Big 12 Expansion: Why Is Kansas Getting the Cold Shoulder?

What kind of world do we live in where one of the top five greatest college basketball programs of all-time gets thrown to the curb?

Lost in the shuffle of all of the conference realignment madness has been the Kansas Jayhawks.

That’s because the football team isn’t on par with the likes of Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma State in the Big 12.

Basketball-wise, no team in the league comes close to the dominance of KU. Clearly we live in a football-obsessed world that puts basketball on the back burner.

Just listen to the comments of Ed McKechnie, the leader of the Kansas Board of Regents:

"

We want the Big 12 to stay together. It's the right conference for KU and K-State. In the end, this is going to work out.

"

He sounds like a boyfriend who has a much hotter girlfriend and is happy just to be considered the significant other.

This is a team whose first-ever coach was James Naismith. A program ranked second on ESPN’s list of most prestigious basketball schools in the modern era.

They have 28 consecutive winning seasons, the most conference championships in Division I history and the second most wins of all-time.

Yet in 2011 they are looked at as a deterrent more than anything else in the grand scheme of conference realignment.

Texas and Oklahoma could care less about the tradition in Lawrence…they are too busy watching dollar signs bounce through their heads at the thought of jumping ship to the Pac-12 (a story that is far from over).

They don’t care about how their decision impacts the rest of the conference.

It’s not right how all major decisions are being based on football (see Syracuse and Pitt to the ACC), and it seems as if there is absolutely nothing bad football schools can do. They are the prisoners of the presidents with big football schools, and the entire college sports landscape is changing in order for the guys at the top to maximize the size of their wallets.

Meanwhile players are getting suspended for taking $100 from boosters who shove it in their face asking them to take it.

It’s a cruel setup that the NCAA has going right now, and they are doing the Kansas Jayhawks an extreme injustice by pretending a school like Texas A&M is more valuable than one of the most storied programs in the history of college sports.

You deserve better, Jayhawks.