NORMAN — On the one hand, it all seems to happen so fast. On the other, Oklahoma opens the football season Sept. 4, so maybe it’s about time college football take center stage.
For the Big 12, that happens Monday when Nebraska, Baylor, Iowa State and Texas A&M take the stage, followed by Missouri, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Texas Tech on Tuesday, followed by Kansas, the Sooners, Colorado and Texas on Wednesday.
I’ve been to a bunch of these things and here’s one of the recurring dynamics.
The coaches are there to talk about their players. The players are there to talk about the team.
Everybody’s optimistic, unless they’re in the national championship race, under which circumstances the coach might go the other way, tamping down expectations.
The reporters, print and electronic, are there for some of that, but not all of that. They’re there to get their stories. And more than any other year, those stories matter.
Maybe every year coaches get questions about a potential playoff, the equity or lack of it concerning conference championship games and the strength of their conference against the rest. But those are yawners this time around.
The conference just completed the most eventful offseason since its inception. Five southern schools were considered headed to the Pac-10 and one, Texas A&M, to the SEC.
Meanwhile, Nebraska and Colorado have already divorced the conference and accepted an engagement for another. They just haven’t packed up and left yet.
All of these things have been addressed by nothing more than press release (and unnamed sources). Well, the firing line is coming and it’s about time.
The great question is whether Bob Stoops, Mac Brown and Mike Sherman will come out and agree their schools, OU, Texas and Texas A&M, deserve the biggest three pieces of the conference pie as far as the eye can see. Or, if Bill Snyder, Mike Gundy, Turner Gill and the rest of their small market conference brethren agree the big dogs should be getting the bigger allowance.
Rookie Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville committed a major-league gaffe after the conference was saved at the last minute. And by “gaffe” I mean he said what he really thought.
“I don’t think this conference will last long because there is too much disparity between all the teams,” he said. “In the SEC, for instance, Vanderbilt makes as much money in the television contract as Florida. … Everybody is on the same page.”
After he said it, Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe reprimanded him for voicing comments that “were unfortunate and contrary to the very strong feelings of unity expressed publicly and privately by the Big 12 Board of Directors and athletic directors.”
It’s all richer than an angel food cake.
Beebe and the 10 non-lame duck institutions in the conference heroically not only kept the Big 12 together, but saved college football as we know it by coming to their 11th-hour agreement. And yet they did it by agreeing, arguably, to a recipe for disaster.
Considering the reprimand handed Tuberville, they make seek to say absolutely nothing and many of them, Bob Stoops for instance, may have no problem delivering such empty goods.
But Dan Hawkins and Bo Pelini, skippers at Colorado and Nebraska, have little to lose. And, for crying out loud, at least a few coaches have to know an intelligent question deserves an intelligent answer.
Perhaps everybody might realize the whole idea for “media days” is to, you know, answer a few questions from the media.
If we’re all in for a 12-team stonewalling, they might as well put together one big press packet and call it a day.
We’ll see.
Clay Horning 366-3526 cfhorning@normantranscript.com
