Left for dead in ’10, Big 12 might have saved this year

Ten summers ago, Nebraska and Colorado left the Big 12 Conference. A year later, Missouri and Texas A&M fled, too.

The conference was in tatters. In its early days, the Big 12 was on the same prestige plane as the Southeastern Conference. But a decade ago, the Big 12’s future was in jeopardy and its status had cratered.

Fast-forward to the middle of this month, when Big 12 presidents met with the fate of college football in their hands. The Big Ten and Pac-12 had scrapped the fall season. The Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences had declared their intentions to keep forging on. The Big 12 was the swing league. If the Big 12 had packed up the shoulder pads, some say all of college football would have had to surrender to the coronavirus.

That’s a hard concept to consider. I personally think the SEC would find a way to play in a nuclear winter. But better college football minds than mine had the season sitting in Big 12 hands.

If three of the Power Five conferences had set sail for spring football, the SEC and ACC might have had to acquiesce. For appearances as much as anything. The Pac-12 and Big Ten are the high brows of the major conferences; if they had been joined by a league outside the snobbish circle, the pressure on the SEC and ACC would have been mighty.

The Big 12 voted to try to play. It might not stick. The virus could spread across campuses to where not even Alabama will try. Crimson Tide athletic director Greg Byrne tweeted a photo of ’Bama students congregating en masse, unmasked, last weekend. “Who wants college sports this fall??” he wrote. “Obviously not these people!! We’ve got to do better than this for each other and our campus community…”

But Alabama and the SEC have a chance at a season, perhaps because the Big 12 said let’s go.

What a transformation. A league left for dead has not only stabilized but climbed past the Pac-12 and ACC in revenue and conferences’ status, reaching a position of influence. Clemson has turned into Alabama’s lone peer and carries the entire ACC, but the Tigers’ roar is offset by a variety of schools that have limited football interest.

The Power Five conferences showed some solidarity early in the pandemic but not much later.

“Anytime anybody at any level has decided they weren’t going to play or that they were going to do something different, it affects us,” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “I don’t know that we would want to be the only college football conference playing.”

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said much the same thing when asked by reporters about potentially playing solo as a Power Five league. “I don’t think that’s the right direction, really,” Sankey said. “Could we? Certainly. (But) there’s a difference between can you do something and should you do something in life.”

The SEC is the unquestioned king of college football. The Big 12’s recovery from the intensive care unit was helped by its association with the conference that pilfered Mizzou and Texas A&M. The Big 12 and SEC went partners on the Sugar Bowl in 2012. That was a sign of status. The Big 12 was hanging out with the cool kids.

The Big 12’s rising prominence has been slowed by a lack of College Football Playoff success. The league has qualified for four of the six playoffs, all by the Sooners, but Oklahoma has lost all four trips to the semifinals.

That must change for the Big 12 to stand taller.

But the conference that almost self-combusted is indeed standing. Even to the point that it might have saved the college football season.