Dear Commissioner* Dan Beebe,
I write this knowing full well that IF the Big 12 Conference were to still exist by the time you read this, I may not be getting a Christmas card from you or anybody else in the Big 12 Offices.
There are so many places I can start, when I was a younger kid I remember watching College Football on ABC every single Saturday and waiting for 2:30 CST to hear that iconic music and seeing a beautiful Memorial Stadium in Nebraska or Kyle Field at Texas A&M rocking and being proud of being in a conference that boasted so much talent and pride. Where did those days go? How could this go wrong, that time slot was the one time where the nation could see places like Manhattan, KS and Ames, IA shake the big boy schools like Oklahoma and Nebraska to their core. Well, over time this conference has gone from national power to national joke. All because of you Mr. Beebe.
When you took the Commissioner's Office in 2007 from Kevin Weiberg, the conference has just reached it's peak in College Football. Texas won a national title in College Football and the Big 12 was among the top conferences in America. Somewhere in that time span there was something rising, a burnt orange and white money making giant, that being the University of Texas. Between 2007-2009 expansion to the UT football stadium went under construction and when it was finished it was not only crowned jewel of the University but of your conference, as well. At that point the Univ. Of Texas looked at you like a steak ready to be cooked and you were all but willing to walk your happy butt to the frying pan.
Last year you experience what I liked to call the “Big 12 Missile Crisis”, in a one week span you saw two schools who were Big 12 entities leave, Colorado and Nebraska. Colorado was the gateway to the west for you, but they were treated like the red headed peg legged stepchild in the conference. Imagine if you actually paid attention to Colorado, commissioner* you could have had a Big 12 Network and locked up the ENTIRE state of Colorado. Nobody gives a damn about the other school in the state, Colorado St. By ignoring the Colorado Buffaloes they became a school at the same level as CSU. Such a shame, that Denver market now owned by Larry Scott and the Pac-12. Then there was that other school in the north division.
Devaney, Osborne, The Option, The Sea of Red. All of those things gave Nebraska it's identity and it's Nebraska who gave the Big 12 it's soul and helped the conference gain it's acclaim when the conference first began. Commissioner* Beebe, you have to understand that before you and I discovered girls, Nebraska football was a long lasting power with great tradition. When you took office in 2007, Nebraska was suffering through it's greatest lull in school history so I can see how it was difficult to showcase a school that had inner turmoil within the athletic deptartment. As Texas rose to power they were becoming the national darlings and the money makers in the conference. With money and Power comes Ego, and Texas has a small ego issue.
It's no joke people weren't happy with the new treatment of Texas and other schools in the south. Missouri all but whored itself out to the Big 10 but that ended horribly. As far as the Nebraska Cornhuskers go, they were like a silent assassin. I don't know if it was a back room deal but somehow, someway, Jim Delaney (Big 10 Commish) was ready to land Nebraska and that's when s*** hit the fan.
When Nebraska left I looked at you as a sympathetic figure. That all changed when you had a teleconference with the media and you said that you hadn't talked with either school about leaving. Then I asked myself, how dumb can you actually be? For 3-4 days in a row, discussions between Nebraska and Colorado with the Pac-10 and Big 10 were going on and you didn't figure “Hey maybe I should give these schools a ring and ask, what in the hell's going on here?"
Your nuttiness continued when it was announced you had saved the conference, it's like hey you saved the Big 12!! Lets lift you up and carry you around the office! Then it was announced what was in the deal. The University of Texas would get their own network and the other schools would get a “Lucrative TV Deal”. It turns out that the “Lucrative TV Deal” for the other schools was pretty much the same thing that they had before its just that now FX will feature one Big 12 game per week. That has the excitement of a playboy spread featuring Haley Mills.
Within the last few weeks, one school decided to stand up and be a man about this plan you as commissioner* came up with at the demands of your overlord, Texas AD DeLoss Dodds. That school was Texas A&M. They passed up an offer to join the SEC a year ago because they believed in you, well, they realized that you were as believable as the tooth fairy. The Aggies along with the rest of America realized that when times got tough under your watch you became a sellout to money just to save some pride. In my eyes and the eyes of the college football world you became a corporate slave to DeLoss Dodds and the Texas Longhorns. Our leaders are supposed to stand strong in times of struggle and strife, not sell out for big bucks like 50 Cent.
One last thing, wouldn't it be funny if you had to call SMU for an invite to save your conference? If you recall, it's the same SMU that you helped bring down when you were an investigator for the NCAA. I hope time heals all wounds.
Signed, Steven A. Hammond. (Football Fan)
P.S. The Asterisk stands for the fact you may not have a job by the time you read this.
