By the time I get to Mound City, they'll be expanding.
They'll find the note I left hanging, on Beebe's door.
He'll laugh when he reads the part, that says we're leaving,
'cause we've left this league, so many times before.
College sports expansion — the rumors, sources and speculation — fly at us relentlessly these days. It makes you dizzy. Thank heavens for that three-hour drive home from Kansas City the other day. For this college football hopeless romantic, it was a chance to find perspective by the mile markers.
How many more times will I drive to Kansas City? Is this my last trip to Kansas State this fall? What's going to happen to Iowa State? Can Bill Self possibly recruit elite basketball players to the Mountain West?
Will I ever see another college football game at Oklahoma?
I never knew the TV set in my house was so important. TV sets rule college sports and football, in particular. But college football isn't just money and who has the most flat screens. It's relationships. It's little traditions fans keep. Memories. It's the experiences we cherish along the way. With expansion, all that stuff gets tossed like old clothes in the attic.
That's fine. That's the way of the world. But I don't hear many people talking about those things. Say what you want about Kansas State — and I love that little stadium — but a lot of Husker fans have memories of that trip, some good, some bad, but those are all memories that serve as mile markers, too.
What about the Kansas-Nebraska series? It's one of the oldest long-running series in college football? Oh, well, Kansas didn't vote with NU on the partial qualifier vote in 1995 so to hell with them. Sorry, but I find what could happen to KU basketball incredibly sad. What a proud tradition. Silly birds. They should have chosen football as their way of life.
Yes, this game is every man for himself. Big 12 membership has taught us that. I just don't hear much empathy for schools that have been neighbors for 50, 60, 70 years. I hear folks say they won't miss going to Boulder or Manhattan. I think you'll miss it more than you know. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe I'm the only one who will miss that classic Folsom Field or that drive into Stillwater.
By the time I make Rock Port, the Longhorns will be surfing....
The Big 12 met last week at the Intercontinental Hotel on the plaza in Kansas City. There's great irony there. For those of us old enough to have lived the other life, that hotel used to be the Alameda Plaza — home of the Big Eight Holiday and postseason basketball tournaments. The Big Eight was family in those days. There's nothing that could have broken them up.
It was back then, in 1978, when I first met DeLoss Dodds. He was the athletic director at Kansas State. Good man, then and now. His basketball coach was Jack Hartman, Rolando Blackman and Mike Evans were rolling and they played in sold-out Ahearn Fieldhouse. In spite of bad football, Dodds and KSU were big-time players in the Big Eight.
These days, Dodds is at Texas and they're all larger than life. A world away from those days. Maybe it's unfair, because of his responsibilities to the Longhorn machine, but I can't help but wonder how Dodds can watch K-State fade off into the Mountain West. He went to school at KSU. He was track coach there, too. Dodds was there when K-State won big and mattered a lot. He knows the passion of the purple people. With all the power Texas wields, isn't there something he can do to help his school?
Maybe not. Maybe there's no room for loyalty in this high-stakes game. Still, if Dodds and Tom Osborne went out for a cup of coffee, couldn't they hash out the Big 12's future? Being a member of a conference is all about compromise — on both sides. If Texas could give NU back some of what it's lost in the Big 12 — and that is, its identity as a power broker — could it happen?
There I go again, dreaming on I-29.
By the time I make Nebraska City, the Big Ten will be calling.
Here's your summer expansion primer: everything is on the table. Every scenario is plausible, even Notre Dame.
For now, or until the next scenario is floated, it seems to me that Texas and the rest of the Big 12 are waiting on Nebraska, which is waiting on the Big Ten. Deadlines don't mean much. The Big 12 isn't going to chase NU away. Likewise, a Husker commitment to the Big 12 will be good only until the Big Ten calls — if and when that happens. Meanwhile, Texas has options and we'll have to see if the Pac-10 jumps first.
Everyone is waiting. Who's going to make the first move? Will this hang over the 2010 season? Could it be done this summer? We'll be talking about this at Big 12 Media Days in late July. How's the elbow, Zac? And would you prefer Big 12 or Big Ten?
I would prefer the season get here ASAP. Call me crazy, but I'm looking forward to the trips to Manhattan and Stillwater.
Contact the writer:
444-1025, tom.shatel@owh.com
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