Robert Carter: Well, that was a waste of time

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June 21, 2010

By Robert Carter CNHI The North Jefferson News Mon Jun 21, 2010, 04:48 PM CDT

COMMENTARY — About a week or so ago, the world of college sports in general, and college football in particular, was about to be turned around completely.

And now? Not so much.

In other words, the whole affair was pretty much a complete waste of time, unless you were a sports talk radio host sorely in need of something to hold the attention of listeners. Or maybe a columnist in need of a hot topic during a typically slow time of the year. Or both.

We’re not yet quite sure why the earthquake was largely called off, but we do know now that the Big XII is now down to X, the Big Ten — which hasn’t had 10 members for several years — is now up to an even dozen, and the Pac-10’s plans for global domination have been thwarted, at least for now. And apparently neither Iranian madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nor North Korean crackpot Kim Jong Il had anything to do with it.

And just for kicks, members of the Mountain West Conference will now get to play regularly on blue turf.

So, now what?

Well, the Big XII now has time to find II more teams to justify its name — and, more importantly, its conference championship football game. No idea where those two teams will come from. Seeing as how Texas seems to be calling most of the shots for the conference right now, maybe they can talk North Texas State or UTEP into jumping in. Sure, that would be a good fit.

Make fun of the Longhorns if you must, but you must concede that nothing in this whole sordid affair came to fruition without the folks in Austin signing off on it. For its part, UT gets more money (and isn’t that what it’s all about after all?), and it gets what amounts to a new cable TV channel of its very own. That was part of the deal that Big XII commissioner Dan Beebe gave the Longhorns in an effort to keep himself out of the unemployment line.

The SEC is standing pat, pretty much like commissioner Mike Slive wanted it. He wasn’t going to make a move unless he had to, in the case of the Pac-10 gobbling up VI of the Big XII teams. His conference is doing just fine, thank you, and has no real need to expand at the moment. If UT or Texas A&M came hat-in-hand wanting to join, Slive might listen — after all, the two schools have huge fan bases. But Slive won’t chase them on his own, nor should he.

As for the Pac-10, or Pac-12, or whatever it ends up being called, they now must realize that the rest of the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision crowd simply won’t let them grow to gargantuan proportions. They can have Colorado, which never amounted to much in their Big XII tenure, plus Utah.

The Mountain West gets a little closer to its goal of becoming a member of the Bowl Championship Series by adding Boise State, they of the “Smurf Turf.” But the MWC will likely lose Utah to the Pac-Whatever, they may have just traded one good program for another.

So after all of this shuffling of chess pieces, what really changes in the realm of big-time college football?

Not much. Not much at all.

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