The Big 12 Conference in Shambles: Who is to Blame?

College football and basketball fans should prepare for a seismic shift in the world of intercollegiate athletics in the near future.

According to many reports, the Nebraska Cornhuskers are prepared to accept a bid to join the Big 10, which in spite of it's name has contained 11 members since the addition of Penn State in the 90s.

The Big 10 has announced intentions to split into two divisions and put on a championship game in early December. Sound familiar? It should since the forward-thinking SEC began this practice in 1992.

The SEC championship game has proven to be a financial boon and long since debunked the idea that it would cost SEC teams the national championship in NCAA football. Four different SEC football squads have won seven, count 'em, seven, national championships in football since 1992.

Of course, that doesn't count Auburn, who had a 13-0 record in 2004 only to get left out of the BCS championship game with OU and USC both also undefeated going into the bowls and playing one another in the Big Game.

Frankly, the only thing that surprises me about all this is that it took a generation for other conferences to catch on to the divisional concept and the cash cow of a conference championship game.

Apparently, Notre Dame has rejected the Big 10's overtures once again, preferring to stay independent in football. It's not a bad position to be in if you have all of your home games televised by NBC in an exclusive, big money deal.

Now, Nebraska regents have voted to go to the Big 10 Conference. Missouri would reportedly like to follow, but appears to be getting the cold shoulder from the Big 10.

As for the Big 12, talks have happened between the Pac 10 and members of the Big 12 South, Texas, OU, Oklahoma State., Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Big 12 North school Colorado.

Politicians in Texas were reportedly trying to leverage the Pac 10, threatening to withhold the Texas Longhorns from the Pac 10 unless all the other Texas Big 12 South schools were included in the Pac 10, including red-headed stepchild Baylor.

The Pac 10 wants Baylor about as much as most people want an IRS audit. Colorado seems to be rushing into a deal with the Pac 10 to preempt the Baylor deal and not get left out in the cold when all the smoke clears in this whole cloak and dagger affair.

The problems in the Big 12 are mostly related to the Texas Longhorns, who Nebraska and Missouri and others say receive preferential treatment from the Big 12 office.

Unlike the SEC, the Big 12 does not distribute money evenly among it's members, but according to TV appearances, giving haughty Texas an advantage.

Back in 1990, when it was announced that Arkansas was leaving the old Southwest Conference to join the SEC, the state and University of Arkansas were roundly denounced and villified as the "bad guy" for breaking up the conference. What wasn't known at the time was that both Texas and Texas A&M had discussions with the SEC, but couldn't leave for political reasons.

Fast forward a generation. Now the Texas Longhorns are basically breaking up a conference and it looks like the Horns will play two years in a lameduck conference, just as Arkansas did in 1990 and 1991.

There had been talk of Arkansas joining the Big 12 if one of that conference's members left. Talk that, as ridiculous as it was, quieted considerably when it was revealed that the Hogs took in over $17 million dollars last year in the SEC. The Big 12 payscale was from $7-10 million per school in 2009.

Would a little better geographical fit be worth a reduction in revenue of $7-10 million a year? You do the math.

The Big 10's desire to expand and Nebraska's disgust with Texas' domination of the Big 12's politics have dovetailed into the biggest shift in college football in many years.

It will be fun to sit back and watch, knowing that the SEC doesn't have to do anything as clearly the #1 conference in college football for the last 19 years.

Hopefully, a college football playoff will come out of all this manuevering once and for all.