Old Football Coaches Are Out Here Just Speculating Wildly About the Big 12

No subset of Americans is more cautious about public speech than are football coaches, which makes it so surprising to see them now, as the Big 12 re-considers expansion, just throwing half-baked ideas as the wall like so many Erlich Bachmans.

First was Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, who during his long career in Manhattan, Kansas has turned “measured paranoia” into a pillar of success. Snyder told a whole bunch of reporters this week that he knew, personally, of two of the schools who left the Big 12 in recent years that had a mind to come back. Everybody figured those had to be Colorado (Pac-12) and Nebraska (Big Ten), if there was anything to it, but the common conclusion seems to be that Snyder and Tom Osborn simply had too much coffee and started making big plans.

Now here comes Rick Neuheisel, who coached at Colorado in the 1990s and at UCLA from 2008-11, saying that he could see UCLA jumping to the Big 12.

" I don’t have any inside information. I’m just saying from outside looking in. UCLA just left Adidas for cash. They went to Under Armour. Right? If there were a reason to do it … If all of a sudden … you take Los Angeles and put it into the Big 12 market where Texas and football are king, it would have a huge impact. "

Calm down, fellas.