Over at SB Nation’s excellent Iowa blog, Black Heart Gold Pants, Adam Jacobi checks in with some good insight into the Texas aspect of this whole menagerie. And, as Jacobi says, it’s not a coincidence that Texas is once again at the center of this speculation... And whatever happens, Texas leaving its conference shouldn’t be a surprise:
History Repeats Itself: Could Texas Head To The Pac-10?
What’s not going to happen, though, is that Texas stays in the Big XII. Oh, they’ll claim to have tried their hardest to keep the conference together, but they could have accomplished that with or without Nebraska and/or Missouri in the fold. Nobody’s ever asked Texas and A&M why, precisely, the conference couldn’t survive without a Nebraska program that had spent the last few years lamenting the XII’s increasingly Texas-centric approach. We can’t even intuit a plausible answer why that’s the case.
Moreover, it’s disingenuous to pretend that Texas’ Big Ten fantasies didn’t start over 15 years ago, or that they haven’t persisted since. [...]
And so either the Pac-10 or the Big 10 happily welcomes into its conference the main actor in the only two I-A conference deaths of the last 50 years. If UT decides it can’t be in a conference with a football program on a death sentence, then the Southwest Conference can’t exist. If UT decides it can’t be in a conference without a Nebraska program that’s been complaining for years about the (state of) Texas-centric approach of the conference, then the Big XII can’t exist. And if, in a couple decades, UT decides to convince Ohio State/USC that they can’t handle conference network revenue sharing when they’re in the same conference as Northwestern/Washington State or Purdue/Stanford, then the Big/Pac Tewhatever can’t exist either.
And just like every time before, we’ll all act so, so surprised.
It’s a good read, with valuable perspective. Especially amidst the swirling speculation, with fans processing the myriad scenarios that could emerge from the chaos of the past few days, it’s easy to lose sight of history in all this. But, as Jacobi points out, Texas’ role at the center of all this is no coincidence. Make of that what you will.
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