The First College Football Domino Falls

Ever since the Big Ten Conference announced they were looking to expand by as many as 16 teams in order to split into two divisions and set up a championship game, the talk and rumors of which school was going where and to what conference has dominated the sports pages and ESPN for weeks.

It has non-BCS schools wondering what the college football landscape would look like id such a feeding frenzy of realignment got jumped off.

That may have just started, but it's coming from an unexpected quarter.

Instead of Texas or Notre Dame getting a conference invite to the Pac 10 or the Big Ten (yet), today the University of Colorado announced they would leave the Big 12 Conference to accept an invitation to become the 11th member of the Pac-10 Conference in 2012.

This is happening amid rumors that Nebraska may be on the verge of leaving the Big 12 for the Big Ten Conference and would announce it at a press conference after its Board of Regents meeting on Friday.

If that turns out to be the case, it would be a huge shock to Missouri, which has made no secret that it wanted to leave the Big 12 for the Big Ten and pissed off their Big 12 brethren in the process.

As a UH alum, watching this impending round of conference realignment has the same deja vu feeling of watching the 1993 breakup of the SWC that started with Arkansas leaving for the SEC in 1990. Many UH alums still have extremely bitter memories about being Left Behind during the formation of the Big 12.

TCU and UH both finger Texas as the major culprit as why they were Left Behind in the first place. We believe they slimed both schools so the Longhorns could use the non-BCS status of those schools as a recruiting tool to access football recruits in the talent rich Dallas-Ft. Worth and Houston areas.

Of course, the Orangebloods deny it, but I note that they never miss an opportunity in local Houston Chronicle forums to trash the University of Houston every chance they get.

Must be because UT never got over those football buttkickings the Coogs administered on a regular basis during the 70's and 80's, including sending Darrell Royal into retirement with a shutout loss in front of a sellout crowd enroute to our first SWC football title.

TCU alums also have much Hateraid for Baylor. They feel the Horned Frogs would have gotten membership in the Big 12 if it hadn't been for the fact that Baylor leaned on an alum who was in the Governor's mansion (Ann Richards) at the time in order to secure its spot in the new conference.

So we're both sitting on the sidelines feeling for the current members of the Big 12 who are about to be tossed aside like empty beer cans as the rest of your former conference brethren leave for mo' money.

Payback is a witch, eh Baylor?

Stay tuned, the conference realignment drama is only going to get more interesting.