BIG QUESTION
Would the Big Ten welcome OU?
OU in the Big Ten doesn’t sound right.
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. Those are schools that have little in common with the Sooners. Culturally. Geographically. Historically. Frankly, outside Nebraska (an epic rivalry) and Iowa (Bob Stoops), there’s little linking OU to the Big Ten.
But as I wrote the other day, if the Sooners ever leave the Big 12, the Big Ten would be the destination of choice. But contrary to what I wrote the other day, getting to the Big Ten might not be as difficult as thought.
A Big Ten professor who follows college football wrote me to dispute the accepted dogma that the Big Ten would only consider members of the Association of American Universities, an elite academic organization.
He pointed out not only Michigan State’s admission to the Big Ten in 1953 (11 years before the Spartans were granted AAU membership), but the Big Ten’s frequent interest in adding Notre Dame, which also is not an AAU member.
Nebraska was an AAU member when granted Big Ten membership in 2010 but was voted out of the organization in 2011, based mainly on competitive research financing and the share of faculty in the National Academies. The Big Ten professor said Big Ten
presidents knew in 2010 that Nebraska was in danger of losing its AAU membership, and then Nebraska-chancellor Harvey Perlman admitted his school had known for a decade that its AAU status was in peril.
My professor source asks a solid question. Why would the Big Ten vote in a Nebraska it knew was headed out of the AAU but not an OU that has made significant academic strides over the last quarter century and long has had designs of its own on AAU membership?
Frankly, all the academic snobbery stuff is above my understanding. But are there other impediments should the Sooners seek Big Ten membership?
Well, a partner is mandatory, preferably from this part of the country. And that means either Texas or Kansas (both of which are AAU members, by the way). Either would fulfill the Big Ten’s apparent requirements of new markets. Either, with OU, would provide an easy divisional break, with the Sooners and either Texas or KU joining Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Northwestern. And OU in a Big Ten West would help balance what is clearly an inequity, with the Big Ten East currently a far-superior football division.
A friend in the business has been telling me for years that OU and Texas appeal to the Big Ten and its networks, because they would more easily provide night games late in the season. I don’t know. Seems like networks tell football teams when to play regardless of 20-degree November nights. But maybe that’s a factor.
Going into the Big Ten with Kansas would cause the Sooners immediate problems. They would be given a nine-game conference schedule and be left with two traditional nonconference opponents in OSU and Texas.
No way would the Sooners want to end their Dallas tradition with Texas, and no way could the Sooners end Bedlam. Getting the legislature to sign off on a move to the Big Ten would be difficult enough, much less if it came with the demise of Bedlam.
Going into the Big Ten with Texas would cause less stress.
The Big Ten would not be as beneficial for OU football as membership in the Big 12, the SEC or the Pac-12. The Sooners don’t recruit in Big Ten territory. Never have to any extent. The Big Ten’s bowl games, centered in California and Florida, would be problematic. A conference championship game in Indianapolis has little appeal compared to JerryWorld in Arlington.
But the academic prestige that comes with the Big Ten transforms a university. I’ve written before about Nebraska’s increased status, even without AAU membership. OU in the Big Ten would cause wild celebration in the academic centers of campus.
My Big Ten professor says that OU and Nebraska are “virtually identical” academically. I don’t know if that’s true. But the professor said that if Big Ten presidents “view Nebraska, with their level of academics, as someone with whom they wish to associate, I cannot imagine why Oklahoma would not be a school that they would welcome.”
Like I wrote the other day. OU’s preference is to remain in the Big 12 and for the Big 12 to thrive. But if change is coming, don’t sleep on the Big Ten.