Vicious Season Ahead For Dissolving Big 12

It appears that the Big 12 athletic conference is poised to fold, with the biggest rat abandoning ship, the University of Nebraska, headed to the Big 10 conference, aided and abetted by its partner in crime, the University of Missouri. Blogs and news stories abound describing the lengthy list of reasons why the Cornhuskers will face a brighter future in the "10" than with its friends in the "12."

The Big 10's reason for desiring the Huskers, however, seems disingenuous. The number one purpose for the Big 10 expansion is to gain more households for the Big 10 Network, which is why early discussions were focused on bringing in teams that would extend into the eye-ball dense northeastern US.

Has anyone from the Big 10 ever been to Nebraska? At any given moment there are more people on Chicago's streets and freeways than live in the entire state of Nebraska. Heck, Chicago has more people in jail than than the number who live in Nebraska.

No, apparently what the Big 10 is seeking is a formerly top-level football program that it can blend into the middle of the Big 10 roster. A team that can be assured of a mid-level bowl game every year while the big guns - Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa - go for the gold. Big Red will jump from champion of the Big 12 North to top place in the bottom half of the Big 10 -- not much of an improvement in my view.

Cornhusker fans think their team is in ascendency, which is probably a good reason to leave the Big 12 now - before any more evidence to the contrary starts to roll in. The Huskers ended last season on a high note following early season gaffes, including their humiliating loss to Iowa State at home. They are not the Big Red of old.

If Nebraska makes its leap to the Big 10, the Big 12 will play its 2010 football season in death throes. Games with Kansas State (October 7), Iowa State (November 6) and Kansas (November 13) - teams that will have been banished to limbo by a Nebraska defection that will trigger more departures to the Pac-10 - will be uncomfortable at best and vicious at worst.

My whole life I had believed that the Big 8-Big 12 conference was nothing more than a group of like-minded institutions taking part in a friendly rivalry. Now I know there was nothing friendly about it at all.