(10-14-2013 12:37 PM)vandiver49 Wrote: Medic,
My post was simply a mental exercise to highlight the difficulty of parting the P12 and that there isn't enough value to appease all the interests. It is why I think the conference will continue to soldier on. Though I do think it would be interesting to see if it could be pulled off. We are talking about 7 representatives that couldn't get together at a Olive Garden without twitter crashing. #failwhale
BTW, I know Mizzou fans love the SEC and I'm happy to have the MTigers in the conference, but I think even you would admit that the administration would look favorably at a B1G invite. I doubt there would the sort of backlash like the kind that erupted in College Station from such a move.
Everyone knows I'm interested in expansion, but most have not figured out why even though I've published it many times. To me it has all been one of the canaries in the coal mine for the U.S. Economy and the impact that corporate America is having on all aspects of the common man's life. There is literally no sacred areas that are left secure from the molesting hands of the conglomerates. I felt that college football, something I loved which had by and large remained constant for decades throughout my life, was the perfect microcosm for others to understand what is really going on in the much more intricate and confusing larger picture.
Here we deal with one aspect of our lives where loyalties have been fairly straight forward, ties and allegiances have lasted longer than most marriages, and where generations of a family might have held relationships of much longer duration than just 1 lifetime. If the corporate entities could spot an undervalued product (mostly due to its lack of organization and therefore its lack of a larger perspective from which to plan strategically and maximize leverage) and swoop in to alter it in ways that fundamentally changed the way in which millions of Americans related to it, would that be enough to awaken and galvanize a sleeping majority into some form of reform aimed at curtailing the growing power that those entities are garnering over every aspect of our lives? But, hell's bells, I thought the passage of permission for corporate drones to spy on our society might grab the outrage, but crickets are all I hear. And, I hear crickets on the rape of college football, on our privacy, on every issue. What has happened to me is that I have lost any hope I may have had that our people would awaken to hold on to things they once cherished.
I should have known better. This is a generation of latch key children, absentee fathers, broken homes, and single parent family units who are now coming of age. And they care. It's just that they care only to deal with the crises in their own lives and don't have time for the bigger picture issues, so crickets. Destroy the family and you destroy community. Destroy community and you destroy regionalism. Destroy regionalism and you destroy cohesion all together. And when societal cohesion is gone then no matter how small the controllers are in number they still seem to be too much for the common isolated citizen to overcome.
We don't fight for anything any longer except our own individual issues, which of course means we the people have lost our voice and our power. So is it any wonder Wall Street cheats run ruff shod over the rest of us, annuitize our retirement plans in order to steal our principal, charge us fees to use our money, throw up road blocks when we want to access our money, and then buy more regulations to require us to keep even more of our personal wealth with them?
So when volatile rivalries like Nebraska / Oklahoma, Texas / Texas A&M, Missouri / Kansas go by the wayside in order to enhance the corporate bottom line and we buy into it, instead of raise hell, we get what we deserve.
What has been established with realignment is that the fans only vote one way, with their feet. The more alienated and powerless they feel that their voice is in these matters the more empty seats we'll see. After all it was only their love of their schools and the game that kept them there after 2008 anyway because the tickets, travel, and lodging were too expensive for most. As they feel more disenfranchised the less attendance we will have. It was the feeling that they were a part of something larger than themselves that had them there in the first place. So, tell them on one hand that their feelings about it all doesn't make a difference, and then insult them further by going up on the cost of tickets, and you get the silent majority speaking only with their absence.
So we are going to get further consolidation. And future changes will be geared toward enhancing viewership. Who wins and loses will become secondary to amount of money earned. Listen to the ADs and Commissioners speak. I'd say outcome is already secondary to earnings.
As a history and political science guy who studied sociology as well, watching realignment with detailed interest is turning into one of the most revealing social experiments I've seen in my lifetime and it's not pretty folks.
My only hope in all this is that things will remain static for a few decades when this is over and that our children and grandchildren will be able to find new meaning, new social connections, and new rivals, all with enjoyment, in their days ahead. They are going to need great distractions as we have solved few problems, kicked most of our cans down the road, and left precious little for those coming after us. Greed has trumped stewardship of cultural icons, the environment, and the inheritances we should have been leaving in at least as good a shape as that which we received from our parents. JR
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If the SEC did expand again and did so from the Big 12 who should we take and why?
