It looks like the crippled, castrated Big 12 is going to try and limp along as an embarrassing, 9-member remnant of college football that seems to be shifting around its members without touching them. Even if they pick-up a leftover from a middling conference as a 10th member, its a pitiful shadow of what it was just one season ago. It's amazing to me that programs the stature of Oklahoma or even Texas aren't making overtures to conferences that have something more credible than Dan Beebe as their leader.
Update Saturday, 5:03 PM CDT: CBS Sports' Gregg Doyel reports that Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, and two other "unnamed" Big 12 schools inquired of the Big 10 about joining their conference. They were declined due to their academic standing.
This continues to reflect the ongoing scramble for conference realignment with virtually all major sources concurring that A&M will leave the Big 12 for the SEC, and the SEC apparently soliciting several other schools as well.
Update Saturday, 9:30 AM CDT: BIG NEWS: ESPN's Doug Gottlieb is now reporting from his own sources that A&M will, in fact, join the SEC. That's not necessarily new news; however, the other element he is reporting IS big news: Reportedly, three NEW teams are planning the SEC jump, and they are Clemson, Florida State, and Missouri. With A&M and now Missouri departing, the Big 12 is a dead duck. The only question now, where will Oklahoma, Texas, and the rest of the Castrated 12 go? All bets look like the Pac 12 will be the winner. More as it happens!
Update 11:03 CDT....One fairly significant event to note - A&M has apparently scheduled a regents' meeting for Monday to discuss "all matters....relating to conference alignment." Florida State still officially denies they are being courted.
I still think the NCAA is going to have a finger in this, and try its darndest to stop any potential expansion. The threat superconferences pose to the NCAA is very real, but exactly how they can prevent them without some sort of leverage is hard to contemplate.
Rather than continually update yesterday's post about A&M, it seemed ripe to start fresh and evaluate where we are in the whirlwind of new conference realignment talks.
What do we know now? For concrete facts, very little. We have strong indications that Texas A&M will formally announce its intent to join the SEC on or about August 22, although there have been "non-denial denials" all over the place. I think this aspect, with details pending, is going to happen.
The next question I asked here is simple: Given that the SEC wouldn't be taking just one team, they'd take at least two, and maybe four, who was the next school on the SEC's list? Current reports and rumors strongly indicate that other school is Florida State. Supposedly, one insider at the athletic department of one current SEC school claims the conference is "confident" they will announce A&M and FSU as new members within the next two weeks.
That same source also indicates that the SEC might be emboldened to jump to superconference status by ramping up to 16 teams, possibly seeking Oklahoma and possibly Clemson.
If the SEC plans a chess move to a superconference, one has to wonder if the same anonymous "interested parties" that
The NCAA wants no part of superconferences, for they fear the organization of an entity that jeopardizes their existence. It would not surprise me to find they were part of the "interested parties" that helped put the kibosh on the Big 12's split last year. If ESPN doesn't want to renegotiate its SEC deal and find its newly inked agreements with the BCS to be worth slightly less than the king's ransom they paid for it, it would seem logical they might use backdoor channels into the NCAA to solicit their assitance in stopping this iteration as well.
How? Stopping all the movement would presumably be simple - figure out a way to shut down the Longhorn Network, presumably the proverbial straw that broke A&M's back and led them to pursue the SEC. If the NCAA could apply pressure sufficient to force the Horns into shutting down their network before it started, A&M would have won the battle and the war. If the NCAA couldn't stop them, it would demonstrate just how serious a superconference threat would be to the NCAA's power and influence over college athletics.
How will it all shake out? At this point, who knows. COnventional wisdom holds that OU and Oklahoma State are tied at the hip, and would first want to head west to the Pac 12. OU wants no part of the SEC recruiting quagmire. Missouri has to be attractive to someone with its proximity to the St. Louis TV market, making a prospective Big 10 jump a very real possibility. Either way, it seems all-but impossible for what's left of the Big 12 to survive as a credible conference if A&M bolts.
Watch this space for updates as they come in!
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