So we know this is a boring time of year unless you're a basketball fan, which I'm not. I'd written a couple of notes about possible expansion of the Big 10 and how it might affect the University of Missouri. However, just for fun, let's take a look at how this might go down and change the look of college athletics forever.
January 31st, 2011. With much fanfare the Big 10 holds a news conference to announce their selection as the 12th member of their conference. The rumors have been flying back and forth for months and the 2 schools being mentioned the most were Syracuse and the University of Missouri. In the end, the conference decided to stick to proximity and selected my Tigers as the 12th member of what is to become the Great Lakes Conference. Breaking into east and west divisions the Tigers will enter at the start of the 2013 season as a member of the Western Division along with Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Northwestern.
The Big XII conference, led by it's commissioner and village idiot, Dan Beebe apparently had no idea they would or actually could become a picking ground for other conferences. It was hard for Dan to understand how the Tigers would be willing to give up their storied 14 year traditional rivalry with Texas Tech to move for a mere 12 million dollars a year in additional revenue. What a dumb fuck.
On Missouri message boards; Tigerboard in particular, Nebraska and kansas fans flock telling the Mizzou faithful that they won't be missed and we'll just wind up being the red headed stepchild in our new conference. Tigerboard is indifferent as members rush to various boards inviting their new partners over for some trash talking. Several do stop by with some words of welcome, and the Northwestern fans brought wine. wtf?
In their haste to add another member, the conference immediately chooses to invite TCU as the new 12th member of the conference. Now the only real problem with this, other than the fact that TCU brings absolutely nothing to the table revenue wise, is that it now brings to 7 the number of teams in the southern half of the conference. The logical thing to do is to move Oklahoma State to the northern division which of course infuriates both they and Oklahoma as it puts their "Bedlam" game into a 2 years out of 4 proposition. Beebe manages to calm down Bob Stoops as the conference promises that his wife will receive an additional 1 million per year in Mary Kay sales. T Boone Pickens however remains unimpressed.
February 11th, 2014. Not to be outdone, the Pac 10 now looks to expand. Of course they could find a couple of teams within their region and go the same route as the Big 10, err, Great Lakes, but this is a conference based on the west coast and that really isn't good enough for them. So in the summer of 2014 it is announced that they will become the first Super-conference as they add BYU, Utah, Boise State and Colorado to the new and improved Pac 14. They also hint that they may not be done and rumors run rampant about possibly bringing in Texas and T A&M. Once again the Big XII has been raided but several prospective new members have already bolted for the new Pac 14. Message boards are flooded with speculation of the conference raiding the SEC to pick up Arkansas, who of course isn't interested in taking a 12-16 million dollar a year hit just to get back under UT's thumb. The conference winds up inviting Memphis who immediately accept.
April 3rd, 2016. The SEC, in an effort to maintain their elite status decides to one up the Pac 14 and announces a search has begun to add 4 new members. The search goes on for almost 2 years until the end of the 2017 season when they announce the first real raid on other BCS conferences. Texas and TAMU leave the Big XII to join the Western Division of the new SEC, while West Virginia and South Florida leave the Big East to join the Eastern Division. Now we have some real problems in what is left of the not so Big XII. The remaining Texas schools don't post the television numbers that UT and A&M did so the Texas market, particularly Dallas is greatly diminished. Oklahoma is unhappy and announces that they will consider any offer fitting their stature. Dan Beebe leaves as the conference commissioner but receives his golden parachute as the new Sports Information Director at Texas.
August 3rd, 2018. At a news conference attended by news celebrities from Oklahoma City, KC and Waco, it is announced that the Big XII conference will disband following the 2020 season. Efforts to form some sort of alliance with the ACC failed when North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams, at a tearful news conference in Chapel Hill announced that he'd be forced to resign if he were to have to coach against the university of kansas. In his words, "I just couldn't do it to the kids". Never mind that no one playing for kansas was alive when he was coaching there. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State attempted to broker a deal to the Pac 14 but it was cut short due to no one on the selection committee realizing there was a state called Oklahoma. They will form a loose affiliation with Nebraska, Iowa State, Kansas State and TCU for scheduling purposes. The remaining Texas teams join a new Mountain West conference and kansas bolts for conference USA and announces that football will now be relegated to club sport status. This allows them to cut 3 womens programs and devote more of their dwindling resources to mens basketball.
The remaining conferences continue to add and move members until by the fall of 2024 we're left with 5 mega conferences of 16-20 members each.
Do I think this will happen? Not especially, but I bet it's a hell of a lot more possible than it sounds.
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