PHEW

OK, friends, one last conference blog post. Sorry, but writing these is very cathartic for me.

When I found out last night that everybody left in the Big XII is staying in the Big XII, I felt incredibly relieved. And when I say "felt," I mean that I physically felt better--I had apparently been carrying around some tension for the several days that I was consumed by conference realignment.

I want to pause here and give credit to Big XII commission Dan Beebe, whom I've been making fun of for being a loser. While the Pac-10 was making up numbers--oh, I mean coming up with "projections"--for how much money the Pac-16 would bring in (and, as my dad put it, was ignoring how much of this supposed money would be burned up "flying the volleyball team to Corvallis on a Wednesday"), Dan Beebe went out and talked to the real TV networks involved in doling out money. He presented the schools involved with numbers that might actually be connected with reality, and I'm sure he negotiated to make sure those numbers were good. Well done, Dan Beebe. (Although some unknown amount of credit surely goes to unnamed major power players in Texas and perhaps Oklahoma, putting pressure on people behind the scenes.)

I've seen people complaining about this decision on the internet, mostly Aggie fans. Over the weekend, a lot of fan support for joining the SEC welled up, and those people are disappointed that we're A) just doing what t.u. wants to do after all and B) staying in an inferior conference. Both of those points are true, but both of those points are good things.

How dumb would the War Hymn sound if we stopped playing t.u.? It would hurt to lose that Thanksgiving game, and we all know it. It wouldn't have been worth staying with t.u. at all costs (say, joining the stupid Pac-16), but it's a great thing to do at a low cost. And is it a cost?

Being in the SEC might have improved Aggie football--maybe playing in the nation's best football conference would have proven to be a recruiting boon. But would it have offset how many more losses we would have had against beefed up competition? I doubt it. A&M would have lost a lot more games in the SEC, and we all know it. I hope to see the day when A&M re-becomes a contender for conference and national titles, but I believe that day has a better chance of happening sooner (and at all) in the Big XII, however many teams it has.

I do not agree that what happened somehow degraded A&M's "manhood." A&M leadership were never as bootlicky to t.u. as Oklahoma's (not to mention Tech and Oke State, or of course Baylor's sad desperation). They saw that the Pac-16 was not in their school's best interest and didn't play along. Staying in the Big XII was not knuckling under (like joining the Pac-16 would have been), and there's no shame in it. A&M is, if you haven't noticed, getting credit in the national media for averting the Pac-16. All the writers know that t.u. was the big dog in all of this (because, let's face it, they are), but tend to point out that A&M's refusal to go along blindly changed t.u.'s direction. A&M made the right decision, based on the right motivations.

I realize that not everything is magically fixed now, but I see quite a few things to get kind of excited about. Yes, this is not necessarily a permanent solution. Other conferences may still try (and even succeed) to pick off the remaining Big XII teams. Or maybe not--perhaps the brief flirtation with the idea of "superconferences" (which would be terrible) has been just that, and we'll all re-embrace the 12-team conference (it's the best number for a conference). Maybe the Big XII will expand? I would like to see that (remember that thing I just said, about 12 teams?). I like the conference championship game. The obvious target would be TCU; I just don't know who else might be good. Imagine, though, a Big XII conference where Oklahoma and Oke State are in the North Division--that solves some problems.

Well, that's what I think. What do you think?

Edited to add: Oh yeah, and the conference name thing is going to be ridiculous. It was bad enough when the Big Ten having twelve teams and the Big XII having ten teams seemed temporary . . .