* As a fan of a school that’s currently in conference limbo, that being the University of Missouri, I think a lot of the worry about conference re-alignment is unnecessary.
First off, even though Mizzou offers very little to the Big “Ten” athletically, it has one of the very best J-Schools in the country, and they’d take Mizzou just for that. Not to mention the St. Louis and Kansas City TV markets. But even if you only want to consider sports, it’s not that MO is compelling by itself, it’s MO+KS that the Big Ten likes so much. It already has NE now, so logic and geography would dictate that it take in MO and KS, to put that storied rivalry in the same conference with OHST+MI. It would also make the MO+IL rivalry a permanent one. Because the Big 10 has already taken Nebraska, that means they’re certainly not loath to expanding their geography westward. Lawrence, Kansas and Columbia, Missouri are now solidly in Big 10 territory.
The Pac “Ten” is obviously going to take TX, and therefore, TXTech, OK and OKST will poodle right along. There is talk that TXA&M would like the SEC better, but no other big TX school would ever schedule A&M again if they were in the SEC. Gov. Perry is an A&M alum, so he’s going to see to it that A&M goes to the Pac 10. Gubernatorial politics in Texas and major Texas school conference alignment seems to be co-dependant; The only reason Baylor was able to join TX, Tech and A&M to enter what was the Big 8 in 1994 was because Gov. Ann “Ma” Richards is a Baylor alum. A&M should be happy that Perry won that primary, because Kay Bailey Hutchinson is a TX alum, so she might not have cared.
I predict that, along with MO+KS, the Big 10 will also take Notre Dame and then either MD, Rutgers or Pitt, Pitt the least likely b/c Rutgers brings in the N NJ TV market and MD is a D.C. school. This would make a Big “Ten” that comprises of schools east of the IL-IN state line in one division and west of there in the other division, eight in each. The Pac “Ten” would be coast schools in one divison and inland schools in the other division, again eight apiece. The SEC and Big East will probably cannibalize the ACC to get to 16 teams in each conference, or maybe the SEC and ACC cannibalize the Big East. Either way, it just might make the talk about a playoff in college football a moot discussion, because the four winners of the four superconferences could start a playoff independent of the BCS/NCAA.
The Big 12 was destined to fall apart for much the same reason that the Hitler-Stalin pact did. It was delusional to throw three big schools from a big state into a conference that was comprised of significant but not too big state schools from relatively small Midwestern states and not expect the Texas schools to dominate. It totally wrecked the NE-OK football rivalry, because they were in different divisions, and therefore didn’t necessarily play each other every year. Now they’re going to be in different conferences.
Iowa State and Kansas State, I don’t know what will become of them.
UPDATE: A Tiger fan board is sending me a bit of a ‘lanche, so let me lay out some hard cold numbers for you: The number of college football national championships, BCS game appearances, men’s basketball championships and Final Fours Mizzou has won/appeared in my lifetime in is zero. That number for KS and NE is definitely higher than zero. And don’t talk about women’s field hockey, we’re only talking about money making sports here. And I’m saying this out of tough love. MO’s going into the Big Ten with Kansas, or we’re going to some obscure conference that doesn’t matter whose home office is in Pocatello, Idaho, and KS goes to the Big Ten. Simple as that.
* Amazing. Some of the same neo-cons and lamestream conservatives who hash their Tweets with #tcot, and who just love Meg Whitman so much, are now bitching that PayPal has revoked Atlas Shrugs’s PP account because it’s a “hate” site. They’re a little late to the party — PP has been doing this for quite some time. And when did PP start in with this shit? Right, just after Meg Whitman engineered the E-Bay purchase of PayPal.
Meg Whitman. Big time phony. I told ya so.
And a few headlines.
Daily Mail: That’s the spirit! UK vodka beats Russia and Poland to be voted best in the world
I bet British vodka is even better when it’s warm.
Daily Mail: Curse of the screen: PCs ‘dull children’s brains and should be banned until nine
De-brainwish your kid — Send them to public school.
Daily Mail: Try not to cart off people, binmen told by health and safety chiefs
Knock on the door and tell the people inside that discarded people should really be recycled.
UK Independent: Australian billionaires take to the streets for tax protest
Zimbabwe’s billionaires, meanwhile, don’t have anything worth taxing.
NSLF: Obama Issues Executive Order Mandating “Lifestyle Behavior Modification”
He’s going to require you to be gay, get a government job and join a public employee union.
