We’ve all been there before.
After a night of debauchery, it’s the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
The DJ clears their throat, steps up to the mic and bellows out the four words best suited to kill the mood and force your hand in one way or another.
“LAST CALL FOR ALCOHOL”
This season, it’s Greg Sankey (not Brett Yormark) that’s giving Texas and Oklahoma the last-call treatment. Their time in the Big 12 is almost up. And while this feels like the natural progression of conference realignment and the SEC furthering to stack the deck, I can’t help but feel a little piece of our collective childhoods are being ripped away from us.
I’m too young to remember the vaunted days of the Southwest Conference. All I know is this semblance of the Big 12. Or the one before it with Nebraska, Missouri and Colorado. And I must admit, it’s going to feel really strange seeing Texas and OU squaring off with the likes of the Mississippi schools, LSU and Georgia instead of seeing them hit the road to Ames or Manhattan.
From a conference perspective, it’s hard to see how this is anything but bad for the Big 12. They’re losing their tentpole teams–the ones who are synonymous with winning at a national level, who’ve run the league from the jump and whose annual rivalry game is must-watch TV the first weekend of October every year.
They’re also losing a huge part of their identity. And in my opinion, no matter how hard they’ve tried with the additions of Cincinnati, BYU, UCF and Houston, it’s just not going to hit the same. In a way, it’s hard to fathom what the Big 12 looks like without Texas and OU. I guess we’ll find out in 2024.
And believe me, nothing would give Brett Yormark red ass quite like being forced to hand the conference title trophy over to one of these two on their way out. Believe that.
From an SEC perspective, this move makes a ton of sense. College football is an arms race and Greg Sankey just picked up two more military-grade firearms. While it might initially be an odd fit, in my mind, this move just further reinforces my belief that we’re headed toward two super conferences.
If you’re Texas, the rich get richer with this move. You get to be the shiny toy in the nicest department store in town. Everyone is going to watch you, and if (that’s a big IF) they can get it humming, it’s going to truly hit different.
I’m not going to try and pretend like I know how this goes for OU. There’s a world where OU gets back to solid footing and winning ways and they fit comfortably within the SEC. There’s also another world where they never regain their footing and they fall somewhere between an Ole Miss and Missouri existence. Time will tell, I suppose.
Texas and OU have had a lot of fun. They did a lot of winning. And tonight, they crushed it on the dance floor.
But as the DJ steps up, shouts out those four faithful words and the lights begin to turn on, both schools will be faced with a harsh reality. They’re going to be starring down the barrel of what they’ve been flirting with all night.
It remains to be seen if this ends as a night they don’t want to remember or one they can never forget.