Making time for golf's big thing
Spieth deserves to shove Big 12 football aside for a few minutes.
Pay no mind to what DeAndre Jordan did to Mark Cuban.
There are worse places to be than Dallas.
In the interest of full disclosure, I spent part of Monday’s Big 12 media days watching Jordan Spieth on my MacBook Pro while half of the conference’s head football coaching population held court at the downtown Omni.
Spieth won’t win a Grand Slam this year, but he gave us yet another indication why he is the next big thing in golf.
Or with Rory McIlroy’s foot woes, let’s change that to the current big thing in golf.
Spieth is there now and will be there for years to come.
Another admission since we’re in the truth tree: After Spieth failed to join the British Open playoffff, I logged offff and headed for the lunch room. No offffffffffffense to Louis Oosthuizen, Marc Leishman and 2015 champion Zach Johnson, but the biggest question coming
out of the British Open was if Spieth could match SerenaWilliams by winning three of the first four majors in his sport. Once he was out of the running, so was I — and probably many in the casual American golf viewing public.
Sorry, golf purist. Tiger spoiled us, and Jordan’s well on his way to doing the same.
In December, Big 12 commish Bob Bowlsby was peppered with questions about TCU and Baylor getting left out of the inaugural College Football Playoff and famously said he wished the powers that be on the selection committee had told him a lack of a conference championship game would hurt the Big 12’s cause.
Monday’s presser wasn’t as much about what can only be called a slight, but in the time that has passed, the Big 12 hasn’t done anything to help its position. There appear to be no plans for expansion, which opens the door to history repeating itself. That is, unless the NCAA amends the rule that a league needs at least 12 teams to have a title game.
“The deregulation process is moving its way through the system,” Bowlsby said. “I think we’ll have the prerogative at some point in time to consider and implement a playoff game if we choose to.”
So there won’t be a championship game this year, but there might be one down the line. Let’s hope Bowlsby is right about that and wrong about an expansion of the playoff field to eight teams not happening anytime soon.
New Kansas coach David Beaty had the enthusiasm of a third-grader on the first day of school. He was easily the most excited of Monday’s interviewees, going as far as to say: “Jayhawks love their football. They really do.” Even more impressive was him saying it with a straight face.
KU is easily the most challenging football job in the Big 12. The team is perennially a league doormat and one of two Big 12 programs — Iowa State is the other — in which football is clearly behind basketball in the campus pecking order.
With that said, let’s allow Beaty his time to bask in the bottomless reservoir of positivity that is the preseason. Hope springs eternal. At least until kickoff. Having attended a few Big 12 media days in my day, I always wondered why the conference insists on having the Texas and Oklahoma head coaches on the same day (usually the second day).
This year is no different for the Sooners and Horns, long the two flagship schools of the Big 12. Bob Stoops and Charlie Strong are both scheduled for Tuesday. Monday’s session was fine with Kliff Kingsbury, Gary Patterson and the ageless Bill Snyder, but wouldn’t it be cool to give Texas and OU fans a look at the other side on their team’s off day? Wouldn’t you like to see the big dogs on separate days?
On second thought, maybe the Big 12 had it figured out all along. They did separate Patterson and Baylor’s Art Briles, after all. There is nothing to suggest they won’t once again be the big dogs this fall.