven’t been as competitive in football as others. Coincidentally, or not, the two schools most often mentioned in this vein - Baylor and Iowa State - are also two of the academic standard bearers for the conference.

So fans of Jock State or Jock U. or Jock Tech think ISU or Baylor should be run, ignoring the fact that their favorite school isn’t even on the same academic tier as ISU and Baylor. Or ranks well below both on tier 1. All those big buildings on the other side of campus do serve a purpose, folks. If we’re going to start booting schools from the Big 12, let’s start with the glorified community colleges that pass for major universities. The Big 12 could do a whole lot better in the academic realm.

Divisions only exist in Big 12 football to create a mechanism for a conference championship game. You’ll note that there are no divisions in any other Big 12 sport. So the entire divisional concept is a gratuitous nod to making money and has nothing to do with competition. The conference could just as easily determine a football champion in a number of other ways. Divisions are certainly not a necessity from the sport side of things, only from the business side. If the divisional alignment were wiped away - which isn’t the worst idea in the world - the natural geography of the league would still have to be used for scheduling purposes. There would still be unbalanced schedules and there would still be whining and whimpering about it.

The South schools get to reap the benefit of existing on some of the most fertile football talent grounds in the country. That same reality means y’all are located real close to each other and y’all have to play each other more than you play the North schools. In football and in every other sport. You can’t have one without the other. It makes no sense for Missouri and Kansas State to not play every year while Missouri and Texas A&M do play every year (one example of the profound ridiculousness of east/west divisions). You’re the south and we’re the north. We’ve got a lot of snow, you’ve got a lot of insects. It’s who you are and it’s who we are. Buck up and deal with it.

The Big 12 is not the result of a merger between the old Big 8 and Southwest conferences. It’s a result of the Big 8 expanding to take in four soon-to-be orphans from the old SWC, a conference ripped apart by prolific cheating and the mistrust and probations that went along with it. The SWC schools were powerless to stop cheating and needed an intervention to be saved from themselves. Only because the Big 8 membership threw life preservers to four SWC schools is the Big 12 here today. Those four schools benefited far more from the deal that was struck than any of the old Big 8 schools have. You’re welcome.

Make no mistake: this conference is the Big 8, it is the Big 7, it is the Big 6. And the six charters members of the conference - Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma - deserve the most respect and reverence of all. Followed by Oklahoma State and Colorado. Without them, the Big 12 isn’t. There will be no “booting” of schools from the Big 12. It’s a conference that was meant to be in its current form, a conference where the charter members are the heart and soul of the league and its newest members are indebted greatly to those that took them in when they had no place else to go.