A Texas-Sized Dilemma for the Big 10

One day not too far down the road, the Big Ten Conference is going to unfurl the welcome mat for a 12^th school, in essence making it the Big 12 without making it the Big 12 Conference.

Confused? That's what college conference affiliations do to us anymore, they spin us around a dozen or so times and expect us to maintain our bearings in spite of their square-peg, round hole geography lessons.

The chances of Texas becoming a member of the Big Ten would seem slim, at least on the surface, but Longhorn Nation has reportedly shown an interest. It's difficult for me to wrap my mind around burnt orange in the Big Ten, though, if you'll remember, Penn State struck us as a peculiar 11^th candidate some 20 years ago.

But even if Texas does wind up in the Big Ten, it makes no less sense than, say:

* Notre Dame, Cincinnati and Louisville in the Big East? New York is east. Philadelphia and Boston are east. South Bend and a pair of cities hugging the Ohio River are not east. What's worse is two other recent Big East additions, Marquette (Milwaukee) and DePaul (Chicago), are situated west of those two.

* Arkansas in the Southeastern Conference? Sure, the home of the Razorbacks is south, but it sure ain't east. Even Fayetteville, the city where the university is located, is tucked away in the northwest corner of the state.

* TCU in the Mountain West Conference? Nothing conjures up images of rugged mountain living more than Fort Worth, Texas.

* Conference USA in general? Don't get me started on this 12-team grab bag. The campuses of East Carolina and Texas-El Paso are more or less 1,900 miles apart (or 300 more than Austin, Texas, to State College, PA), yet they are league rivals.

* Louisiana Tech in the Western Athletic Conference? Air fare from Ruston, Louisiana, to Honolulu, home of the University of Hawaii, can't be cheap, yet the Bulldogs and Rainbow Warriors square off annually in football, baseball and men's and women's basketball.

So you see, geography, the groundwork to all conference affiliation when sports teams traveled by train, no longer is a chief concern. In other words, come on, Texas, get the lead out and join the Big Ten. Seriously, how surreal would it be to see the Longhorns taking the field at Indiana's Memorial Stadium or Purdue's Ross-Ade Stadium for a football game?

If not Texas, maybe someone of influence at Hawaii, Alaska-Anchorage, Oregon or Maine could pick up the phone and dial. Anymore, that's just the way college athletics roll.

I still contend Missouri and Pitt are the front-runners. The latter makes more sense for the Big Ten Conference as it would give Pennsylvania two league affiliates, a distinction currently held by Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. The Panthers also brandish a heavier stick in terms of national reputation having produced gridiron legends such as Tony Dorsett, Dan Marino, Larry Fitzgerald and Mike Ditka.

Throw in the fact the men's basketball program has been built into a top 10 mainstay and the women have advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament the past two seasons and it has Big Ten written all over it.

Getting Texas would be quite a coup, but as consolation prizes go, the league won't do much better than Pitt.