Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly-ish column on the Texas Longhorns.
In a victory for those who describe Austin as a land of hipsters, Longhorns can now claim to have uncorked a conference realignment arms race way before Los Angeles thought it was cool. UCLA and USC are joining the Big Ten.
There are two ways for this to work out, regarding our burnt orange friends over on Guadalupe. One is realistic, and a little bit optimistic for Texas. The other would be funny.
The first way is that the SEC and Big Ten do, ultimately, emerge as the two lone powers atop college sports. Some would argue we’re already here, though adding a pair of football programs averaging seven wins a year is a strange way to completely upend the collegiate sports landscape. As this happens, and as Texas becomes more established in the SEC (and Chris Del Conte outlives Nick Saban), Texas becomes one of the leading forces within the Southeastern Conference, eventually growing powerful enough to shape the whole of college sports to its whims.
The second way is that the Big 12 pulls off enough short-term football success (Chris Klieman works out big-time at Kansas State, BYU breaks through, Baylor rises, Oregon is added and returns to prominence) that its basketball heft keeps it alive in the eyes of television executives, and that demographic power centers in America then shift to favor Utah and the Pacific Northwest, leading to a world in which the Big 12 is king and Texas is stuck in the SEC going 6-6 every year (but still crushing Tennessee).
We, of course, hope the second scenario comes to pass. With Texas, as long as A&M isn’t getting good enough to be the state’s preeminent brand, humor is the priority. The Texas Longhorns are funny more than they are any other word. The Texas Longhorns are a goofy, goofy concept, and if you doubt this, tune into College Gameday on ESPN at 10:00 AM EDT on September 10th, then switch your TV to FOX two hours later.
In a sense, the Big 12 is no longer held back by Texas. Would they rather still have the biggest brand and best athletic department in the nation? Yes. But in something John Nash could explain better than I, the Big 12 might be benefitting here. Yeah, they’d rather have Texas money. But when they had Texas money, they also had the constant threat of Texas leaving, and the other schools were so beholden to Texas (and Oklahoma) that they couldn’t do anything to elevate themselves beyond the status of jilted-lovers-in-waiting. Now, they can make their move. They can zig while the Big Ten and SEC zag. You’d rather be powerful enough to zag, sure. But that’s not who the Big 12 is. That’s not what the Big 12 has ever been. Finally, with Texas gone, the Big 12 gets its shot. The Big 12 gets to zig. They weren’t going to win by zagging, anyway.
