The Aggies' Dilemma

If the Big 12 was a hastily put together, imbalanced, politically constructed ticking time bomb, I never knew it. I was a freshman at Texas A&M University in the first year of the Big 12 Conference, and I was certainly swept up in this new creation that brought together some very impressive sports programs.

I graduated from Fayetteville High School, which was across the street from the University of Arkansas, the school that killed the Southwest Conference. When Arkansas left for the greener pastures of the SEC in 1991, they left behind an all-Texas conference that didn't take long to prove that it wasn't sustainable. The failure of the Southwest Conference met with the pleasure of Razorback fans, and it contributed to a sort of cognitive dissonance in Fayetteville. While Arkansas fans gladly bragged about getting out of the Southwest Conference, they still counted Texas and Texas A&M as their biggest rivals.

I arrived in Fayetteville a couple months after Arkansas's basketball national championship, so the emphasis was very much on the present, but any time a Texas school was mentioned, or even when it wasn't, Arkansans would always talk about how much they enjoyed being in a conference that was better than the SWC. Growing up, I had always thought of the Southwest Conference as a source of pride for Texans, but a Sports Illustrated article I read in 1992 (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1004498/index.htm) painted an entirely different picture, of a conference that was becoming somewhat of an embarrassment. So the news of the formation of a new conference, including Oklahoma and Nebraska and scheduled to coincide with my arrival in College Station, was extremely exciting.

Among a fanbase that calls itself the 12th Man, the new Big 12 Conference seemed to be a perfect fit. The 12th Man towels that get handed out before football games had, in the fall of 1996, "12th Mania" written on one side. The Big 12 brought a lot of big sports programs into town. And while football has faltered, the Big 12 has raised the profile of pretty much every other Aggie sport.

Fourteen years after Texas and Texas A&M chose the Big 12 over the Pac-10 and SEC, respectively, the Longhorns appear to be headed out west, and the Aggies seem ambivalent between the SEC and the Pac-10.

There's an argument to be made for either choice. In the Pac-10 column are academics, politics (Texas politicians have a desire to see UT and A&M in the same conference), and the need to keep alive the Aggies' biggest and most important rivalry. In the SEC column are geography, culture, sports prestige, and shaking free of the sports and financial colossus a couple hours to the west. Money, I think, favors the SEC.

As someone who's attended both A&M and Texas, I have no desire to see them play in two different conferences. In fact, that rivalry looms about as large as anything in my thinking. But I think it may be time for the Aggies to step out on their own. (And this is coming from someone who put A&M and UT logos on his groom's cake (actually pies), keeps a UT/A&M "bowl divided" on his desk, and who thinks the SEC is a scourge upon the earth.)

If the blogs and message boards are any indication, it's difficult to talk about A&M going to the SEC without getting swept up in bitterness (on the part of A&M) or portraying the Aggies as ungrateful and stupid (on the part of Texas). The "we'll show them" sentiment that I've seen in various forms misses the mark, but maybe it's not too far off. Trust, or lack thereof, is key to this decision, and it's one thing to have the trash talk related to a sporting event, but when it gets this nasty and this public and this nonspecific, it's indicative of something else. I don't think Texas has done a good job of building trust over the last couple weeks. If the reports are true, Texas expects its rivals (primarily Oklahoma and A&M) to follow it to the conference of its choice, and failing to do so will result in (at least in the case of A&M) falling off the UT schedule. Now, there are reasons to choose either conference, and holding a century-old rivalry hostage over what is essentially a judgment call indicates that Texas thinks A&M shouldn't get to decide where to go--they should just go with Texas.

Texas is doing what Texas does--they are throwing their considerable weight around. There's nothing wrong with that. Their stock has never been higher, and they know it. But A&M has options, and they need to figure out whether this relationship is good enough and important enough to push them in the direction of an otherwise inferior choice. Knowing what we know, I can't say that it is.

The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry would be the most-played rivalry in major college football history but for the three years the series was canceled because of violence between the two schools (1912-1914). Now, the school that created the maroon carrot, hissing instead of booing, and a litany of terms (yell leader, war hymn, former students) in order to be Not-Texas has the opportunity to be the bigger person. Go to the SEC. If Texas refuses to schedule the Aggies, make a very clear and very public invitation until they do. Public perception is that Texas is overplaying its hand/being a bully/running away from where the competition is. In response, A&M has an opportunity to be gracious toward its big brother rival while playing in the tougher league. What a PR gift.

Look at it this way: two people are in a relationship. Let's say they both get job offers in the same two cities: San Francisco and Birmingham. And let's say that Longhorn is intent on taking the San Francisco job, and that Aggie prefers the Birmingham job. So Aggie has two choices: go to San Francisco with Longhorn, or go to Birmingham and make it a long-distance relationship. If Longhorn makes it clear that a long-distance relationship is not a possibility, then you're stuck weighing the value of Birmingham against the value of the relationship. In this case, I think the Aggies have seen enough to know how much stock they should put in their relationship with the Longhorns. If it comes down to it, they need to break it off.