60 days (give or take a few hours).
The future.
Kirk Bohls has some predictions for the 2010 season. This one is my favorite.
Texas should win the Big 12, assuming Garrett Gilbert only has one bad day, and it doesn't fall on Oct. 2. If it does, Oklahoma might win the conference title, if it can fix its cornerback dilemma and find an offensive lineman or two who can stay healthy for an entire season.
Happy, happy day! A point guard.
Some Texas Longhorns' basketball fans likely went into hiding after last season when the team fell from the top of the national polls to a dispiriting first-round exit from the NCAA tournament.
Myck Kabongo, UT's point guard of the future, said he isn't worried in the least.
"Every team is going to have bad stretches," he said in San Antonio earlier this week. "You're not going to win every game. It's part of basketball. We've got to rebound this year. I'm pretty sure the boys are going to be all right."
A little humor at our expense. Very little humor.
Texas is trying to create its own cable sports channel, right?
Well, even ESPN has things on its stable of networks that aren’t exactly considered sports and the Longhorns network could undoubtedly do the same.
Just imagine how many hours of programming can be filled with court proceedings for the numerous current or former Texas athletes that have run afoul of the law. Then you could follow-up with true life stories about these same athletes working on getting their lives back on track.
There is no freedom of speech in the Big 12. Someone needs to tell Tommy Tuberville.
New Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville has beenpublicly reprimanded by the Big 12 after an interview in which he questioned thefuture of the conference.
The Big 12, which lost two members last month, issued the reprimand Fridaysaying Tuberville violated a conference standard that prohibits public criticismof members.
Tuberville is in touch with reality. Beebe, not so much.
My guess is, though, if we polled Big 12 fans and asked them whether Tuberville or Beebe is more in touch with reality, the coach would win in a landslide. For being a rookie in the conference, Tuberville seems to understand the lay of the land. The Big 12 is still the unhappy marriage that stays together only for the joint coverage.
A small history review as an intro to the next article link...In case you have forgotten your World History courses at UT.
Let them eat cake. Beebe as Louis XVI.
When Dan Beebe addressed the media one month ago today, he sounded like Louis XVI defending the French monarchy while the third estate tore cobblestones from the streets of Paris. His voice betrayed exhaustion and defeat. With Colorado and Nebraska already announcing their departure from the Big 12 Conference and most of the South Division peaking out the door, the commissioner's words insisted he had hope for the league, but his tone sent another message.
The Dallas Morning News got Dan Beebe's last ditch efforts to keep the conference alive.
Entitled "The Case for the Big 12 Conference," Beebe implored the leadership for a renewed commitment and investment in the league. He explored the division of revenue – a sticking point for many in the Big 12 because TV revenues are distributed unevenly – and touted that the Pac-10's revenue distribution results in a more disparate situation than in the Big 12. "In most years USC receives twice that of Washington State," Beebe wrote.
Beebe stated his optimism for increased revenues that future TV negotiations would bring the conference and of Fox's "bullishness" about competing for the league's rights.
Beebe painted the Big Ten as a risky league to join because of its geographic footprint in the upper Midwest, where population is declining.
As for the Pac-10, Beebe warned against the time zone and travel issues and even the student-athlete and fan experience. "The facilities and fair weather fans are a disappointment," Beebe wrote.
A collateral consideration, Beebe wrote, was that the creation of a few "mega-conferences" may result in more governmental, legal and public scrutiny, along with tax consequences and pressure to pay student-athletes.
They stopped the bleeding but didn't heal the patient.
The choice to save the Big 12 will reverberate far beyond its geographic footprint. The sudden flurry of realignment possibilities rang alarm bells at the highest levels of college athletics. Suddenly, the idea of even fewer conferences holding most of the power seemed quite realistic. Even the possibility of the most powerful conferences breaking free from the NCAA didn't seem so far-fetched anymore. We always knew money drove the decisions in big-time college sports, but never had that fact been so nakedly obvious. "There was no way," one high-ranking NCAA source said, "to tell how far this thing was going to go."
Now, thanks to Texas and Beebe and the conference that wouldn't die, the rolling ball of butcher knives has stopped. Are college sports better off? Maybe. That remains to be seen. But at least they're stable.
For now.
Lee Croso thinks the Big 12 will survive. He just didn't bother to say how long.
Q: Will the Big 12 survive with 10 teams?
A: Yes. It’s good where it is now. Because now Texas and Oklahoma don’t have to worry about the conference championship game, and it makes it easier for them to get to the national championship.
Provided, of course, the Big 12 gets the TV money it thinks it can get.
Tom Osbourne can stop whining for a few minutes. Some surprising numbers.
Which Big 12 school earned the greatest amount of conference-delivered cash in the last year for which government figures are available?
Hint: It’s not Texas.
Which Big 12 North school topped that list?
If you answered Nebraska, you’d be wrong.
The correct responses are Oklahoma and Kansas, which may surprise those who believe that Big 12 deposits are laundered through the Austin branch of the Bank of Texas.
Fox Sports Southwest has a Q&A with Poke Kendall Hunter.
Together again. Only the Salt Lake Tribune would care about the Colorado-Utah rivalry.
Iowa State receiver Darius Reynolds has some catching up to do.
Reynolds, so good before getting to Iowa State that his brother nicknamed him "Money," missed most of last season after breaking a bone in his left leg. He’s healthy now, which means entertaining, long pass routes are back in the playbook for the Sept. 2 opener against Northern Illinois at Jack Trice Stadium.
"I didn’t get to run any routes last year, so the fans haven’t seen me go deep," Reynolds said. "All they really got to see were screens and me trying to make some guys miss."
Some guy names Don Best isn't too impressed with most of the Big 12.
Nobody is expecting too much out of the rest of the teams in the Big XII, and the oddsmakers have come up with the following betting lines; Kansas State (+800), Texas Tech (+1200), Colorado (+1200), Kansas (+1500), Baylor (+2000), Iowa State (+3000).
Tom Osbourne on the Jim Rome show.
"It was mainly fit, culture and just a feeling that the Big Ten was stable [and] was going to be there for the next 50 or 100 years."
Barking Carnival is planning a nice send-off for the Cornhuskers.
Damn. I just hate when I have to say something good about a Land Thief.
Quinton Carter is known around college football as a big hitter and a ball hawk, but when the Oklahoma free safety shows up at KinderCare every Wednesday afternoon, no one is impressed by his teeth-rattling hits or his game-changing interceptions.
He has founded a nonprofit charitable foundation that is changing lives not only in Norman but also back home in Las Vegas. He is mentoring at-risk kids. He is supporting in-need dads. He is doing football camps.
While athletes starting foundations is nothing new, most don't do so until they're in the pros.
Carter is still in college.
If you like stats, Barking Carnival is the place for you.
The NCAA settles on 68.
The NCAA has settled on the format for the new 68-team men’sbasketball tournament, though the announcement isn’t scheduled until sometimenext week.
The Division I men’s basketball committee reached its decision afterstudying a number of options and discussing feedback during meetings in Chicago,said David Worlock, associate director of the March Madness tournament.
Realignment is just a game of ugly chicken.
It quickly lapsed from musical chairs to an ugly game of chicken.
No one mistakes it for calm. Especially not Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick.
"This isn't over," said the 56-year-old former lawyer with un-lawyer-like directness. "That's not to suggest there's anything near term. I just believe that all the forces that were in play this time continue to exist, and will continue to exist through the range of my career at least. This will be back around."
Corporate dollars continue to creep into college sports.
Leave concussions to the professionals.
When an NCAA panel recommended requiring all schools to form a plan for how they handle concussions, it also asked schools to spell out who exactly has the authority to send an athlete back to practice or games.
The hope is to address two issues. First, it would encourage schools to ensure a medical staff member specifically trained to diagnose and treat concussions sees athletes with potential head injuries. Second, it would place the return-to-play decision at the hands of a medical staff member, rather than a coach.
Coaches don't like being singled out in NCAA academic data.
John Brady has been the basketball coach at Arkansas State for two seasons, and he's facing a predicament. Although the Red Wolves are improving on the court, their academic progress rate is well below the NCAA's benchmark, so the team was recently docked a scholarship and hit with a practice time restriction.
And now, the NCAA is about to publish a database of APR figures for individual coaches – a very public black eye for those with poor numbers. To Brady, it seems a bit harsh.
Berry Tramel thinks college basketball coaches are amusing.
College coaches crack me up. Basketball coaches more so than football coaches.
The NCAA is about to publish a database of APR figures for individual coaches. APR is academic progress rating, which the NCAA has used for a few years to monitor a program’s performance in the classroom. Some schools have been decked scholarships for a poor APR.
So let me get this straight. When a program thrives, and reaches Final Fours and wins NCAA championships, the head coach is rewarded with pronounced financial considerations. But when something goes wrong, it’s time to spread the blame.
Mike Leach is fishing and writing a book.
When Mike Leach went fishing with former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson last year in South Florida, little did he know that was a precursor to his own way of life.
Still fishing for answers on why he was relieved of his head football coaching duties at Texas Tech on Dec. 30, Leach has become arguably the most recognizable beach bum in his new hometown of Key West, Fla.
"I'm just hanging down here and having a great time down here," Leach said. "If I move down here long-term, that's great. I've got all my kids' sports and their school activities to go to, and I'm doing good. We're riding our bikes around and are just living life, and I'll check out what's down the road."
And finally...
An update on former OU player and fellow Texan Corey Wilson. Crimson and Cream Machine has the details on how to help.
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