Everybody plays the fool sometime
There’s no exception to the rule
It may be factual, it may be cruel
I ain’t lying, everybody plays the fool
— The Main Ingredient, 1972
I probably listened to this heartbreak song a dozen times after the girl I had asked to a dance decided on the last day she didn’t want to go after all.
So, I know what it’s like to be strung along.
A “B list” of fools last week included football programs at Houston, BYU, Cincinnati and Connecticut. All strung along by the Big 12 Conference, which decided not to expand after all. At least the rejection I received didn’t cost me any money.
Can’t say that about the long list of candidates for Big 12 expansion, many of whom spent time and money after being asked to make a video presentation for possible inclusion. After months of speculation, university presidents from the Big 12 emerged from a six-hour meeting last week to say the conference would remain at 10 teams.
Talk, talk, talk, yak, yak, yak. What a waste of time. But not everyone was surprised by the decision of the Big 12, where Texas and Oklahoma take turns driving that clown car into a ditch.
“We’re the hometown college football team of the third-biggest city in America, and there’s really good high school football here,” Houston coach Tom Herman said in a radio interview. “So, certainly if you’re an athletic director or a football coach, that probably worries you. But I think anytime you can add a competitive program to your conference, you’re going to better it.”
The Big 12 distributed an internal talking-points memo before the announcement in an effort to refute criticism the league surely knew was coming. It was a list of what and what not to say.
“This was not a decision not to expand,” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said to reporters after Monday’s meeting. “This was an endorsement and an investment in the 10 (programs) that we had.”
Oklahoma President David Boren, who had been all over the place on the issue, said expansion is still possible, which makes me feel sorry for the fool who sits by the phone waiting for that call.
“Down the road, who knows?,” Boren said. “Circumstances change.”
They do, indeed, which every Arkansas fan should be forever grateful to Frank Broyles for leading Arkansas out of the Southwest Conference and into the SEC when the league decided to expand. The SEC isn’t perfect. Far from it, and the league received some criticism over a scheduling snafu between Florida and LSU after their game in Gainesville was postponed because of Hurricane Matthew. The teams, with the help of SEC officials, eventually worked it out to where Florida will play at LSU Nov. 19 in exchange for consecutive trips by LSU to Florida in 2017 and 2018.
Alabama can be a bully, but there are enough quality programs that makes the SEC the most profitable and strongest conference in the country. So, how are you going to handle your Big 12 rejection, Houston? What do you say, BYU? How about you, Cincinnati?
Do you move on or cling to the phone like a 13-year-old, lovesick school girl waiting for a call that may not come?
“The Big 12’s decision in no way changes the mission we began long before there was talk of expansion,” Houston President Renu Khator said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Our destiny belongs to us.”
Good for you, Houston, even if it likely means losing Herman to a Power 5 Conference team that will pay more.
Any more discussions about the Big 12 and expansion should shift from the sports pages and onto a platform more appropriate for the way they do things. How about Saturday Night Live, the Big 12 edition, with Alec Baldwin playing David Boren?
That should bring a few laughs.
Rick Fires can be reached at rfires@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWARick.