You know, nothing quite says “Pacific Coast” to me like Lubbock, Texas, and Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Two reports surfaced Thursday, in the midst of the annual Big 12 meetings, that indicated the Pacific 10 is mulling offering six Big 12 schools entrance into its league as part of a southern division.
The Big 12 schools are Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado. Baylor would be left out of the Pac-10 mix, Orangebloods.com first reported Thursday. Later in the day, the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera reported that Colorado athletic director Mike Bohn has “been led to believe” the Pac-10 would invite the six schools, perhaps putting them with current Pac-10 members Arizona and Arizona State to form the division.
“The longer that we (athletic directors) were together in Kansas City, it appeared that the rumor or speculation did have some validity to it,” Bohn told the Camera.
There’s more here and here, with ESPN reporting the possibility of a full-blown merger between the two conferences, whatever that might mean. I must confess, I had been under the impression that the Big XII was a powerhouse, so I find it more than a little odd to see its members being (potentially) poached by the PAC 10 and the Big 10 and whoever else. Burka suggests that Missouri being wooed by the Big 10 was the catalyst for all this, while a leaked email from Ohio State’s president (via Justin) suggests that the Big 10 is gunning for UT. All I know is if the Big XII can just up and disappear in a cloud of TV money, can anything be considered safe? Having said that, as a Rice fan let me just say to all of you Big XII devotees, “Welcome to our world”. We’ll see how many conferences are left, and who’s left out in the cold, when the music stops playing.
It’s no worse than the AAA baseball Pacific Coast League having teams in New Orleans, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Round Rock, Omaha and Iowa. Last time I looked, all of these were two times zones from the Pacific Ocean. 🙂