Read about the formation of the Big XII

[sdillon500]

"It was 1990, and the landscape of college athletics would soon undergo a significant change.

Arkansas left the Southwest Conference for the Southeastern Conference that year, and Penn State left its independent status and joined the Big Ten.

"The dominoes are real shaky in 1990," Wefald said, reflecting back on that time period. "The dominoes were falling and I was concerned about the future of the Big Eight. It's very similar to July of 2010, and now late summer, early fall of 2011."
Wefald, along with Kansas chancellor Gene Budig and Iowa State president Martin Jischke, understood what was at risk if those dominoes continued to fall.

"That's when I started thinking to myself, 'OK, I'm the Chair here and I know there are two or three other Big Eight presidents that feel we have to get aggressive,'" Wefald said. "Otherwise what I was worried about was Texas would join the Pac-10 in 1990, kind of like the same thing we found last year and now. They'd be leaving the Southwest Conference and that would be a powerful force to maybe trigger Oklahoma into joining the Southeast Conference."

Read more here:
http://themercury.com/K-StateSports/article.aspx?articleId=3d2af06db8284de69292e4bd5d8d69a2

[ppclone]

Wow great article. Note How isu and ksu went from positions of influence to positions of...well, fetal positions. We had some starry eyed leaders back then, willing to give in to UT.

[sdillon500]

Wow great article. Note How isu and ksu went from positions of influence to positions of...well, fetal positions. We had some starry eyed leaders back then, willing to give in to UT.

It sounds like the administration of ISU has been pretty active behind the scenes during this round of realignment as well. Unfortunately, not much has changed for ISU in 20 years, power-wise. Iowa State is still the second school in a small population state without a lot of history of success.

But yeah, interesting to read about UT throwing their weight around even in the early 90's, when they sucked and their conference was crumbling. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that they'll change their ways now.

[JP4CY]

Interesting part about the prop 48 players Osborne had.