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Thoughts on the latest round of college football realignment

Scott Hines
Aug 4, 2021
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Texas, Oklahoma joining SEC: Longhorns, Sooners kick-start conference  realignment with move from Big 12 - CBSSports.com
IMAGE CREDIT: CBS Sports

I understand why the latest round of conference realignment in college football is happening. But something’s still gnawing at me.

A thing that’s been brewing for a long, long time suddenly happened very quickly over the last several weeks, as the two preeminent football brands in the Big 12—Texas and Oklahoma—announced they’d be abandoning their current conference home in favor of membership in the powerful SEC. The remaining members of the soon-to-be-eight-team Big 12 and their supporters have made a lot of noise about how this is a slap in the face to tradition, to competitiveness (given Texas’s relative lack of it the last decade), and to the sport in general.

Though I understand their anger—speaking as a fan of a school that’s been on the wrong end of this process before—the claims ring a bit hollow. The Big 12 is a 25-year-old conference, barely older than the athletes competing in it, and its formation—itself done primarily with television audiences in min…

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