Big 12 Football Analysis
The Universities of Oklahoma and Texas are headed for the Southeastern Athletic Conference effective July 1, 2024, one year earlier than previous agreements between the schools, the SEC, and the Big 12 Conference. The 2023 football season, the 2023-24 basketball seasons, and the 2024 spring sports (including women’s softball) will be the final campaigns for the University of Oklahoma and the Big 12, and possibly an end to competition between O.U. and Oklahoma State.
Reaching the age of 83, I regret that the Big 12 as an academic and athletic alliance of regionally and culturally affiliated schools, as I have known it, will have expired. That comes also from the joining of new institutions that only mildly or remotely belong in the Big 12. An explanation is in order.
Athletic Conferences, at their inception, were mostly about academics, not athletics. “The Conference of Faculty Athletic Representatives,” was created in 1896 to assist affiliated institutions in gaining control over intercollegiate sports, a medium that was carried by players bearing the name of the colleges, but who were playing outside control of the institutions they purported to represent. Players often participated who were not students, and were even being paid to play (a violation of that era’s amateur code).
So, a “Conference” was an attempt to define student eligibility (including rules on grades and academic progress), residency, travel, and awards. It was important that cultural and social norms of the region in which the competition was held be used, and members should be close for competition between known opponents.
That seven member “Conference,” eventually became the “Western Conference.” And when membership grew, it became known as the “Big 9” and, by 1916, the “Big 10.” By then, universities in other parts of the U. S. concerned with academics began joining conferences.
In 1907, six Midwestern colleges united to create the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association. By 1925, their number had grown to eleven, including O.U. and Oklahoma State. Six schools with larger budgets, including Oklahoma, left the League in 1928 to create the “Big 6.” With the addition of the University of Colorado in 1949, it grew to seven, and in 1959 to eight (with the addition of Oklahoma State). From there, the Big 8 in 1994 collapsed into the Big 12 in order to admit four schools from the defunct Southwest Conference.
Following the departure of four allied institutions between 2006 and 2012, the Big 12 held modestly to its regional identity through the addition in 2012 of Texas Christian and West Virginia.
I acquired my appetite for college sports through radio broadcasts of Oklahoma’s 1948 Big 6 basketball champions and national basketball finalists, with heroes like Norm Pilgrim, Tom Churchill, and Ted Owens. I bowdlerized the name “Oklahoma O.U.” as my first fanciful college team.
That fall, I found that the Big 6 had a football team when I saw the Santa Clara-Oklahoma football score emblazoned on the mast of my Grand Dad’s Oklahoman. By the 1949 Sugar Bowl of O. U. 14, North Carolina 6. I was hooked on O. U. football.
When the Big 6 became the Big 7, a conference synonymous with Bud Wilkinson’s Sooners, Oklahoma won every football title of the incipient conferences from 1946 through 1959. I relished watching Tuesday’s “Big 7 game of the Week,” sponsored by Champlin Oil Company. Their motto, “A Great Name in the Great Plains” said it all. The Big 7 was The Conference of the Great Plains. Oklahoma State’s admission added to that regional luster with its own champions. I rooted for whoever carried the Big 8 banner. And when the Big 8 finished 1, 2, 3 in the final 1971 AP football poll, that pride was solid.
The 1994 merger with the Southwest Conference was a mild departure. But all those institutions were regionally accredited, and their proximity did make regional and cultural sense. But the Big 12 soon began to loosen its regional identity. Texas schools were supported as being of our own kind. But in the early 2000’s we lost Great Plains stalwarts Nebraska and Colorado, followed by Big 6 charter member Missouri.
Big 12 ties were now stretched. TCU was OK (with its largest Baptist Student Ministry in Texas). West Virginia was a problem. But, West Virginia had a lot of good ol’ boys and girls; and they had Wednesday prayer meetings in those hills. So the Mountaineers also became one of our own.
Now comes Brigham Young, a commuter school named Houston University, accompanied by Cincinnati and Central Florida. Central Florida? Central Florida was a Juco not too long ago; Cincinnati is a town.
Well, at least Brigham Young students behave themselves (we hear), and they live in the Mountains (like West Virginia does), and the Rockies are a barrier to the dreaded west coast. So, alright to BYU. And Cincinnati, you have to swallow. At least it’s closer to the Midwest plains than West Virginia.
But, Central Florida is a region buster. You may as well ask the dreaded west coast apostates of Oregon and Washington. Then it becomes all about football and TV revenue. (Which I guess it already is).
Only the Kansas schools and Iowa State remain from the old Big 6, together with Oklahoma State from the Big 8.
And now comes Brett Yormark, the new executive head of the Big 12, a public relations expert with no ties to academe, nor to athletics. Yormark appears intent to completely reconfigure the Big 12.
And nothing about regional familiarity, academic viability, and Wednesday night prayer meetings.
(Well, the latter never was, anyway).
Dr. Donald Rominger has the M. A. from the University of Oklahoma and a Ph. D. in history from Oklahoma State. He was a college head football coach for five years, athletics director for two and academic dean for 18.
