Finally official: Welcome to the Big 12, WVU

But you probably already know that by now.

The announcement is that WVU will be joining the B12 this July and will compete starting with the 2012-2013 academic year.

The BEast is saying not so fast, we've got a 27 month exit clock that started today. Will be interesting how this is resolved.

WVU's exit fee is still just $5M instead of the $10M that the BEast membership agreed to earlier this month because the BEast has not yet succeeded in getting any new members to join. They are apparently really going after Navy, AFA and Boise State (the last two FB only) , but haven't convinced them yet.

I do wish the B12 had added UofL as well, as that would have left the BEast with only Rutgers, UConn, USF and Cincy as FBS teams. Although not openly at the moment, word is that UConn and Rutgers are still looking around. UConn still wants to join the ACC badly, and Rutgers (official name "Rutgers,The State University of New Jersey" ) would like having a new BCS home if the BEast is not going to be a viable one. With its football status so fragile, it seems really unlikely that schools with solid FB programs would want to join the BEast, which could still continue as a conference for all its other sports, especially hoops. Wouldn't it be great news if the ACC surprised everyone again with an announcement that it was going to 16 and Rutgers and UConn were going to fill the ACC gaps on the eastern seaboard? (If that happened, the only Atlantic coast states without an ACC member would be Delaware, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine.) It would ensure the ACC of its continued viability as a BCS conference, and effectively kill the BEast as one. Ah, perchance to dream...

Quick side note: watching the World Series while writing this, and the announcers just ran an ad for the Pac12 (Dec 2) and B1G (Dec3) first ever championship games. Oh, they love that those guys have one now. How long will it take "our" conference to realize it needs to live up to its name and get back to at least 12 so it can have one again?

Back on topic --

On top of this, there is a lot of talk that although the conference is stopping at 10 now, they are still talking with Notre Dame about pulling its other sports from the unstable BEast and bringing them to the B12. While ND FB would stay independent, there is talk that ND could commit to 4 to 6 non-conference games each year against B12 teams so that everyone in the B12 got a chance to split $$$ with ND. This is actually not that far fetched an idea, as ND already has agreed to H&A games with Texas and OU in the not too distant future (I forget the years, sorry). It would mean a 20 game basketball regular season unless they went to unbalanced pods for hoops or agreed to alternate playing certain programs round robin and others just once a year to keep it to 18. Not unworkable, though.

I'm not crazy about this idea, but the big push behind it is to give ND a place for its FB program should ND decide to actually go "all in" with a conference. Sort of an insurance policy for ND if the BCS landscape changes (e.g., playoffs) or if a deal with the B12 in 6 years would actually be sweeter than staying independent. It would also allow ND to continue snubbing the B1G at the same time (apparently there is some old Hatfield-McCoy thing between ND and the B1G). Of course, the ACC would like ND, too, but like the B1G, the ACC is an "all or nothing" conference (per ACC Comm Swofford).

Still nothing yet from mOO about leaving. Deaton leaves to give the keynote speech at a conference in India next week and is supposed to be gone 1-9 Nov. Hard to believe something won't be announced before he leaves, since it's even harder to believe they would announce anything while he was out of the country. Since he will be crossing the International Date Line, he will have to leave on 30 Oct to be there the day before the conference starts in order to try to get acclimated to the time difference.

That means mOO has to announce tomorrow (Sat 29 Oct) if it's going to do so before he leaves.

It seems likely that will happen. The SEC has a welcome notice all set to go. It was erroneously posted on the SEC website by the webvendor, then taken down ASAP, but not before it got spotted. You can read it in its entirety at Matt Tait's Realignment Today blog update (see the 9:19am posting). I fully expect the news to be announced before he leaves.

But what will it mean if there is no announcement before he leaves?

Kietzmann (WHB 810am) has reported his sources told him Deaton enterer the Curators meeting wanting to keep mOO in the B12, but MO Gov. Jay Nixon's appointed curators dominated the meeting and strong-armed Deaton into going to the SEC. The next day Deaton announced that there were legalities to be worked out that might take a couple of days or could take a couple of weeks. All of his talk since then has intimated that mOO is gone. Just as all his earlier talk was about saving the B12.

Wouldn't it be something if this is really all a stall by Deaton because, to borrow his words, his head *and* his heart tell him mOO should stay, but only if the conference can be forced back to 12 despite the wishes of Texas, OU, whoever? And has the B12 accepting WVU starting next July given him the leverage he wants to force the issue with the conference?

I don't envy Deaton, as I see him traveling between Scylla and Charybdis here.

If he keeps mOO in, short term for certain he will catch all sorts of grief, and possibly even lose his job.
If he takes mOO out and it disappears into the lower regions of the SEC and out of national prominence (as their Texas recruiting pipeline dries up and they fail to quickly establish reecruiting connections in the southeast and eastern US), he will be praised for now but later and forever remembered as the Man Who Made The Mistake.
Either way he stands to lose big time.

And is Chuck Neinas really a sly old dog?

Despite the B12 notice of a 10 team conference for next year that did not include mOO, in his press conference today he repeated that mOO was still a B12 member until mOO announced it was leaving.

Is this Neinas telling mOO "Hey, you still belong, and you know, we think we'll be able to forge this deal with ND that you really don't want to miss out on, do you?"

With adding WVU and mOO staying, there would be 11 teams, plus ND every year for hoops and perhaps twice every 6 year for FB -- and more if circumstances eventually led ND to add FB as well.

This thing may just have more twists to it than a James Patterson mystery.

In closing, congratulations to the World Champion St Louis Cardinals.

Hmm, Missouri beats Texas.

Pay attention, mOO.

---

"So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late" -- Bob Dylan
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. - Mark Twain, "Innocents Abroad"
"Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum... Still it's a real good bet the best is yet to come." song sung by Sheahon Zenger, 2011-12-09.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2011 10:33PM by HawkErrant.