the tindog coffeehouse

Next week will be the 118th time the University of Texas will play Texas A&M in football. And it looks like it’ll also be the last, at least for the foreseeable future. As of July 1, 2012, A&M will be part of the SEC, and the historic intrastate rivalry between the Longhorns and Aggies will officially come to an end. Of course, it’s not the first rivalry to be torn asunder by the seismic shifts of conference realignment over the past couple of years, but it’s arguably one of the best and certainly one of the most personal for anyone who grew up in the state of Texas. Whether you went to Texas or A&M or not, whether you even knew anyone who went to Texas or A&M, you were a fan of one or the other. Even if you bled Red Raider red, you came down on one side of the fence or the other. There was no escaping it.

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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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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 normally don’t follow college basketball; there are just too many games. But I do tend to get caught up in March Madness. Not to the point of bringing a TV and rabbit ears to work like a former co-worker of mine used to do every year, but I do enjoy watching games when I can.

That said, here are my pics for the men’s tournament. Yes, most of them are safe bets while a few are probably long shots. (Predicted winner in parentheses) Discuss.

Sweet 16.
Pitt vs. Florida State (Pitt)
Duke vs. Villanova (Villanova)
Louisville vs. Wake Forest (Louisville)
Kansas vs. Michigan State (Kansas)
LSU vs. Gonzaga (LSU)
OU vs. Syracuse (OU)
UConn vs. Purdue (UConn)
Missouri vs. Memphis (Memphis)

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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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