I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned football here – or any sport topic for that matter. But a little bit of Winn-trivia: I’m a big college football fan. I’m Texan, what can I say? All this chatter about the demise of the Big XII brings back nightmarish memories of when the Southwest Conference crumbled. And if you know nothing of this dark day, simply let me say – those were days when giants walked the land.
The most probable endgame scenarios I’ve read leave Baylor and their Golden Wave Marching Band out in the cold. The one kid completely left behind. It’s a sad tale for the little university that could. Baylor is in Waco, Texas, my hometown. I spent many a Saturday at Floyd Casey Stadium hoping against hope for the Bears. I spent many a Saturday dejected and disappointed. Many.
Baylor is a Baptist university. It’s relatively small. It has a cuddly Bear for a mascot. The administration didn’t allow students to dance there until 1996. They’ve always had a couple strikes against them.
A few articles and favorite lines:
On whether Baylor’s Baptist affiliation will hurt them finding a new conference:
“The last time we checked, the Baptists still scored six points when the ball crossed the goal line,” said Lori Fogelman, a spokeswoman for Baylor.
//Yes, six points are the same. Only, no touchdown jigs that shake anything below the waist.//
“Pac-10 always has been allergic to Brigham Young, another church-based school,” one sports writer said. “A Baptist friend of mine says Baylor actually is quite liberal in Baptist eyes, but I don’t think that’s a concept Berkeley recognizes, liberal Baptist.”
//Yeah, probably not.//
And then a piece from Joe Posnanski on how the football conferences are built for ratings and dollars, end of story. Greed, says Posanski, birthed the Big XII and will end up killing it.
The conference was built for television sets. And Texas had the most television sets.
//All fine and good – so long as we all are clear that Texas has the most.//
The craziest thing is that a team like Kansas, with one of the best basketball traditions in the country, is going to get left out. Makes me wish the ACC would invite Kansas to join, just to get big-time home-and-away basketball games with the best teams each year
Kansas will find a landing spot. I listen to Chip Brown on the radio every day (he's the reporter who's been breaking most of these stories, including the original "Pac-10 will invite six Big XII South schools" and Thursday's "A&M wants to think about the SEC" bomb shell), and he has stated that the ACC may be showing some interest, especially since they may lose one or more Florida schools to the SEC.
I have a feeling Baylor will find a much tougher road to a new conference. I can only think of The Mountain West as a good fit, but they just added Boise State. My opinion, Baylor should aim for a basketball conference since they are clearly more of a basketball school now.
Mountain West is certainly the easiest / obvious choice. But if things got really crazy and the ACC needed to land a couple teams, I could actually imagine Baylor finding a home there – and I think that would be interesting (obviously depending on how how much the Big East would break apart). It depends on whether or not the ACC would like to reach its market into Texas / West (which, under one potential scenario would make a lot of sense) and if they see Baylor's basketball trajectory as strong as I hope it in fact is.