Texan Mosaic

by DOMINICK PUENTE//Staff Writer

With the people of the sports world calling for a meeting of the topic of expansion, the Big 12 committee finally meet over the topic and came to no agreement.

The Big 12 has become the least productive conference in the sports community due to the overall talent and athletes that are recruited in the other major conferences such as the SEC, Pac-12 and Big 10.

Top tier athletes want to take their talents to the best universities and programs there are in the nation. The sports programs within the Big 12 have not lived up to that notion causing the long-standing drought of success to continue.  Out of the power five conferences the Big 12 is the last conference to follow the moving trends in the growing sports community. The conference has shown to be the last of the power five to vote for any sort of change.

After the college football playoff began, it has hurt the Big 12 every year. Either the Big 12 lacks the competition to make the final four or the problem of not having a conference championship hurts the Big 12’s chances of making the playoff.

All 10 schools considered and favored the idea of expanding the league to bring in more competition to improve the conferences overall success in all sports for men and women.

However, the committee appears to be hard-headed in voting to pass new rules or things such as expansion. Along with the idea of expansion another example of the Big 12 being difficult is when it came down to deciding Television contracts and the conference opted to wait till the very last moment.

The Big 12 held out as long as they could and because of their decision Big 12 schools lack notoriety. A small amount of sporting functions are televised between all 10 schools due to their decision which hurts the overall conference.

As for the smaller and less successful universities in the conference, the TV stations that the Big 12 signed with will not care to televise their sporting games due to the lack of buzz. This causing the entire university to lose money and will affect the recruiting process for that university in any sport.

The Big 12 has made more decisions that are insignificant and hurt their own conference. The universities should be able to have more power in what the Big 12 decides to do. Allowing the conference to make important decisions for the future without consulting the schools in further detail and consideration is not the proper way to conduct their business.

I believe the Big 12 will come to an end in the near future due the decisions that have been made. A majority of the schools in the conference have expressed their thoughts to the Big 12 committee and have thought about jumping ship.

More conferences are open to being more flexible and open to opinion about decisions. But the Big 12 has not and I see the conference disbanding and most teams going to the Pac-12 or SEC.

The conference needs to hear out the schools to make everyone happy and pleased with the way the conference conducts business. The thought of expanding the conference is not a painful process. If the conference can find substantial universities with competitive sports programs, then the conference should be able to benefit from the addition of the teams. The only possible way the expansion of the conference could damage the Big 12 is if the committee allowed a university that did not exceed in athletics and academics.Some of the less competitive schools should push for more peace within the conference. It is hard for an unnoticed university to join a top-level conference if they do not see and benefit. Expansion can be a tough process to go through for any conference and committee. But for the benefit and prosperity of the conference expansion is needed. The Big 12 needs to understand that change can be a good thing and expansion of the conference is necessary in order to stay in the league.