I really don't get the insistence on having twelve teams. Every year that we don't win a national championship, there is a momentum for changing to some other paradigm. There may be some specific schools that just aren't getting it done in football for the moment. But I remember two or three decades when TCU was a football laughing stock. Same with Baylor. Now we consider them the teams to beat to win the conference.
And they were the only two of the top four to get a bowl win.
From 1974 to 83 they were 15-89-5. Jim Wacker got to TCU with a couple of small school national championships in his pocket and they went 8-4 in 84, but Wacker found out that behind his back, players were getting big money under the table and kicked seven guys off the team, including a running back who'd won some awards and had a solid NFL career later. They went back to being bad again, even though he was a qualit 11y coach.
From 1960 when Tech was allowed into the Southwest Conference (west Texas had been considered TCU's prime recruiting territory ) though the end of the conference when they weren't asked to stay in the formation of the Big XII, they played in three bowl games, winning zero.
Baylor, because of politics, was allowed into the XII. From the first season in the new conference, they were 35-101 until Briles arrived. Even worse, in those 13 seasons, they won 11 conference games total.
If the overall quality of the conference is good, then it doesn't matter how many are in the conference. And if it's bad, then it doesn't matter how many teams are in the conference. The problem is the politics of the SEC headed up committee, and what they call of value. And it isn't going to change if we add two teams, disrupting even more the contiguous continuity of the conference.
The one thing that gives this idea new credibility is Boren's 179 turn on the issue. I suspect that has to be coming from Stoops. But with OU's overall credibility and worthy annual big boy presence on the schedule, if we take care of OUr business, we will be in the final four. Isn't that what everybody seeks here? Or isn't it?
Joining other conferences becomes a short term solution to a long term issue, and all create traveling challenges for the atheletes who already miss a lot of class time anyway. But playing in Seattle in a game that doesn't even end until after midnight in Norman, is just not a practical solution. There are just as big of problems changing conferences.
I like that we're not in a divided football conference where we play the tougher schedule and somebody from the north has an easier trip to the CCG. We play the other Texas schools and OSU, while whoever wins the North gets Iowa State and Kansas is a lousy way to get a conference champion. The round robin makes way more sense.
I wonder what's really going on behind the scenes for Boren to take a new leadership role with a different point of view. Maybe it's because the OU Network is getting its outlets taken away by TV carriers. Mine has been for the non revenue sports. And I'm more than a little peeved by it.
