OKLAHOMA and TEXAS RUMORED TO SWITCH TO SEC

Baker Mayfield has never been one to hide his thoughts, usually tells it like it is, and Thursday during a break in shooting a television commercial in Cleveland, he got right to the point.

“It would ruin the Big 12,” said the Heisman Trophy winner and former Oklahoma All-America quarterback upon hearing the news regarding the Sooners and rival Texas rumored to be wanting a change to the football-heavy Southeastern Conference. “It would be done, trust me.”

Talk is talk, but it was something that Mayfield and others regard as a possible disaster. The Big 12 was sought to be on life support about a decade ago after losing  Nebraska, Colorado, Texas A & M, and Missouri to the SEC. But it managed to survive as a Power Five conference after it added Texas Christian and West Virginia.

But in 2009, the Big Ten pushed over the first domino when it announced it was going to explore expansion, and that lured Nebraska away from the Big 12 and into the Big Ten.

“We often talk about how uncomfortable this time is,” said new Nebraska Athletic Director Trev Alberts. “It is like a changing environment, there’s a lot of stress, and now is the time you want to be part of some stability.”

That Big Ten expansion sparked a frenzy, with schools and conferences fending for themselves. So now it brings Big 12 football powers Oklahoma and Texas into the discussions.

Meanwhile, Atlantic Coast Commissioner Jim Phillips, who took over this year after serving as athletic director at Northwestern, a Big Ten school. He took a similarly cautious approach.

“I think it’s critically important for all of us to always paying attention to what’s happening in the landscape and understanding what’s occurring across the country,” he said. “And this pertains to whether you’re a conference  commissioner, whether you’re an athletic director, and whether you’re a school president.

Others stayed away from speculating, calling this current news just another example of the volatility sweeping through college sports at this time.

“That’s the world we live in right now,” said Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren. “From where we sit, we’re always constantly evaluating what’s in the best interest of the conference.”

The Sooners and Longhorns have not made any official reports, but one day after word of the discussions surfaced, the ripple effects across the sport of college football were clear as schools from the Big 12 and SEC tried to sort out where this is going.

Barry Alvarez was a long-time athletic director at Wisconsin. He watched the Big Ten grow to 14 teams from the Midwest to the East Coast.

His quick response when he heard the present news? “Why?”

He did add that another round of shuffling could be on the horizon, with Oklahoma and Texas initiating discussions with the packed Southeastern Conference about leaving the Big 12 and joining what is already football’s strongest league.

The Big 12 athletic directors and university presidents and chancellors had a call Thursday to be briefed on what’s going on with Texas and Oklahoma. Sooner and Longhorn officials did not participate because the Big 12 was not making its actions public.

Leaders from other conferences were hesitant to speculate on what’s next, although some observers were concerned about the possible consequences.

Just to let you know, college football is filled with people operating in silos and what they fail to realize is that they only look at and try to build their silos as big and as shiny as possible than the entirety of the sport is not going to be as strong as it needs to be.

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Said former Colorado quarterback Joel Klatt the lead college football analyst for Fox, which holds the television rights with the Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12, “I think a move like this would be to the detriment of the sport overall.”

Stay tuned to how United States college football figures this one out.