Apparently, we have A&M to thank for the Big 12
Published: 4/30/2010 11:40 AM
Last Modified: 4/30/2010 11:40 AM
Every two years, Oklahoma plays football at Baylor. There is good and bad in that.
The good -- OU fans who can't get tickets to home games, or who just like road-tripping to see the Sooners, can make an easy 4-hour drive down to Waco, grab some chicken fried steak and a brew at George's, drive right up to Floyd Casey Stadium for the game, and cheer without worrying about verbal or physical assault from the hacked-off home crowd.
The bad -- By the fourth quarter, there is typically more excitement at Floyd's Barber Shop than at Floyd Casey.
Depending on your perspective, you have former Texas governor Ann Richards to either thank or curse for this. She's the Baylor alum who, legend has it, strong-armed Big 12 brokers into taking the Bears, who otherwise would have been orphaned after the dissolving of the old Southwest Conference.
That, to my knowledge, was the only power play in Big 12 Conference history.
Until now.
Remember when the SEC added Arkansas and South Carolina back in 1990? They weren't the conference's first choices, according to Harvey Schiller, SEC commissioner from 1986-89.
"The one that made the most sense was Texas," Schiller told Alabama columnist/talk show host Paul Finebaum this week. "I spent some time with DeLoss Dodds (the Texas athletic director) and he really wanted to join the conference."
Holy Muckelroy! Let that one bake for a minute...
Had Texas joined the SEC, what would have become of the Big 12 (formed in 1994 and inactive until '96)? Would Arkansas have simply replaced the Longhorns? Might the Big 8 have considered adding two schools, maybe Arkansas and Texas A&M, instead of an all-out merger with the defunct SWC? Would we have missed out on all this fun with Mike Leach and Texas Tech?
Could OU-Texas have been threatened? It's worth considering. The Longhorns would have been transitioning from a soft SWC schedule to the SEC gauntlet. Why add to that stress with OU every October?
You could spend hours imagining the dominoes toppling.
So why didn't they fall?
"The state legislature (in Texas) somehow got wind of it through Texas A&M," Schiller told Finebaum, "and said we had to bring in both schools or we couldn't take Texas."
Not much separation of sport and state south of the Red River, huh.
If the Big 12 caved to Richards/Baylor, the SEC held its ground. Schiller wanted the Longhorns, but not enough to take the Aggies, too. Or so he says.
(Another school of thought is that Texas never seriously considered the SEC. Former UT president Kent Berdahl once told the San Antonio Express-News: "We were quite interested in raising academic standards, and the Southeastern Conference had absolutely no interest in that.")
Whatever the case really was/is, OU-Texas wars on, uninterrupted. The Sooners deal with Waco, and Lubbock for that matter, every other year. But at least they get to experience Kyle Field on the same timeline.
But man. Think what might have been.
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
