With Colorado and Nebraska gone, Big 12 fighting to hold on to Texas

The Big 12 has seen the last of Texas quarterback Colt McCoy. Could the league also be saying so long to the Longhorns as well? (Icon SMI)

 By Ben Cook, Lindyssports.com

 

Now that Nebraska has accepted a move to the Big Ten and with Colorado’s move to the Pac-10, both becoming official in 2011, the big question is what will happen to the Big 12.

 

Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe’s conference is hanging by a thread, and that thread is Texas. It is not a good sign for the league when Texas announced a meeting of the regents on Tuesday to discuss the future. Texas is said to be eyeing a move to the Pac-10 while Texas A&M, a team that is said to be joined at the hip with Texas, seems to favor moving to the SEC, but for political reasons the two would appear to be seeking a solution that would keep them in the same conference.

 

The alternative could be to stay with the Big 12 and save the league. The Big 12 can survive losing Colorado and Nebraska, but if Texas bolts, even if no others from the Big 12 South follow, the league will follow the same road as the Southwest Conference. If the Longhorns stay, Beebe will be looking for two new teams. The most logical candidates would be Houston (big television market) and either Tulsa or Memphis.

 

“We're working with all those members. We've had a lot of positive feedback about the desire of those institutions to (stay) together,” Beebe said. “There's been a lot of speculation about people going west ... I'm going all the way to the final whistle. I'm playing it out as hard and fast as I can.”

 

With the Pac-10 (Eleven) and the Big Ten (Twelve?) circling, it may not be enough to hold the league together. The thing the Pac-10 and Big Ten have going for them is money. The two leagues have more than the Big 12. By expanding they can bring in even more and that’s what college athletics are all about today. That is not big news, that’s reality. The schools can talk about aligning with schools that have the same academic standards, but the truth is they will go where the money is regardless of the academics.

 

“We're still working through the issues,” Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin told the Associated Press last week. “We're also waiting to see what happens with other schools. We were very happy to stay in the Big 12, the way it was. It's changing now, and we need to figure out what that means. The Big 12 is not what it was, and we have to think about its future, and ours.”

 

Those are not the sorts of words Beebe wants to hear at the present time. He’s working overtime to convince Texas that there is a future in the Big 12. He’ll find out on Tuesday if that future includes Texas or not.