Pretty innocuous, really. Some relevant clips:TraditionKU wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 1:13 pm Malinger has a new piece out in the kc star about Big12 turmoil
behind paywall tho
And still another: “Every league is structured similarly to what ours is. There’s three or four bell cows and there’s the rest.”
That last line is an unintentional self-own, because who are the Big 12’s bell cows now? Oklahoma State, which has always been walking uphill in chasing the Sooners? Baylor, which has had some success in football and basketball but lacks regional or national pull? Kansas, which now has the largest known athletic budget in the conference (private schools like Baylor aren’t included), but stinks out loud at football?
. . .
They’re together, for now, but nobody from any of these schools can swear that this is sustainable.
Recently, Kansas athletic director Travis Goff said the quiet part out loud when he was asked if the Big 12 adding four new members closed the door on KU being open to other conversations.
“No,” he said. “The beauty of it is, is when you think about being focused on what’s best for Kansas, that applies to anything we do. It applies to conference affiliation …”
That was only reinforced this week. One Big 12 source said he spent part of the basketball media day “looking around the room and wondering who’s working who.” Another, told that at least one insider gave the league less than two years before it would inevitably experience another shakeup, responded: “I don’t know, but it’s not up to us and that’s the problem.”
. . .
The answers for KU and K-State are … uncomfortable.
For Kansas, the reality is that they’re behind schools like Rutgers, Mississippi State, Indiana and Missouri in revenue. The Jayhawk is a strong national brand, the AAU designation matters and the basketball program is a certified giant. But that’s made almost meaningless by KU’s performance in football, which determines the structure of power in college sports.
K-State’s reality is even more frustrating. KSU has done everything right — good facilities, strong ticket sales, bowl games in nine of the last 10 non-COVID seasons. But because K-State operates with the smallest known budget in the Big 12, in part because of a geographic disadvantage that’s simply out of their control, the Wildcats could be pushed to the wrong side of the fault line.
In other words, KU needs football to be un-embarrassing fast (which could be made more difficult by realignment and the NCAA’s new transfer rules); and K-State might benefit from some good ol’ fashioned politicking — KSU’s strengths and successes could be made better known, and perhaps thus more widely accepted.
