Big 12 Status Report: Not Falling Apart (At The Moment)

Conference media days, that time of year when all college football fans are assured that the problems plaguing last year’s team have been eradicated, are underway.

And the Big News out of the Big 12 is that it is not, at present, on the brink of dissolution.

From The Oklahoman:

"Conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby interrupted the very first question of Big 12 Media Days Monday. The Austin American Statesman’s Kirk Bohls was starting to ask something about expanding the College Football Playoff, and Bowlsby couldn’t resist. “I thought you were going to ask the Big 12 expansion question,” Bowlsby said. “I still had it on my list.” Uh, you can cross it off the list. Conference realignment talk was gone from the Dallas Cowboys’ Ford Center, where the once-staggered Big 12 stood tall and proud Monday. No talk of instability. No talk of seeking new members or trying to hold on to flagship schools Oklahoma and Texas. No talk of the Big 12 being swallowed up by the rest of the Power 5 Conferences."

This is a break from the status quo of … every year this decade, beginning in 2010 when Nebraska and Colorado announced plans to leave the conference, sending the whole world of college athletics into hysterics.

Expand or die. 

The Big 12 contracted, then expanded, and now occupies a unique position in the world of college sports. Its league championship is decided by a schedule in which everybody plays everybody else every year. The Big 12 touts this as the toughest path to the College Football Playoff. While I’m a little dubious about that claim, it is a cool, old-school feature of a conference that, ironically enough, created the opposite scenario when it formed from the Big Eight and Southwest Conference in 1996.

I don’t see how anybody could argue with a straight face that the Big 12 is a better league now than it was when Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Texas A&M were in it. But after years of teetering on the brink, it seems the Big 12 now has something of an identity.

And it helped that at least Oklahoma made the playoff.

" “I think OU playing in the playoff last year was kind of stepping back in the arena,” said Texas Tech’s Kingsbury, who after the Baker Mayfield saga has no reason to be a Big Red fan but was quite complimentary of the Sooners’ success. “There were a couple of years where we weren’t in there, and that was being used against us in the conference in recruiting. But having that presence last year meant a lot to the Big 12 and hopefully that continues.” "

The Big 12’s coaches say recruits in Texas are staying in Big 12 country more now than they have in recent years, but as we all know the life of a recruiting trend is a short one.

Since the last time a Big 12 team won the national championship (Texas in 2005), the SEC has nine national titles, the ACC two and the Big Ten one. At some point, somebody — Oklahoma, TCU, Kansas — will need to break through and win the league another one, or we’ll all be right back to where we’ve been every other year this decade   — trying to figure out if Texas wants to join the Pac-12 and wondering what’s ever going to become of Iowa State.

For now, though: Contented bliss.