From Extinction to the Captain's Chair: A Timeline and a Game of Big 12 Jenga

Jenga is a beautiful game. It involves strategy, thought and varying emotions that can push good men to the brink. Yes, good "men." This game parallels the path of a fine wine and gets better as you age. Try too hard, and your wooden world will collapse. Plan it right, and it’s never too late. It also goes well with whatever you’ve decided to pour into your glass.

When Nebraska bolted for the Big Ten, the beginning of the anticipated end of the Big 12 was set in motion. Colorado left too (not nearly as earth-shattering, but still telling), and suddenly the cogs began to turn.

Jenga Status: Back-to-back pieces are taken near the middle of the tower. It wobbles ever so slightly but show no signs of immediate destruction. You can pick out the novice players at this point. If their eyes light up, they've shown their tell. It takes more than this to bring it down. You should know that.

Former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe, who worked hard to grasp the expansion landscape even before Nebraska began to shop around, was bailing water out of his sinking ship with a bucket unfit for the job. While he did his best to keep the remaining teams together, Texas worked a deal with ESPN that would give them their very own cash steer. And so the damage was done. 

The Longhorn Network rubbed a lot of people in a lot of different places the wrong way—especially their rivals Texas A&M, who weren’t thrilled with the potential televising of high school games (a move that was later squashed)—and this set off another chain reaction in the world of Big 12 expansion.

Jenga Status: One drunken friend just accidentally hit the table, and the entire tower wobbled some. He apologized, but you noticed a piece near the bottom moved slightly. You said nothing, however, for “strategy’s” sake.

Texas A&M followed through with its thoughts to leave the Big 12, and Missouri followed, looking for more stable, profitable ground. The two eventually withdrew from their former conference, and these SEC rumors that circulated eventually became reality.

At this point, the conference raid was all but on, and a domino effect seemed imminent. As buyouts were sorted out, legal battles were shaping up and other conferences were trying to determine just how big they wanted to be and which schools they had their sights set on.

Jenga Status: Some yahoo just pulled one of the bottom support pieces because he was somehow deprived of Jenga as a child and therefore does not understand the nuances of the game. The tower is ready to topple, and you cover up your drink just to be sure an errant block doesn’t give it an earlier death than anticipated. Timmmmmmmber.

It doesn’t, though. The Pac-12 was set to become the Pac-16, and the Big 12 would have been scrapped for parts like your first high school ride. Well, at least what was left of it. This, in some ways, seemed like a foregone conclusion at the time, but Pac-12 commish Larry Scott crushed these preconceived notions, saying the conference would not expand.

Oklahoma announces that they are committed to the Big 12, and suddenly things didn’t look as doomed. This was a tipping point, although things didn’t tip as expected. Well, unless you’re Dan Beebe, who was fired.

Jenga Status: The wild card of the group fakes like he’s pulling a crushing piece, and the entire table backs away. He laughs at his own joke, which is one of the worst things one can do in a social setting. He pulls the piece just one row off the top instead, because he is that guy. His actual turn nearly sends the tower tumbling, but magically it just violently wobbles from side to side.

Weeks later, however, the Big 12 finally saw some benefits from expansion at others’ expense. TCU was packed and ready for the Big East but got cold feet with the future of the conference in doubt. The Big 12 reached out, the Horned Frogs paid the $5 million to leave, and suddenly the conference had cash coming in versus going out.

And that wasn’t all. West Virginia saw the writing on the wall with the Big East (which also lost Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC) and announced that they were heading west to the Big 12. Timing became an issue, the legal battles ensued but eventually they were off and will compete in 2012.

Suddenly the conference had a pulse once again.

Jenga Status: You picked a conservative block and the trend set in. The structure, which was ready to collapse just moments earlier, is solid again. Your friends are doing awful impressions of chickens to criticize you, but you don’t care. They are following your lead, and this is Jenga, damn it.

With fresh faces in the conference, a new leader also took over. Former Big Eight commissioner Chuck Neinas was the man pegged as the Big 12 resurrector, and he wasted very little time building his foundation. 

The Big 12 got a new television contract (and a cool $208 million a season for the conference), and they immediately went from doomed to thriving. It happened in eight months or so, and the transformation was brilliantly swift.

Jenga Status: This is officially the longest game of Jenga ever. No, really. Look it up. The tower always topples, yet somehow no one has gotten anxious and pulled the proper piece yet. The feeling of destruction is gone, and it’s never gone. They must really want to win, and you’ve been holding this pee in for hours now, better go. Now.

With stability obtained, money pocketed and a positive landscape set, the Big 12 secured a yearly bowl game (starting in 2014) with the SEC. It will feature the champions of both leagues (unless they’re in the title game, of course) and will be the Rose Bowl, only BBQ flavored. The Big 12 is not only alive, but it is now helping dictate the potential future of the bowls with the most powerful conference in the country.

Jenga Status: The tower is still standing, but everybody has decided to go home because they have to work early. Even after they leave you pour yourself a glass of something special and study how it stayed up this long. You check every block, every piece that is slightly off center. You touch it (only slightly) to see how it will react. It doesn't.

In all your years, you’ve never seen anything quite like this. There will likely be new players, maybe, but the important and miraculous thing is that the tower never fell. You're not quite sure how it all never came crashing down, and you know that other games will come crashing down soon enough.

Not this game, though.