Texas, Oklahoma killed college football as we know it. It may now be wise for the CU Buffs to take the Nebraska approach and contact the Big Ten.

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Rooting for Nick Saban feels awkward, dumb and wrong, but great lord, would it be nice to watch Alabama drop 60 points – hell, let’s make it 70 – right behind Bevaux.

Because the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners, the Hawks in the Arms, are SEC bound, I just took Machete to college football as we know it. And I loved him. Or I tried, anyway.

“I don’t know how the Big 12 goes on,” offered former CU coach Gary Barnett, who coached the Buffs for four titles in that league and played for his predecessor’s Big Eight in Missouri.

“(Texas and Oklahoma) kind of took me out of the nostalgia and worry about what it used to be. It just got so different.”

Forget loyalty. Forget alliances. Forget geography. Forget common sense. It’s a giant, soulless, soulless cash grab. A global pandemic? Sorry kids. We got contracts.

“College presidents have ceded a lot of control over conferences and, in turn, to ESPN,” noted Dave Redpath, a longtime advocate of NCAA reform, Ohio University professor and a California State University alumnus. “None of these changes is best for education or for the athlete, in my opinion.”

The Horns and Sooners will join the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Big 12 is just one step closer to joining its beyond. It’s a dog eating a dog. Logic and tradition are secondary to covering your ass. and your lockers.

So when you bring up the CU Buffs hypothesis that explores moving into the Big Ten, for example, you’d expect Barnett to laugh at you.

Only he doesn’t. Absolutely.

The former Buffs coach replied, “Whichever one of these conferences is going to stay, if you can get into it, you have to go in.” “So I would say, if you look at the Big Ten and say, ‘Is the Big Ten likely to survive at a level above Pac-12,’ then I’m going to do whatever you can do to get there. Because once you get that brand, You can keep it.

“Getting this is hard. It’s like Missouri going to the SEC. They made a move. They were just lucky to get in there because they moved into the best brand of college football. Now they’ll be able to stay (stable) through this (re) regulation), no matter what. This is critical.”

mad? likely.

Then again, these are tough times. Anything that gets the Buffs to play in Nebraska again on a regular basis would be good for college football. And what’s beyond great for CU, whose fans, especially those over 35, miss having someone to hate.

Buffs-Iowa can be insanely fun, for Front Range transplants like everyone else, a chain linking The Sports Column West (LoDo) and The Sports Column East (Iowa City). Imagine road trips to Chicago for the Northwestern and The Barnett Bowl. Or relive Kordell Stewart’s Miracle in Michigan any time you visit the Big House.

Plus two words: miles. Tucker.

And yes, yes, we know where the Buffs’ financial bread butter is made. Nearly 1 in 10 out-of-state undergraduates hail from California. Denver may be a Midwestern petri dish and Pacific Coast species caught up in I-25, but Boulder’s ethos and donor base lie farther west.

But know this too: If it’s about money, if it’s about brand, if it’s about survival, the Big Ten is the only yacht left that can keep up with the SEC. You will not go anywhere.

With tail wagging the dog officially these days, FOX may be looking to take on ESPN’s SEC gambit with its own superhero league. Merging the Pac-12 with the Big Ten into an NFL-style multi-divisional behemoth, given their shared football and academy alliances, isn’t the most isolated scheme on the table.

“I think from afar, the Big Ten seems to have a higher chance of surviving than the Pac-12, and that’s from afar,” Barnett said. “I think with the general (comparison) of these two, you could say the Big Ten would have a much better chance — Ohio State, Pennsylvania State, Michigan State, Michigan State, all that tradition — of surviving, based on what happened to the Pac-12 over the past ten years.”

Just because Buffs are safe doesn’t mean they shouldn’t roam. Make calls. protection of their own. History can be written by the victors. But as long as the checks are signed by Mickey Mouse, no cows are too sacred for a slaughterhouse.

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