Mr. Tramel's article paints a rather rosy picture of the Big XII - and it would, since he's writing to an audience trapped in the conference, at least at the moment. But he's exaggerating some harms while glossing over some others, and those are, not surprisingly, better reflective of his conference than the Big Ten.
He speaks of knives in the back. Nice prose, but if we're talking about actual factual knives, the AAU bugaboo was the least of Nebraska's harms in the past decade and 1/2. By far the biggest dagger was wielded by Oklahoma, Mr. Tramel's beat school, when they chose (or failed to fight against) the choice of Texas as Oklahoma's rivalry game. Both fan bases, NU's and OU's bitterly regret the end of that rivalry. Maybe not the 30-and-under crowd, but certainly anyone who wasn't still crapping their diapers during Tom and Barry's epic battles in the 80s - The Scoring Explosion years and Sooner Magic.
It wasn't Nebraska's choice to end that series, just like it wasn't Nebraska's choice to create the Big XII - that was another stab-in-the-back job by a trio of Liberatores, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State, programs weary of beatdowns by the surging Cornhuskers. In the late 80s and early 90s, when Gene Budig, Jon Wefald and Martin Jischke began plotting the minimalisation of Nebraska, the most recent victory by any of these teams was by Iowa State in the 1970s; neither Kansas nor KSU had beaten Nebraska in two decades. But while these men played the roles of Cimber and Brutus and Longinus, Oklahoma was Casca Longus, stabbing not in the back but in the face, very publicly marring the face of a former friend.
The AAU? An embarrassment, to be sure. But by the the time Nebraska was evicted it had devolved from an elite group of academic institutions into a Boys Club of rank, a badge of "prestige" important to those in academia and few others. The actual, tangible benefits of AAU membership are debatable. They lobby for research funds and being "in" is typically considered better than being "out," but the fact of the matter is that AAU members account for about 58% of research grants and funds, which is a tidy sum until you consider that's split (and not split evenly) between the AAU's 60 member institutions.
Nebraska's continued membership in the Big XII would have done nothing to keep it from becoming the only institution ever ousted from the AAU - and before anyone goes on a Harvey Perlman rant, just save it - the research Nebraska focuses on (Ag-based) would never, and will never, be valued by the AAU. UNL's ouster was a foregone conclusion when the AAU became more and more obsessed with quantifying its membership in the mid-2000s. Agriculture research is not, and never will be, viewed equably on the academic scale, Harvey Perlman as Chancellor or no Harvey Perlman.
Mr. Tramel chooses to ignore, no doubt because it sounds better for the purposes of his article and his audience, the CIC, a far more exclusive "club" of Big Ten academic institutions (and Chicago U). Nebraska has access to more research, more research funds and is in a better overall academic place as a member of the CIC than it was as a member of the AAU - and it could never have joined the CIC without leaving the Big XII.
Mr. Tramel also chooses to ignore, or omit from his story for reasons unknown, the fact that neither the University of Oklahoma nor Oklahoma State University are AAU members.
So much for that "loss."
Mr. Tramel also chooses to ignore, for his own reasons I'm sure, the fact that Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were already planning on leaving the Big XII by the time Nebraska solidified its membership in the Big Ten.
Nebraska officially accepted its invitation to the Big Ten on Friday, June 11th, 2010.
Pac-10 officials were in the air not 24 hours later with offers in hand, visiting both Texas and Oklahoma. Let's not forget that both Texas and Texas Tech had special Board of Regents meetings scheduled on Tuesday, June 15th - four days after Nebraska's move became official - to announce their departure from the Big XII.
It was Texas' perfidy that ultimately sabotaged those moves, but not before poisoning the well - so much so that both Missouri and Texas A&M both SECeded from the conference.
Bah. I could go on and on. Barry Tramel waxing nostalgic over Nebraska's departure may be genuine. He's a reporter, not a university official. But the fact that Oklahoma no longer visits Lincoln, nor Nebraska visits Norman, isn't anything other than a damned shame, and he doesn't have to look north for reasons and responsibility.
He can look just down I-35 at Norman. And he can keep wondering what might have been.
