Hearne: Big 12 Renaissance Vs Big 10/SEC Reality

Not only is the Big 12 back, it’s super bad and soon to get badder…

The mini glut of perennial College Football Playoff teams aside – Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Ohio State, Clemson – the vaunted Big 10 and SEC  conferences are mostly cash cows with overall mediocre on-the-field performances.

Starting with the once respectable Mizzou Tigers – reduced to being humiliated by Kansas State last weekend and taking it up the shorts in basketball, not just against KU, but even lowly UMKC, AMC Theatres founder  Stan Durwood‘s alma mater.

Ah, but take heart fellow Missourians, MU is far from alone among teams that have paid the price after bailing on the Big 12 over the past decade.

“Look at everybody that’s left the Big 12 or whatever,” says longtime area concert and festival promoter Brett Mosiman. “Like Nebraska, they lost their recruiting bases, they lost their historic rivalries and they’re absolutely disappointing. The only team that hasn’t been a 100 percent disappointment is Texas A&M and they lost to Appalachian State Saturday. They just haven’t been as embarrassing as the rest of the teams that left the Big 12.

“And look at Southern Cal and UCLA going to the Big 10. Does that make any sense on a Green New Deal basis? Those teams just took their travel schedules from from ghastly to horrible. Their travel schedules are awful now.”

Spoiler alert: May I suggest Mizzou fans close their eyes while Mosiman does a verbal touchdown dance on behalf of KU football’s rise from their decades-long grave.

“I think new Kansas football coach Lance Leipold is the real deal,” Mosiman says. “And I think this is his forever job. He’s getting support from the franchise, from the fans and from his recruiting – he’s going to be our Bill Snyder.”

Back to those Big 12 past and future refugees…

“I believe Texas and Oklahoma are going to struggle in the SEC,” Mosiman says. “Like Missouri, they’re going to get more money, but they’re not going to able to compete against the SEC  conference powerhouses.”

All of that said, Mosiman’s boldest statement:

“I think you can make a pretty good case that the Big 12 is the second best conference behind the SEC,” he says. “And I think top to bottom, if we get the four teams from the PAC 12 that we want, the Big 12 is better than the Big 10. Yeah, we don’t have Ohio State, but look at what they’ve done the past four or five years. And Cincinnati, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Utah and Brigham Young are all perennial Top 25 teams, while the Big 10 only has 3 or 4 teams that are very good.”

In terms of following the all-important money, Mosiman thinks in the new, upcoming Big 12 media deal, “We can get up to $60 million dollars a year per team and we’re competing,” he says. “And I think our media markets really look pretty good compared to the Big 10 media markets and a lot better than the SEC media markets. For example, the Univesity of Central Florida in Orlando is one of the Top 5 media markets in the country and they have more than 60,000 kids going to school there.

“And right now KU is on a really good trajectory and their two wins are not a fluke. Head football coach Lance Leipold is going to be here for 10 years and everybody’s in love with him and they love the new Athletics Director and they love the new Big 12 commissioner.”

As for Mizzou, “They’re a dumpster fire,” Mosiman says. “They started going down with all their race issues a few years back and they’ve deflated their fans because now they’re playing teams like Florida, Vanderbilt, South Caroline and Tennessee – they’re all on the East Coast – and the fan base is just not plugged in. I mean, they’re completely irrelevant and they’re going to stay that way. Exactly like Nebraska that went from being a perennial institution in the Big 12 to being an unimportant, gum-on-your-shoe disaster in the Big 10.”