Expansionocalypse is over ... for now

And we're done!

After all of that talk about the collapse of college sports and all of the wasted words worrying about the inevitability of four 16 team superconferences, Texas came to their senses and ended the realignment madness. For the second time this year, a college basketball doomsday scenario ends without much more than a whimper. If you forget, a 96 team supertournament was a certainty back in April.

So where do we stand now?

• Colorado makes a move to the Pac-10, becoming the 11th school in the conference. (One can only wonder if the Buffaloes expected the Big XII to collapse, as they will now be forced to pay a $6-8 million fee to the Big XII for leaving. They couldn't afford a $3 million buyout for their football coach.) Most believe the Pac-10 will add one more team, likely Utah, in order to get to 12 teams and add a conference championship game in football.
  
• Nebraska heads to the Big Ten Te-leven Te-welve, joining a league that seems to be more their style in both basketball and football. The Big Ten Te-leven Te-welve could still create ripples by adding some Big East teams, but it seems like the general consensus is that they will stand pat for now.
  
• Boise State makes the move to the MWC, which would have been great if the Big XII collapsed. As it is, Utah's move will make it all the less likely that the MWC with get a BCS-automatic qualifier, which is what the league and Boise State were gunning for.
  

The effect this has on college basketball is negligible. Nebraska won two league games last year and now heads to the one league that may be better than the Big XII. Colorado actually has a bit of basketball pedigree (Chauncey Billups, anyone?) and with the move to the Pac-10, Alec Burks, Cory Higgins, and company may actually be able to compete. Having said that, this is still a team that has gone 13 years without an NCAA Tournament victory. Boise State was a mediocre team in the WAC. Enough said.

The irony is all of this?

Losing Nebraska and Colorado has turned the Big XII X into the toughest college basketball conference in the country. According to Ken Pomeroy, if Nebraska and Colorado had not been a member of the league last season, the 2009-2010 version of the Big XII would have been the strongest conference since the 2003-2004 ACC, which featured two Final Four teams (Duke, Georgia Tech), the 2005 national champion (North Carolina), and three other teams (Maryland, Wake Forest, and NC State) that finished the season ranked.

Five Big XII X teams will be ranked in the preseason -- Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Texas, and Missouri. Two more -- Texas A&M and Oklahoma State -- were ranked much of last season, and have been a constant presence in the NCAA Tournament this decade. Oklahoma struggled last season, but the Sooners shouldn't be down for too long under Jeff Capel. Only two of the ten teams -- Texas Tech and Iowa State -- would be surprises is they made the NCAA Tournament.

How many leagues can say that?

What makes this new Big XII X even better is that, like the Pac-10 prior to the addition of Colorado, we will get a double round robin in league play. That means every year, Texas and Kansas will play twice. Missouri and Kansas will play twice. Kansas and Kansas State will play twice. A balanced schedule in the country's toughest, most balanced conference? This is going to be an entertaining league to watch and follow come 2012.

When it comes down to it, the real winners in this deal are the fans. Fans of the five Big XII X schools that would have been left without a conference. Fans of Kansas, one of the most storied basketball programs of all time that would have been left out in the cold. Fans of the Big East, which could have grown into a 20 team megaconference.

Anyway, I've had enough of this expansion talk. Before I (hopefully) leave it for good, here is some reaction from around the internet:


Pete Thamel, NY Times: Texas's 11th-hour demands to the Pac-10 broke down the talks. Texas wanted to keep its lucrative local television rights and also asked for "extra sweetener" in revenue sharing, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the talks.

"It was unacceptable," the official said. "The talks broke down."


Andy Katz, ESPN.com: An NCAA source with direct knowledge of what occurred told ESPN.com that the aggressiveness of the Pac-10 caused various factions of the collegiate sports world to coalesce. They then worked to slow and try to stop the pace of moves that would have left a number of schools searching for a new conference home.

The source said the people involved were business executives, conference commissioners, athletic directors, network executives with ties throughout college athletics, administrators at many levels throughout the NCAA membership and a "fair number of them without a dog in the hunt."


Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott: “University of Texas President Bill Powers has informed us that the 10 remaining schools in the Big 12 Conference intend to stay together. We are excited about the future of the Pac-10 Conference and we will continue to evaluate future expansion opportunities under the guidelines previously set forth by our Presidents and Chancellors.”


Andy Staples, SI.com: The attached white paper, obtained by SI.com through a public records request to the University of Colorado, contains many of the same points Beebe made Monday as he worked with school officials to salvage the conference. In the paper, Beebe predicted that a network would pay more to televise Big 12 football games. Fox promised to do just that. Beebe also predicted that radical realignment could have serious consequences for college sports. Powerful outsiders, concerned that the Pac-10's plan to supersize to 16 by pillaging the Big 12 would set off an unstoppable chain of events, helped broker the deal, which may have saved college sports as currently constituted.


Darren Rovell, CNBC: It's quite possible that there's never been a story like this, with so many tentacles, that was so dominated by someone outside the mainstream media. Despite all its sources, ESPN was forced to cite Orangebloods.com until the very end, which included a brief time when the Worldwide Leader reported that the Big XII teams, including Texas, would in fact go to the Pac-10. Orangebloods.com reported that was not the case and turned out to be right.