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?

Continue reading…

A couple of years ago, I commented on a great cover story in Texas Monthly about the big business of the University of Texas Athletics. Since then, it seems, that business has only gotten bigger.

According to figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics, UT’s football program isn’t just the largest grossing team in the country (at $87.5 million), it’s also the most profitable (at $65 million). To put that in perspective, that’s $20 million more in gross earnings than the No. 2 entry on the list, Ohio State ($68.19 million gross), and the No. 2 most profitable school, the University of Georgia ($45.38 million net).

Continue reading…

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?

Continue reading…

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.

Continue reading…

I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike of college football’s BCS nonsense. And of course, I’m not alone. There are many, many fans begging and pleading for some kind of playoff system, arguing it’s the only way to truly determine a national champion.

U.S. Representative Joe Barton agrees. Barton, whose district borders TCU’s hometown of Fort Worth, has even gone so far as to compare the Bowl Championship Series to communism. And nothing gets a Republican congressman more worked up than the threat of communism. Hence his anti-BCS bill, which has now passed in a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, is not the BCS-destroying solution envisioned by millions of college football fans. But if it were to eventually become law, it would turn up the pressure on the BCS by preventing the group from calling its title game a “national championship game” unless it was the result of a playoff system. …

“What our friends and fans need to know about the Bowl Championship Series is that it is not about choosing the champion or competition on the gridiron,” Barton said. “It is about revenue sharing for the schools that are in the BCS conferences.”

Continue reading…