send lawyers, guns, and money ...

"The sh*t has hit the fan!”

-- Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”

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Well, the sh*t has hit the fan, hasn’t it?

I had intended for the first post in a couple weeks to be a massive mailbag, but instead, I think I’ll break this into a number of smaller posts, so that if you don’t care about the apparent end of the Big XII, or the end of “Lost”, or the Bucks draft, or 350,001st planning, or anything else this somewhat insane brain of mine thinks up, then you can skip it.

Earlier today, Big XII North doormat Colorado became the first to officially jump off the HMS Big XII, bailing to become the 11th team in the (now misnamed) Pac 10. Tomorrow, it is widely expected that Nebraska will bail on the rapidly sinking conference, and officially join the (long-term misnamed) Big 10 as their 12th school.

And depending on which rumors, blogs, or semi-reputable websites you read, the entire Big XII South is ready to bolt for parts unknown.

There’s a very real probability that come Monday morning, the Big XII will be down to four schools: Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, and Iowa State.

Everyone seems to have a theory as to what caused the Big XII to reach this point. Yahoo! Sports Dan Wetzel believes it is when Big XII commish (and all around f*cking idiot) Dan Beebe voted no on the and-one proposal two years ago. I argue he’s got the general timeframe right, but the wrong reason.

The Big XII was finished when Dr. Tom came in from retirement in 2007, put “Surrender” Steve Pederson out to pasture, fired “Sur” William Callahan, and made it his personal mission in life to restore Nebraska football to what it once was.

Once Dr. Tom returned, and Nebraska set out to regain its spot atop the Big XII mountain, this conference was doomed. Not just because Texas wasn’t going to stand by and see their power base erode. Especially to a rival they’d already vanquished. But because once Dr. Tom returned, tradition mattered again. The way things were had value again. And the only way things could return to how they used to be … was to knock Texas off the top rung.

The final nail in the coffin that holds the decaying corpse of this conference was the Big XII Title Game last December. We all remember it. The heavily favored Texas Longhorns, playing essentially a home game, a layup victory away from playing for the national title. All they had to do was beat the “best of the worst”, the North champion Cornhuskers.

As I noted at the time, as the only person I know of who thought the two touchdown Huskers would put up a fight: “The return to all that is good, decent, and right about college football continues in a big way. Tradition should matter. Power I should matter. Winning with class, integrity, and a suffocating defense should matter.”

Tradition, class, integrity, good, decent, right … all chucked out the window when a replay official “graciously” put an extra second on the clock, to allow Texas to escape with a one point win via a 47 yard field goal kicked on that extra second.

Dr. Tom has far too much class, integrity, and civility to ever admit it publicly. But I firmly believe that night, witnessing that embarrassment of a finale, he privately checked out. His return was the beginning of the end. That title game was hitting the iceberg. And Texas’ ridiculous “deadline setting” this week, a “loyalty clause”, issued by a member who didn’t have the “tradition” and “ties” to the old Big 8, was the ship splitting in two.

I don’t blame Nebraska for leaving. I’d get the hell out of this shady conference too if I was in their position. Look it, my school benefited tremendously from arguably the shadiest moment in this conference’s football history, the insane decision to pick Kansas over Missouri for the Orange Bowl two years ago, despite KU not winning their division, and getting their ass kicked by Mizzou eight days earlier. It was a joke then. It should have been a warning sign as well.

The conference gave us a lot of good moments. Three BCS championships -- 97 Huskers (beat Tennessee), 00 Sooners (beat FSU), and 05 Longhorns (beat USC). Eight teams playing for the BCS championship -- in addition to the three winners, also the 01 Huskers (lost to Miami), 03 Sooners (lost to LSU), 04 Sooners (lost to USC … for now …), 08 Sooners (lost to Florida), and 09 Longhorns (lost to Alabama). And of the conference teams, seven reached BCS bowls (Nebraska, OU, Texas, Texas A&M, Kansas State, KU, and Colorado).

It gave us one hoops champion, the 2008 Jayhawks. But 4 of the 12 members reached the Final Four at least once – KU (02, 03, 08), OU (02), Oklahoma State (04), Texas (03), and 4 more reached the Elite 8 at least once – MU (02, 09), Baylor (10), Iowa State (00), and Kansas State (10). Texas won my favorite event of the summer, the College World Series, twice (02, 05). Also making it all the way to Rosenblatt were Baylor (05), Nebraska (01, 02, 05), Oklahoma State (96, 99) and Texas A&M (99).

On the court, on the diamond, on the gridiron, the conference was tremendously successful. Off of it, it was doomed from the moment Dr. Tom returned to the top of the Huskers athletic department, if not sooner.

And you know what? I’m good with it. Its been a tremendous 15 year run. But as Jacob so eloquently put it in “Lost” (and yes, that humongous post is coming eventually …), as he so perfectly put it: “It only ends once. Everything else is progress”.

Today, as the conference dies, is progress. Its progress for the teams leaving, and for the teams left behind.

Which begs the question: so what’s next for KU? Well … stay tuned. I have a post on that coming up relatively soon …