Sports : Out of Bounds - Greed Breaks Up What Had Been A Happy Family

Devotees of soap operas know this story well: The little town in the story has its share of drama over the years, but for the most part they are strong, everyone gets along and they all work together. But then one day, a new family moves into town. There is a strong, dictatorial patriarch, a close sibling who is also an archrival and a couple of annoying hangers-on that just make things difficult. When they first join the community, it’s fun, but you just KNOW that some how, some way, the new family will end up ruining everything in town.

About 15 years ago, the little town in this discussion was the Big 8 conference, and the new family was the Texans (the Longhorns, A&M, Tech and Baylor). I remember when the VIII became the XII that I had a bad feeling about it. Turned out I was right.

As I write this, the Big 12 is disintegrating before our eyes. Granted Colorado went first (to the Pac 10) and Nebraska was soon to follow (to the Big Ten), but neither of these moves would have happened had it not been for Texas. The Longhorns have been shopping themselves like bimbos looking for sugar daddies for the last year. And, of course, wither they goest, their lap dogs got with them. Right now it looks like the other three Texas schools are going to abandon Baylor on their way to the Pac-10, but will take Oklahoma and Oklahoma State with them.

The Big 8, one of the strongest and proudest conferences in American college sports history it dead; dead and buried. While Nebraska will be an excellent addition to the Big Ten, and the move of the Texas schools to the Pac 10 is just one more reason to dislike the Pac 10, what of the survivors? What of Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State? And not that I care that much, but what of Baylor? Like a basket of kittens left on the side of the road, the five survivors of this money-grubbing carnage are being left to fend for themselves. They hope some kind family (the Mountain West, for example) will pick them up off of the side of the road, but there is just as good a chance that they’ll wander off on their own; some will survive, some won’t.

And yes, I blame all of this on Texas, and on football. Texas forced the end of the old Southwest Conference because they wanted to play in a conference that included Nebraska and Oklahoma as opposed to one that included Rice and SMU. Basketball is secondary to all of this (which, as a wrestler, I find amusingly ironic). If it weren’t, Kansas – one of the most storied basketball programs ever – would be in the middle of this discussion. But they aren’t a football power, so bye-bye.

So now what? Like the cast of “Lost,” right now the Cyclones, Jayhawks, Wildcats and Tigers are wandering around the beach, picking through the debris, trying to figure out what to do next (The Bears are there too, but no one is really talking to them).

The trouble is – even with KU’s history in basketball and Iowa State’s great wrestling history – none of these schools are exactly prom queens in the social pecking order of college sports.

First and foremost, NONE of them are football powers. K-State had a pretty good decade under Bill Snyder and KU won the Orange Bowl a few years ago and Missouri hasn’t been bad lately, but let’s be honest; whoever has won the North Division of the Big 12 lately has lost the conference football championship game pretty consistently over the last few years.

The best hope for the survivors is probably the Mountain West, and frankly the Mountain West should jump all over that. BYU, Colorado State, TCU, New Mexico, Wyoming, UNLV, San Diego State, Utah and Air Force are currently in the conference. Boise State is joining next year and the addition of Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri would create a 14-team, two-division conference that would be competitive, beneficial to all parties and – most importantly – probably earn the conference BCS status. There would be four major cities involved (San Diego, Las Vegas Denver and Kansas City), which gives it some media outlets and it would have six of the 14 schools with recent experience in BCS bowl games.

In the end, this is all very sad.

Texas’s constant flirtation with other conferences was making everyone nervous.

Colorado and Nebraska, fearing the obvious, jumped ship. If the Longhorns had honored the commitment they made to Big 8 15 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now. But they didn’t, and now there are a lot of people hurt.

Congratulations Longhorns.