The winners in this mess

So now all the remains is who will the Pac 10 pick to be their 12th member now that they managed to corral the worst athletic department in Division 1 sports.  Expect Utah to receive their invitation sometime within the next 10 days to 2 weeks.  Then we can all sit back, take a long breath and wait for the next 18 months to 3 years until it starts up again.  And believe me, it's going to start again.  But while we're catching our breath or having a cigarette, let's take a look at who were the winners here.
Winners:

The University of Colorado.  They finally managed to get to the conference that they always belonged in when they joined the Pac 10.  They have the whole west coast mentality going plus great skiing.  You can include beautiful scenery, a student body more interested in smoking weed than attending football games and absolutely the least successful athletic department in the country.  Can you tell me the last league title they've won?  Can you tell me the last time they finished in the top 5 in anything?  I'm serious here.  I have no idea.  They were basically the way the Pac 10 extended a middle finger to Texas when they suggested they might be better off taking Baylor so the entire south of the Big XII could remain together.  Somehow the administration of Cal and Stanford couldn't see themselves with a Baptist university and it was a good time to show them.  But what the hell, Colorado gets what it wants.  Away from Texas and access to some really good northern California pot.
Texas.  Was there any doubt they were going to land on their feet?  At any time they could simply have called up the Big Ten, Pac 10 or SEC and been admitted without making a 2nd call.  However, other than the SEC they weren't going to be given permission to start their own network.  And that's what they really wanted from this.  Now they have a few years cushion to get the thing up and running before they begin looking for another soft place to land that will allow them to bring their own up and running network along.  They may well be powerful enough and the Pac 10 especially may be desperate enough at that point.

Chip Brown and Kevin Keitzman.  These are heady days for these 2 formerly unknown media pundits.  Keitz was the guy that actually threw the first chum in the water last month when he announced on his radio show that formal offers had been extended to Missouri, Nebraska, Rutgers and Notre Dame.  He parlayed this into appearances on numerous appearances on radio and television stations around the country and much of the media, including ESPN just took his story and ran with it.  Meanwhile, Brown, acting as Jimmy Olsen to Deloss Dodds Superman regurgitated information coming from the Texas athletic department and enjoyed his own 15 minutes of relative fame.  Whether they can retain their new found popularity once this dies down remains to be seen.
The Big East and Notre Dame.  A week ago it seemed really likely that we were going to see the implosion of the Big XII and likely the Big East as Missouri would be swept up with corn nation.  Grabbing Rutgers and Syracuse would have ended the Big East as a football conference and put their basketball status in jeopardy.  Now, things remain the same and the Irish can continue to remain independent in football while continuing an affiliation in basketball and minor sports with Pitt and the boys.

Iowa State, Kansas State and Baylor.  These were the 3 schools that stood to lose the most.  Make no mistake they were likely going to fall hard, unless the Big East had made a desperate attempt to take the 5 remaining Big XII teams had the Big Ten and Pac 10 plans worked out the way they intended for them to work.  Now they have some time to get their shit together and prepare for this thing when it starts up again.   That really applies to Mizzou and kansas as well, although I still think both of them would have landed somewhere.  In my opinion the new Big XII has a shelf life of 5 years at the most.  The most important guys on campus in Columbia are Gary Pinkel and Mike Anderson.  We better get behind those guys and their teams or it could get really ugly when things get started.
I intended to include the losers in this post, but it's drawn on too long already so we'll talk about them next week.  I've lots to do this weekend so just get out there, fire up your grill and spend some quality time with the people you love.