the tindog coffeehouse

How many teams does the Big 12 Conference have to lose before it stops being the Big “12″? And when exactly is it no longer considered “Big”? We may find out pretty soon now that Texas A&M has officially declared they’re packing up their marbles and leaving the Big 12 for a shot at the bottom of the SEC.

The Aggies apparently weren’t too keen on their intrastate rival Longhorns getting their own television network, despite the fact that the Longhorn Network will be available to exactly seven households in America, none of which are in Austin. But logic has never been A&M’s strong suit, so they’ve chosen to abandon 100+ years of tradition and possibly as much as $30 million in exit fees in hopes that the SEC will let them in to their exclusive club. Yeah, good luck with that. Let’s see, how many Big 12 football titles has A&M won? How many BCS games have they gone to? How many National Championships have they won since the rise of the BCS? Zero. And yet they really expect to do better against the likes of Auburn, Florida, Alabama, and LSU?

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Good news, people of Waco. Baylor’s not screwed after all!

In what can only be explained as a miracle (by football-loving Baptists, at least), the Big 12 has been saved from destruction, with the ten remaining members swearing allegiance to Dan Beebe and the unnamed sports network (*cough*FoxSports*cough*) that bribed them to stay.

Who would’ve guessed that at the end of the day all of this realignment mess was really just about money? Huh.

So for now, there are no 16-team superconferences. No realignmentpocalypse. No ripping of the very fabric of the time-space continuum. Heck, not even a single punch thrown (unless you count Vince Young’s pummeling of an irate OU fan outside a Dallas strip club). In fact, Big 12 ADs would be singing “Kum Ba Yah” right now if it weren’t for the fact that they were too busy counting their enormous stacks of cash.

Where, then, does that leave us?

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I’ve largely stayed away from all the various NCAA conference expansion and/or realignment rumors floating around the interwebs the last few months because, well, they’re just rumors. One day you hear the Big Ten is going to steal the University of Texas away from the Big 12, the next you hear Texas is going to the SEC. One day the Big 12 is imploding, the next it’s expanding. Publicly, athletic directors declare their undying love for their conferences, but then they’re supposedly working vigorously in the shadows to broker a million other deals. And all the while, state legislators are trying to influence the process for their own particular benefit.

Is this college sports or As The World Turns?

The latest rumors have the Pac-10 asking Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, OU, Oklahoma State, and Colorado to be their new BFFs, thus elevating the Pac-10 to a 16-team superconference and completely decimating the Big 12. That would leave Baylor out in the cold, a result that doesn’t sit well with Waco’s state senator, David Sibley, who is apparently now fighting to have the Bears superglued to the other Texas teams. Meanwhile, the Big Ten, which has been rumored to be courting everyone from Texas to Nebraska to the North Dakota School for the Deaf, is supposedly focusing its efforts on Notre Dame. And Boise State, which was a lock for the Mountain West, is putting its plans on hold to see how everything else shakes out.

And of course, everything in the previous paragraph will be null and void by the time you finish reading this post.

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I wondered at the beginning of this year’s college football season how accurate EA Sports’ NCAA College Football 09 for the Wii was at predicting the outcomes of the real games. Each week, I played the game as the University of Texas versus their scheduled opponent for the week and then compared that score to the real score.

A few of the Wii scores were fairly close to the actual ones (Florida Atlantic, Rice, Texas A&M) while others were way off (Arkansas, Missouri, Baylor), margins of error probably not too different than what you’d get from ESPN and other “expert” prognosticators.

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Texas coach Mack Brown wasn’t happy. Because of an odd tiebreaker rule in the Big 12 Conference, OU will play Missouri for the Big 12 Championship with a shot at the National Title game should they beat the Tigers. The Longhorns, meanwhile, finish behind OU even though the Sooners lost to the Horns in October and will likely end up in the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State.

That, apparently, isn’t a good enough consolation prize for Mack:

I’m really disappointed for our kids that two teams we beat this season will be playing for the Big 12 Championship. I’ll try to explain it to them, but most importantly, my message will be that you’ve done enough to put yourself in position to play for the conference championship, you had a great season and there still is a lot out there for you to play for. …

Since this situation has never happened before in the Big 12, I think the conference should follow the lead of all of the other BCS leagues with championship games (ACC/Conference USA/Mid-American/SEC) in how they settle three-way ties. I think their systems are fairer and give more credit to how the two highest ranked teams performed against each other on the field.

I have to wonder, though: Would Mack and all the other angry Longhorn fans feel the same way if they had come out on top?

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This week the Longhorns open Big 12 conference play in Boulder, Colorado, against the the Colorado Buffaloes, coming into the game ranked No. 5 in the country, undefeated, and yet largely untested. While their defense is improving, their running game seems to be limited mostly to Colt McCoy.

Meanwhile, Colorado (3-1) will be celebrating their homecoming today, which may not mean much to the Horns except for the fact that the Buffs have won 8 of their last 12 homecoming games, including last year’s, when they came from behind to beat No. 3 Oklahoma 27-24.

So why is it then that NCAA Football 09 for the Wii shows Texas winning 51-7?

Needless to say, these weekly predictions haven’t exactly been very accurate. So far, I’m off by an average of 19.5 combined points. But this Texas team, I think, has so far performed beyond expectations and certainly better than they did during the first part of the 2007 season.

And considering Texas has won 52-10 in 3 of its 4 games this season, I think the Wii is simply playing the odds.

Hook ‘Em, Horns!

Real Score: 38-14. OK, so it’s not 51-7 or 52-10, but it was a very solid win for the Horns, so that’s all that matters.

And now, hang on to your corny dogs because we’re officially into TX-OU week!