Sic 'em Bears!

Riding the high off of an exciting victory against TCU, Baylor is proving to be the deafening voice of the little guy in the never-ending conference realignment saga. In an interesting turn of events, Baylor has threatened legal action against Texas A&M if the Aggies leave the Big 12 and has brought conference realignment to a halt, at least temporarily. Hats off to the Bears for resisting the seemingly inevitable flow of teams switching conferences. The band in Waco need to stand their ground because they have nothing to lose, and hopefully this will slow the potential march towards the much-ballyhooed “super-conferences.”

While the BCS is largely a power grab by the most prestigious football programs and conferences in the nation, the major benefactors of the system are the low-income programs in each BCS conference. The Dukes, Baylors, Iowa States and Vanderbilts of the college football landscape benefit more than any other because they spend very little on their football team. They are in conferences with huge TV deals, thus they reap the dollars with minimal effort. Teams like Texas, Ohio State and USC are going to make a lot of money regardless of their conference affiliation. Baylor is not. On average, each school in the SEC will earn $17.3 million thanks to the conference TV deal. A program like Vanderbilt may get the smallest piece, but they will still be bringing in millions of dollars with minimal expenditures on their football team, simply because they play in the SEC. If Vanderbilt's conference was the one being torn apart by other leagues, their TV dollars would be in jeopardy and they too should fight tooth and nail to keep that money for themselves. Money is the primary driver in all conference realignment talk. Teams should not go down without a fight when that much money is being threatened by other greedy schools.

No one knows how all of this will unfold, but I applaud Baylor for sticking their neck on the line for all of the small football programs out there. They are not doing anything underhanded, just fighting for what they were promised. Let's hope other schools that risk losing their TV dollars will gear up for the fight.