Big 12 leadership should be blamed for letting tremendous product slip awayMatt Hayes
Thursday, Jun. 10, 2010 - 3:28 p.m. ET
Seven times in the 12-year BCS era, they've played for the national championship. Twice they've won it all.
Four Heisman Trophy winners, five Heisman runner-ups and 17 BCS bowl games for the Big 12 since college football moved to the BCS system following the 1998 regular season. And now this: from supernova bright to a black hole of nothingness.
The Big 12—if reports of any more members defecting is true—has died. And the Pac-10 has arrived.
"It's kind of exciting," Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said recently of the new Pac-10.
Actually, it's kind of unfathomable.
Still, to this very moment, the absurdity of it all is shocking. How in the world can one of the two strongest college football conferences in the nation absolutely and unequivocally capitulate in the face of adversity?
Want someone to blame for the Big 12's troubles? Look no further than commissioner Dan Beebe. How can the Pac-10, which before the emergence of USC this decade struggled to get games on television, suddenly be in the same ZIP code as the SEC and Big Ten?
Want someone to blame? Here's your man: Dan Beebe.
The Big 12 commissioner's rudderless leadership doomed the Big 12 from the moment the Big Ten announced last December that it was exploring expansion plans. Instead of being proactive and pursuing a mega-television deal and/or building a Big 12 Network , he sat back and watched the Pac-10—with a brand new commissioner and a conference reputation of USC and the nine dwarves—meticulously and quietly build a plan to take over the Big 12.
If that doesn't blow your mind, consider this: The Pac-10 will be no different than the Big 12. Only longer road trips.
New Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott says his league will start a Pac-10 Network, and the hope is that each school could eventually make at least $20 million a year. The Big 12 could've done the same thing.
The Pac-10 likely will still use revenue sharing, where teams that play on television more often get more money. The same revenue sharing plan the Big 12 currently uses—and the same plan that's the source of so much strife between the league schools.
So why in the world, you ask, would the Big 12 fold when there is no groundbreaking change in the works with the Pac-10? Scott's brilliant move of hiring Creative Artists Agency to advise the league on expansion vs. Beebe's trust in Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany that he wouldn't take teams from the Big 12 before speaking with Beebe. Of course, Beebe still is waiting for that call.
"I continue to work through the process that was agreed upon last week by our Board of Directors to address membership issues," Beebe said in a statement Thursday after Colorado left for the Pac-10. "And (we) are working tirelessly towards the long-term viability of the Big 12."
Look, everyone, there's Captain Beebe, arranging chairs on the Titanic. If Beebe were in control of BP, he'd be standing on the tar-stained white sand beaches in the state of Florida, emphatically declaring "what oil?"
"Hurry, everyone! Chew as much gum as you can so we can plug that hole!"
Meanwhile, back in reality, the Pac-10's sheer audacity in thinking big and acting big landed it—it's going to happen; it's only a matter of time—the most coveted university this side of Notre Dame: Texas. Not only that, Texas brings five of its friends from the Big 12, including national heavyweight Oklahoma.
And the best part? They're happy to be leaving.
Can you imagine Florida coach Urban Meyer saying it's "exciting" to be leaving the SEC for the ACC. Or Ohio State coach Jim Tressel saying he's "excited" about leaving the Big Ten for the Big East?
Because that's what this is, everyone. Somehow, someway, Beebe has taken a league with elite teams and facilities, a league with rising football powers and universities hell-bent on staying the course in the stadium/facilities arms race, and turned it into the Sun Belt Conference.
Boone Pickens built his own athletic Disney World in Stillwater, Okla., for the love of God. Kansas and Kansas State played in BCS bowl games. The Big 12 had three of the biggest names in the history of the game (Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska), and Beebe still found a way to blow it.
Shortly after CU announced it was the first school to leave tire marks on the back of the Big 12, Scott released a statement saying, "This is an historic moment for the conference, as the Pac-10 is poised for tremendous growth."
Meanwhile, Beebe is still chewing gum.
It's unfathomable.
