With Texas and it’s band of followers staying right where they are, the Big 12 is alive and well, and college sports will no longer undergo a seismic shift

SCOTT JACOBS

On Monday Texas stayed put.

And on Tuesday the sports world will alas be quiet. The tectonic plates that seemed ready to shift college football’s current state into flux has stopped moving. College sports are still again.

In the end, Nebraska, Boise State, and Colorado moved. Not half of college football.

It was surprising news from a story that grew legs a few weeks ago and seemed ready to forever alter college sports. The Pac 10 and Larry Scott were prepared to change the game. They had Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma State all ready to jump aboard the superconference express freight. They appeared ready to leave their other conference rivals in a crumbling demeaning mess.

The apocalypse was coming. Tuesday was the day.

And then, like a hurricane forecast gone terribly awry, the storm ready to break up the 14 year old Big 12 turned around and headed back out to sea, to die a simple, irrelevant death.

College football was prepared for the worst. Instead they got a light breeze. A few trees down, but ultimately nothing that’s irreplaceable.

Finally after a tenuous and strange weekend of constant rumors and approaching inevitability, the storm clouds are gone. Bright sunny skies ahead.

The Big 12 or as they should be called now, Texas+9, is alive and kicking, an unbelievable turn of events for a conference that had already seemed to dig its grave. But Nebraska and Colorado bolting for new conferences didn’t turn out to be the deathblow that everyone projected it to be. Because what Texas wants, Texas gets. The Horns wanted to remain the cash cow of the conference, and their minions within the Big 12 conference once again happily obliged.

They’re dancing in Lawrence, KS where the Jayhawks once looked to be one of the odd teams out. They’re breathing a sigh of relief in Columbia, MO where the Tigers played their Big 10 hand wrong, but didn’t ultimately get burned. They’re relaxing in Waco, TX where Baylor’s people were ready to take the bolting bunch to the courts. In Ames, Iowa State can sit down once again. Same for the Wildcats of Kansas State.

All those programs were outsiders looking in, according to the PAC Plan that never ceased to be. And those schools are today’s biggest winners. Did we mention they get double the revenue they were making? Talk about win-freaking-win!

Texas didn’t stay out of pity. The Horns will once again be the Big 12’s puppeteer with the other 9 schools being its puppets. But with Texas in the fold, the conference is a gold mine of opportunity. And Texas can start it’s own network. Why people want an all UT Network is beyond me, but apparently it would bring in $3-5 million a year which is simply amazing. Oklahoma and Texas A&M (which had been flirting with the SEC) will stay put and cash in big-time. The Big 12’s revenue system will continue to be uneven, but even as the rich get richer, the little guys will still do pretty darn well.

And about those natural rivalries that over the weekend I cited were going to be really awkward after the Big 12 dissolved. Well, scratch that. Kansas and Missouri, you were made for each other.

Texas A&M had thought of jumping ship to the SEC, but no formal invitation was ever actually handed to them. Once Texas said no, the Aggies were more than happy to stay along too.

So in the end, the Cornhuskers were the biggest school to move, and they made the most geographical sense anyways. The Big 12 loses a football title game, but if they really want another one, I’m sure they can lasso in a pair of new schools. The Big 10 will probably stay put now, at 12.

If you’re scoring at home, basically the Big 10 made a trade with the Big 12 for Nebraska, so they could change names. But that would just make this mess more confusing. Addition by subtraction? Big 10 title game in 2011. No such event for the Big 12.

The Big East now looks to be on steady ground, which means that Notre Dame will most likely stay put too. With the Pac 10 stuck to 11 or 12, and the Big 10 at 12, the SEC has no reason to raid the ACC of its schools, which means that Conference USA is safe too.

In the end it wasn’t Nebraska or Colorado that held the cards. It was Texas.

On Monday the Horns got what they wanted, mainly well, whatever it was that they wanted.

And just like that, the storm is gone.

Photo: Reuters

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