K-State Q&A: Can Wildcats help Big 12, Pac-12 alliance talks by beating Stanford?
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
Conference realignment is once again the dominant topic this week. And that’s OK, because it’s a topic that brings in lots of great questions. Let’s get right to them. Thanks, as always, for your participation.
My first instinct is to say no here. If winning games and having passionate fans was all it took to switch power conferences then the SEC wouldn’t be interested in Texas right now and the Big Ten wouldn’t have wanted Rutgers a few years back.
If things were that easy, Iowa State would be on its way to the SEC right now.
A million different things drive realignment. Winning games, for whatever reason, seems to be near the bottom of the totem pole.
Still, it honestly couldn’t hurt Kansas State’s chances with the Pac-12 if the Wildcats bring a bunch of fans to AT&T Stadium and put on a good showing against Stanford.
Outside or Oregon, Washington and USC, there aren’t many Pac-12 teams that have passionate fan bases. College sports isn’t a priority on the West Coast like it is in the middle of the country. Heck, K-State had more fans in the stadium than Stanford did when it opened the 2016 season at Stanford. And that was when the Cardinal had Christian McCaffrey.
Reminding Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff that all of the remaining Big 12 schools have passionate fans and are capable of beating teams currently in his league could help to some small degree.
Here’s hoping Bob Bowlsby and Kliavkoff agree to a gentleman’s wager on the game. If K-State wins, the Big 12 and Pac-12 merge. If Stanford wins, the Big 12 has to retroactively forfeit Texas’ win over USC in the 2005 BCS championship.
E-MAIL QUESTION: - I know I am not alone when I am hoping that the Big 12 can survive somehow. And while I realize there are any number of realignment ideas, I would like to suggest one that might be a possibility: The Big 12 and the Pac-12 would form a contractual alliance, not a merger. In this scenario, the two leagues would negotiate together on a national TV contract and would have one network. It’s time to get creative. What do you think? - Allan S.
Well, I think it’s much more likely that the Big 12 and Pac-12 agree to form some sort of alliance than actually merge.
A 20-team super conference is too big, and I can’t imagine there being enough TV money involved for that league to split the pie into that many pieces.
But an alliance could work.
Or maybe the eight remaining Big 12 teams join the Pac-12 strictly as a football-only members and do everything else on their own. That seems a little more realistic than a full-blown merger.
Here’s the most likely symbiotic plan to me: The Big 12 and Pac-12 agree to a scheduling alliance and combine their media rights into a single package for TV networks and streaming services to bid on.
Every season, teams from both leagues would play two nonconference games against each other.
For example: In any given year K-State’s nonconference schedule would feature two games against Pac-12 teams, plus any other opponent it fancies. Maybe it would be Arizona State, Washington and Missouri State.
To make things even sexier for TV networks, the conferences could agree to schedule those cross-over games late in the process to create the best matchups possible, similar to the way they schedule conference challenges in college basketball.
That would provide the Big 12 with survival and more money. And it would provide the Pac-12 with exposure and more money.
Casual fans don’t stay up late to watch USC, but they might tune in to watch the Trojans play West Virginia at 2:30 p.m. Eastern or TCU at 6 p.m. Central.
To sweeten the pot, half of those cross-over games could be designated exclusively for streaming on subscription-based services like ESPN+ and Peacock. The Big 12 will be more willing than any conference in history to stream its games if there is good money involved.
Those games could be at a premium early in the season when there aren’t many Power 5 matchups on the schedule.
The Big 12 would likely choose to expand to 10 or 12 teams to make things even on both sides, but it could maybe work with just eight members.
For now, it’s just an idea. But there are some fun possibilities there.
E-MAIL QUESTION: I am skeptical that the Big 12 can survive without Oklahoma and Texas, but there are some attractive teams out there if Bob Bowlsby keeps the conference together via expansion. Let’s say that happens. Which teams would you add? - Jeff M.
If the Big 12 explores expansion, and actually votes to add new members this time, there are four teams I like more than the rest.
1. Houston: The Cougars are a good fit for the Big 12 in football and men’s basketball, plus they are located in the biggest city of Texas. I don’t care if Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech object, Houston is the top choice.
2. Cincinnati: Much like Houston, the Bearcats are good in the sports that matter and are in a good TV market. Ohio is also a nice state to recruit.
3. Central Florida: The Knights are great at football and would give the Big 12 a presence in Florida.
4. BYU: Few schools have a larger fan base than BYU, because of its Mormon connections.
I can definitively tell you that I’m not leaving for the SEC. My brand is big enough to stand alone as an independent, like Notre Dame.
From a reporter’s perspective, I view conference realignment like a coaching search ... on steroids ... that consumes fan bases all across the country at the same time.
Allow me to explain why with a few bullet points:
- Everyone has a personal wish list for how things will play out.
- Those wish lists are often more important, or least interesting, to the common fan than what is actually happening behind the scenes.
Spewing nonsense on social media gets you more followers than honest to goodness reporting.
- Rumors are viewed as facts.
- Very few of those rumors can can be totally disproved, even when sources deny them on the record.
- The only way to totally prove a rumor is for a team to legitimately switch conferences, like Oklahoma and Texas.
- We talk about it 24/7.
- A good chunk of fans end up angry, regardless of the result.
The next person who changes his or her Twitter avatar/handle and tries to make it look like a national writer is reporting something ridiculous on realignment should be fined.
This week started off with a bang on the realignment front with the political hearing on college sports in Texas and then Bob Bowlsby meeting with the Pac-12 commissioner. But insiders have told me it’s been very quiet since then.
There are always wheels turning behind the scenes, of course, but now is a time for Big 12 leaders to think and talk through potential options more than anything. Realignment takes time. No big dominoes are about to fall, despite what rumors suggest.
Gene Taylor thinks things will remain slow until Big 12 athletic directors have a face-to-face meeting later this month in the Dallas area.
But that won’t stop realignment from being a big topic of conversation for all of us until something is settled.
Realignment isn’t all bad, though.
It did give us this:
Believe it or not, the old Big 12 team I miss the most is Colorado.
Sure the Buffaloes never did anything all that amazing on the football field or the basketball court, but that trip to Boulder was always fun.
Ralphie is also the best live mascot in all of sports.
I wish the Buffs were still in the league.
But I miss the old rivalries you mention, too. K-State vs. Nebraska (when both football teams were good) was electric.
Anytime an old Big 12 North team beat Nebraska in football, it felt like Christmas. That was cool. So were the Nebraska tears that followed, such as Bo Pelini accusing Bill Snyder of running up the score on the Huskers or Kansas dropping 76 on them in football.
The hate involved in the Border War was off the charts.
I would gladly trade West Virginia for any of those teams.
The shame about realignment is that I can’t say it truly paid off (on the field) for any of the schools that left. Yes, it appears that Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas A&M made wise moves by switching leagues from a monetary and stability perspective I think their fans liked things better in the Big 12.
It’s a shame. The original Big 12 had the makings of a dominant league that could stand the test of time. But it now faces an uncertain future because schools like Oklahoma and Texas are more concerned with TV revenue than with tradition.
I’m happy to say I broke this story and will update you if anything comes from U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall calling for the attorney general to investigate ESPN for its role in Big 12/SEC realignment.
But I doubt it goes anywhere beyond Option D.
If ESPN was up to no good, as Bowlsby has suggested, then the Big 12 can take the TV network to court on its own and handle the situation that way.
There really is no need to get the government involved.
Also, the Big 12 (if it survives) will need ESPN involved to at least drive up the price for its next round of media rights. Even though Big 12 executives are angry enough to sign with a new TV partner, they don’t want to act as if ESPN doesn’t exist.
Me thinks that is part of the reason why Bowlsby has promised to keep things quiet with ESPN from here on out.
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 3:29 PM with the headline "K-State Q&A: Can Wildcats help Big 12, Pac-12 alliance talks by beating Stanford?."