I was going to cut back on expansion talk, but what the heck, everyone else is.

I said a few weeks ago that I was tired of talking about expansion of the Big 10 and in a way I am.  But this seems to be taking on a life of its own and now everyone else is writing about it, so what the hell?   When this all started I really thought it was their hope that adding a 12th team would induce Notre Dame to finally say fuck it and join the Big 10 while they still have enough of a fan base to be of interest.  Today I have very little doubt that while they still want the fighting irish, they have set their sites on becoming the first "super-conference" and intend to add 5 teams, and cripple the Big East and the Big XII in the process.  And seriously, in business, and make no mistake, this is business, that's just how these things happen.

As it stands today, and that may change sometime this afternoon, the likely candidates for Big 10 expansion would be Pitt, Syracuse and Rutgers from the Big East and Missouri and Nebraska from the Big XII.  Of course all bets are off in they can attract Notre Dame and someone from that group would fall, likely Pitt in my opinion.  At that point what does the Pac 10 do?  Reports indicate and have for months that Colorado is on their radar but what about Texas and Texas A&M?  They'd certainly be a bigger prize than the Buffs and why not take all 3, add Utah and BYU and become their own super conference?   Then you've practically forced the SEC to respond and don't think OU and Okie Light wouldn't be on their radar, along with South Florida and possibly Florida State.  Then the ACC is forced to respond.

So what happens if all of this occurs?  You wind up with 4 mega conferences encompassing 64 teams.  Currently there are 65 schools in BCS conferences.  Wouldn't be much of a change would it, other than some teams enter, some teams leave?  I can see the Big XII rotting away at the roots, destroyed by Texas greed and inept leadership starting with the buffoon Dan Beebe that was placed as conference commissioner by, you guessed it, Texas.  If we see something like this happen, you can thank Mr Beebe for much of it.  Shit may float to the top but that doesn't mean you should put it in charge of anything.  Hope your week is going well.  I have a feeling that things are just beginning to heat up so we may have much to talk about in the next few months.   

Just when you thought it would be a dull summer

Well, as we approach the end of April I expected nothing less than a dull summer.  The Royals decided not to wait until May to go into the tank, spring football is over and frankly, I have no idea what's going on with Big 10 expansion although that might get interesting again in a few days.  About the biggest suspense for me was where my new seats would be for this season now that I qualified for an upgrade.

But we as Missouri fans can always count on one thing when times are tough.  The university of kansas will come along and provide us with some amusement.  This handsome gentleman on the right is David Freeman, a lawrence, kansas developer, and convicted felon that's prompted and FBI and IRS investigation into an alleged ticket scandal at everyone's favorite university and bastions of purity, the university of kansas.      
Now to be fair, the only reason this guy appears to have rolled over on beaker tech was the hope that it would result in some leniency for him in an unrelated bribery case.  (it did but not to the extent he and his attorney hoped)  So you'd need to take his accusations with a grain of salt; right?  Well, not so fast.  Apparently Mr Freeman has bragged for years about making substantial amounts of money of kansas basketball tickets.  And apparently the story has a few legs since terms such as theft, fraud, money laundering and tax evasion are being thrown around by no less than the Kansas City Star, which has generally refused to print any anti-ku news. 

Rodney Jones, who in 2004 was appointed to a $70,000 job as the head of fundraising arm of the Williams Fund, the main fundraising arm of ku athletics has resigned.  At the time of his resignation he was making $135,000.  He becomes the 2nd member of ku athletics funding to have resigned or been placed on administrative leave.  Of course, the beak spin is that there were a couple of bad apples that made their way into "sweet" Lew Perkins pristine administration that took advantage of the sensational demand for kansas basketball tickets to their own financial advantage.  Whether or not that is true remains to be seen.  But when push comes to shove, it's a hell of a lot of fun to sit back and watch isn't it?  I have a few Boulevard Wheats in the refrigerator.  Feel free to grab one and sit down for the show.
I'm heading out for a few days of R&R but assuming that they have wireless connections in Arkansas, I'll be keeping an eye on this.  Have a great week folks and let's talk again really soon.  Oh, and Lew, here's something for you from Amazon that might come in handy in the future.  IRS REGULATION: income tax preparers, enrolled agents and tax attorneys (EA Exam)

Bits and pieces

It's been a while and I apologize but I always said I was more of a college football guy.  Compound that as I've been bidding on a couple of outside projects and contemplating my own independent website and there just hasn't been a lot to talk about.  However, last weekend was the black and gold game and the 4th annual PowerMizzou tailgate so I'm feeling a bit recharged today.  Saturday was a beautiful day in Columbia and the tailgating was spectacular.  The football is usually (ok, always) secondary to getting back together with some good friends, trying out some new recipes and firing up the grill that's sat under the cover for the last 4 months.

The day before the game I had both smokers going and had 18 lbs of ham injected with honey and teriyaki sauce and a beer and pineapple marinade brisket that apparently was quite the hit.  My old tailgate buddy beach deep fried a couple of turkeys and we brought in wings and ribs from 2 of the local restaurants.  I'm going to guess we had around 150 in attendance, which made up about 1% of the 15,000 that reportedly attended the game.  One of the highlights for our group was Missouri basketball player Kim English stopping by to have a few photos taken with some of the kids.  I did hear one young man describe it as "like Christmas morning" after he'd had his photo snapped with Kim.  A fine representative for the university.

As for the game itself, well, I've never believed you could take anything from a spring football game when it's 1's against 2's, the quarterbacks can't be tackled and the play calling is vanilla.  But it was a nice diversion from the last 5 months of a fairly brutal winter here in the midwest.  And anyway, it may be just a scrimmage, but the Golden Girls were in mid season form.

Now something else that has raised its head this week is the Big 10 and expansion that may come a year earlier than previously announced.  Apparently the Tigers are now on a short list and many are thinking this could be something that happens within the next few weeks.  I really doubt that.  When this began, I thought that they'd prefer to drag it out and keep the conference in the headlines for as long as possible.  While I suppose they could have found some university or universities that have just blown their doors off, or maybe just worrying that the Pac 10 or another conference could leapfrog them, I kind of think this was just them throwing a little fuel on a fire that had started to go out.  I mean they can keep running it 24/7 on the Big 10 network but they have all of those fans anyway.  Why not throw out a few rumors and get everyone talking about it?  Hell, who knows.  Maybe I'm just jaded.

Finally we had the Mike Anderson to Oregon rumors floating around all weekend.  I've got pretty mixed emotions about this.  I believe it's his obligation to listen when he's offered a huge raise from someone else and I'm certainly glad he stayed.  I just hope this isn't something we're going to have to deal with on a yearly basis from now on.  If so, then he'd better have as good a year as this recruiting class indicates he might have or I can see the athletic department and fan base turning on him pretty quickly.
That's really all I have at this time, but don't be surprised if you see me opening up my own website before long.  I have some ideas that I'd like to try that just aren't possible with this platform and then I could overwhelm you with some cheesey advertisements just like this.Missouri Tigers 28"x40" Collegiate Banner Flag
Have a great week folks and I'll be back soon.