(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Last year, college athletics went through a bit of realignment. The Big 10 conference announced its intention to expand, setting off a tidal wave of intrigue and speculation. The PAC-10 made a big play to become the PAC-16 by adding Texas, A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado. Colorado bolted to the Pac-10 before Baylor could take their spot, the rest of the prospective PAC-16 members stayed in the Big 12, now properly known as the Big 12 minus 2. Nebraska also left the Big 12 to join the Big 10 after the Big 10 was unable to secure either Texas or Notre Dame.
The Big 10 is the only conference to have a research consortium (along with the University of Chicago) and a big issue in the expansion was membership in the American Association of Universities- a private club of major research universities. At the time of expansion, all 12 members of the Big 10 (don’t ask) were members, but recently the AAU took the unprecedented step of booting the University of Nebraska-Lincoln out of the club, which required a 2/3 vote of the member institutions. UNL became the first member of the AAU in the 111 history of the organization to face ejection.
During the time when the Big 12 had 12 members, Nebraska and Texas were often at odds. The Texas side of the story, which is the only one I have heard, is that there was a knock-down dispute over admission requirements for athletes at the conference inception. Nebraska wanted them low, Texas wanted them higher. Texas had the vast majority of tv sets in the conference, Texas won. Resentment festered among the Children of the Corn.
So…it just so happens that two former Presidents of the University of Texas at Austin are now high-ranking officials at the AAU, leading the Omaha World Herald to report on conspiracy theories that the AAU boot was payback.
Personally, I doubt that athletics had much to do with this decision. It is more fun, however, to believe that it did.
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