52 days (give or take a few hours).
Recruit in Ohio. Now, that's a great plan. Tom Osbourne isn't worried at all about the possibility that the Cornhuskers will lose ground in Texas' recruiting talent.
So what happens when Nebraska's recruiting trail in Texas stops being beaten?
Osborne admits they may lose a few recruits in Texas, but they won't stop recruiting the state, and have now gained access to states like Ohio.
K-State coach Bill Snyder has some ideas about the conference.
Kansas State coach Bill Snyder suggested the revamped Big 12 create two five-team divisions and have a championship game.
It's an idea that would result in Oklahoma State likely moving from the South to the North division. As the northernmost school in the South, it would be a natural move for the Cowboys to join Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and Iowa State in the North with Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Baylor in the South.
Mack Brown isn't worried about the fact that the Big 12 does not have a championship game.
The conference title game is another story. Brown came armed to Tuesday's news conference with a handy stat: Four times in the last 14 years a Big 12 team has seen its national title hopes dashed with a loss in the league championship game.
Nor is he worried about the conference disappearing from the radar screen in late November, like the Big Ten sometimes did without a championship game.
"I think the Big 12 has a lot of models of where it has worked and where it has not worked," Brown said.
What will it be like in the new and improved Big 12 minus two for the North division? Will it get any easier winning a conference title?
It’s a little like asking the best high school team in Kansas - Hutchinson - to play one of the Texas 5A champs, Euless Trinity or Abilene. Four times.
You might win one. Occasionally two. Not three or four.
So it will be for the northern leftovers.
"I think it’s going to be tough to watch a team like Kansas State," Steele said. "They used to contend and even bagged a Big 12 title. For them to be up there on a yearly basis - not only getting through the teams in the north but Texas and Oklahoma every year - it’ll be very difficult."
We are all about drama in the Big 12.
It’s a shame TNT doesn’t broadcast league games, because "Big 12: We Know Drama" would make a perfect tagline this year
As one last season of the Big 12 as we know it approaches — the Dysfunctional Dozen? — the conference has proven to be far from the country’s most stable, lucrative, visionary or buzz-worthy. But say this much for Dan Beebe’s Big 12: No one ever accused it of being boring.
The coaching fraternity is one of the greatest factors preventing the NCAA from going after rule-breakers.
The fraternity of coaches has done more to both prevent a storm of false accusations and protect actual rule-breakers than any other factor. Throw in the fact that small schools are reluctant to blow the whistle on big schools because they’re skeptical that anything will come of it and we’re a long way from the Doomsday scenario of coaches convincing recruits to concoct false claims of serious recruiting violations.
Future Longhorn receiver?
The NCAA unveiled their plans for a 68-team basketball tournament.
Two of the early games will match the tournament's lowest seeds, Nos. 65 through 68. The other two games will include the last four at-large qualifiers.
The format appears to be a compromise. Including the lowest at-large teams will probably prevent mid-majors from being over-represented in the first round, but it could also mean that two teams from bigger conferences - those generally seeded between 11th and 13th - will be out before the tournament really gets going.
The tournament should be a lot more interesting.
For months now college basketball purists have feared that adding teams to the NCAA tournament would damage one of the greatest events in all of sports.
But now that the new format has been announced, it hardly seems as if the March Madness experience will take a step back. Instead, the NCAA tournament may have improved.
Just can't get enough of Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit? ESPN GameDay is expanding to three hours next season.
Coming to a cable provider near you soon.
The University of Texas could launch its own TV channel in the summer of 2011.
The Universities of Oklahoma and Missouri might not be far behind.
Much about schools' own networks remains uncertain, from how fans will watch to what live TV rights will be available.
But Big 12 school officials said they're planning on networks coming soon and becoming a profit-earning tool for the university.
"In our minds, it's more than just a concept," OU athletic director Joe Castiglione said. "It's something that we hope will eventually become a reality."
Should college athletes get paid for their likeness on video games?
Whether those likenesses are part of a college athletes' intellectual property is a fundamental issue in a class-action lawsuit filed by Keller against the NCAA and EA Sports. The issue has been ongoing for more than a year, and likely won't be resolved anytime soon. The newest version of the game will be released on Tuesday, complete with team rosters similar to those that will play on Saturdays this autumn.
"Something needed to change about how college football players were being taken advantage of with this game," Keller said. "College football players, and college athletes in general, they work really hard and to be taken advantage of by this game. I felt we could win this thing."
A great moment in Texas history. The Longhorns beat #15 Oklahoma in 1989.
From MBTF: Texas 28, #15 Oklahoma 24
Saturday, October 14, 1989
Texas hadn't beaten Oklahoma since 1983, and it looked as though that streak would stay intact when freshman QB Peter Gardere broke the UT huddle at the Longhorns 34-yard-line with 3:42 left. Having seen its 21-7 halftime lead turn into a 24-21 Sooners advantage, the UT half of the Cotton Bowl rallied behind the Longhorns for one last drive. Four Gardere completions later, the Horns were at the Oklahoma 25-yard-line with a little more than two minutes left in the game. Then, on second-and-10, Gardere rifled a strike to an outstretched Johnny Walker (right) at the goal line for the winning score. On the seven-play drive, Gardere went 5-of-5 for 58 yards. Two Wayne Clements field goals, a 44-yard TD run with a fumbled punt by Mical Padgett, a Gardere to Tony Jones TD pass and a two-point conversion after a blocked PAT rounded out the UT scoring on the wild afternoon. Gardere would go on to defeat OU three more times, making him the first quarterback in Texas history to lead the Longhorns to four wins against the Sooners.
The Lost Lettermen is counting down the top 100 college football traditions. They are at #38, but Texas has already made the list.
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