Big 12 Realignment: Longhorns Blink, Ruining Big Ten Plan, Giving Pac-10 Wedgie

The day's developments seem to indicate that the Texas Longhorns have blinked in the face of Texas Aggie resolve http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/football/ncaa/06/14/texas.big.12.ap/index.html?eref=BrkNews .

A&M wanted no part of the Left Coast league, which meant the Longhorns would either proceed without the Aggies or find a way to renege on the elaborate plan to take five Big 12 schools and make a PAC-16. Because the people who run Texas are smarter than Longhorns' fans, they dared not risk A&M in the sexy SEC while Texas plays in the soft Left Coast.

So now we hear how the Big 12 can be saved.

Before getting to how long that saving can last, we need should pose this question: How big a patsy is the PAC?

Now, the PAC-11 is stuck with Colorado. It can't play a Championship Game until it gets 12 members, and it can't add Utah, because Utah is not going to split from BYU. The PAC will not add BYU for the same reason it rushed to add Colorado: It wants no church-related school. To prevent the TX legislature from acting to get Baylor tagged on to the planned expansion, the PAC jumped the gun and added Colorado.

The Buffs (whose soft nickname of the athletics nickname sounds right for the Left Coast) have almost non-existent support for basketball and have small time football support. Colorado will bring nothing that the PAC needs: No 60,000 per game or more football fan base; no 10,000 per game or more basketball fan base; no new recruiting hot zone; no reasonably consistent Top 25 program in either revenue sport.

The PAC basketball regular season and tournament will remain lamer than those of the MWC, and the PAC football race will be more diluted.

If nobody else moves, then we would have seven BCS Automatic Qualifier leagues before long, because the MWC + Boise State is deserving.

And that is a reason more moves are coming, eventually. 

The Big Ten began this mess, assuming it would have an easy time expanding to 14 or 16, adding a couple of national heavy hitters to its lineup, which is necessary to feed the Big Ten Network.

Before proceeding, I should recap what I have said about how and why all this happened as it did. The Big Ten and the PAC, which closed the Rose Bowl to end competition, have acted together in another master plan to stifle competition to their advantage.

The master plan was for the expansions to kill two BCS AQ conferences: the Big 12 and the Big East. The Big Ten would do that by adding one to three current BE football members. It would complete its 16 member league by adding Notre Dame and one or twp Big 12 North schools.

The PAC, the Big Ten's junior partner in its various schemes, was to add six Big 12 schools.

The reason for such a massive attack on the current college system is the Big Ten Network and Fox Sports, which owns 49 percent of the BTN. If the 16 member Big Ten controls the NYC area and Notre Dame and the old Big 12 North, and the PAC-16 controls TX and westward to CA, then the two Rose Bowl allies would be able to control at least 50 percent of the schools in BCS AQ leagues (depending on how many schools the ACC and SEC added), as well as the vast majority of the nation's largest TV markets.

And Fox sports would thus control the market, because at that point Fox would have a deal with the PAC-16.

The Big Ten plan to force Notre Dame to join its league is much bigger and nastier than merely ending BE football.

But the SEC has proven to be tougher and smarter than the Big Ten assumed possible. And the ACC also deserves credit. Fox bid against ESPN for the new ACC TV deal, and leaked reports say that Fox offered more. But the ACC honored its history with ESPN and took less to maintain old ties.

For saving us from college football largely controlled by Rupert Murdoch, all college football fans owe the SEC and the ACC, and Texas A&M and Notre Dame, much gratitude.

But this is not over. Fox now will offer huge money to Texas to go to the PAC and drag Oklahoma with it. And the SEC will not be asleep at the wheel. Mike Slive knows what the Big Ten and Fox are, which means he knows he must work to keep A&M in his orbit and try to squeeze between Oklahoma and Texas, because at some point the Big Ten and Fox will kill the Big 12. Missouri leaving for the Big Ten would do the job.

It remains highly possible that by this time next year, we will see four BCS AQ leagues that have either 14 or 16 members. But rather than the Big Ten/PAC Rose Bowl Axis and Rupert Murdoch controlling the playing field, we will see the SEC having moved westward and the ACC having added northward, each of those two having positioned itself well against the Rose Bowl Axis.

This then is the question: will the Big Ten realize its defeat and stop at 12 members and tell the PAC to be satisfied with 11, leaving the ten-member Big 12 alone?

Will Rupert Murdoch allow that?

If not, look for the SEC to add significant football power to its west, and the ACC to add even more basketball power to its north as its football quality grows.

And then all eyes will turn to Notre Dame, because it would either cast the Rose Bowl Axis in gold by signing on, or would render its victories largely hollow by rejecting it, and thus reject playing for Rupert Murdoch, on principle.