The Big 12 column I’d rather not write: Options for league’s 8 remaining schools stink
Kansas and Missouri taught me what a rivalry feels like. Bill Snyder taught me that anything is possible. Billy Tubbs taught me how to curse.
This isn’t coming up as any sort of nostalgia-palooza, even though I’m at that age that if our kids complain about being bored I want to grab their shoulders and scream: YOU THINK YOU’RE BORED??? TRY AN ENTIRE AFTERNOON AT THE DEPARTMENT STORE WHILE YOUR MOM SHOPS AND YOU CAN’T WATCH AN IPAD BECAUSE THEY DON’T EXIST YET!!!
But, anyway. Apologies. OK. I bring all of this up because you should know that I fell in love with college sports through the Big 8 and I’ve spent most of my adult years trying to convince myself that I love the Big 12.
So it gives me no pleasure to tell you this: The Big 12 is screwed.
I hate writing that. I hate believing it even more, which is why I called Gene Taylor, a smart and reasonable man and the athletic director at Kansas State.
Here’s part of what he said:
“Our only conversations have been about staying together and the benefits of staying together. You have to be aware of what other leagues are doing and have conversations, but right now, it’s about sticking together.
That’s good to hear. This is the Big 12 playbook. At least right now. They will project strength and confidence and tell their story. And Taylor has a point — the remaining Big 12 schools are stronger individually and collectively than general perception.
But it’s also true that they are individually and collectively strong enough to form a credible Power 5 league only with a flagship, nationally interesting program or two at the top. You know, like, say, Texas and/or Oklahoma.
I hope Taylor is right. I want him to be right. I also know that his job is literally to be positive about K-State’s future. So I respect him and hear him and appreciate the perspective, but I also went looking for a second opinion.
“I’m usually optimistic, but I don’t see any way out of it,” said one of my most trusted sources in college sports.
“Football is king and none of them have a real broad appeal,” said another.
“Nobody’s leaving any Power 5 conference to join that group,” said a third.
I don’t want to tell you everything else these three men said because it would just make me sad. I don’t want to be sad. I want them to be wrong, and I’m clinging to the truth that college sports are moving so fast that nobody can claim certainty on anything right now and, well, this is where we sigh.
Because all of this stinks.
The Big 12 has time on its side. Texas and Oklahoma are locked in a grant of rights deal through the 2024-25 school year. Lawyers will buy beach homes with the billable hours spent on both sides of that contract. Maybe Texas and Oklahoma can get out early. Maybe they see it to the awkward end. But either way, the eight schools left in the Big 12 have four years of relative financial security remaining before they have to do it on their own.
Unsolicited advice to the presidents, chancellors, ADs and others trying to manage the best future possible: You need to explore three separate paths, exhaustively.
Option 1: Hold the line
The first option is to do everything possible to stay together.
This means constant communication, telling your story as loudly and as often as you can and generally projecting confidence. Like Taylor was doing at the top here.
The end game is to be as attractive as possible to land the best expansion candidates possible, on the best financial terms possible.
Option 2: Brace yourself
The second is to make a plan for what happens if one more school leaves, because you’re a fool if you don’t think that’s possible.
Formulate your messaging ahead of time. One more school jumping would leave the Big 12 without breath, so you better figure out your safest landing spot.
Option 3: Protect number one
The third is to see if you can be the one more school to leave.
It’s cold and it’s dishonest which, really, makes it totally on-brand for college sports. Work the back channels and prioritize confidentiality. You’d make seven mortal enemies, but squeezing into an existing Power 5 league is an objectively better future than even the Big 12’s best-case scenario.
The best collective future is solidarity, followed by expansion. Kick the tires on BYU, but that’s complicated. Houston, Cincinnati and UCF are the next-most attractive Group of Five schools. Invite them all, geography be damned, and if you need an even number, put schools like Colorado State and Memphis into some hunger games.
The Big 12’s future will not be as fun or as rich as its present, but if we’re honest this current reality always had an expiration date. The Big 12 was flawed from the beginning. This scramble was inevitable.
The good news is the remaining schools have some time.
The bad news is they don’t have as much time as they’d need to find an outcome that won’t stink out loud.