| 10 June 2010
This expansion of the Big Ten and Pac-10 that is unfolding is driven by our love for football and the money that comes from football. Have you thought about the other sports that are being left behind?
What got me thinking about this is the Kansas basketball program. Is there a program out there that can boast the legacy that Kansas basketball can lay out on the table? John Naismith is the man who invented basketball. He was Kansas first basketball coach. Wilt Chamberlain played at Kansas. It holds the longest current streak of NCAA tournament appearances. It is first in the number of winning seasons. Three national championships and thirteen final fours. If football and money were not the driving forces behind this expansion Kansas would be the prize and not even Texas would be close. Kansas is looking at possibly ending up in the Mountain West conference. That is just wrong.
You want a super conference? Think about the wrestling conference that would evolve from the Big Ten, no question the best wrestling conference in the country right now with Iowa, Ohio State, Minnesota and Penn State, adding Iowa State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. There is an argument in soccer that the European Championship and the Champions League are tougher competitions than the the World Cup because there are no easy games. That is something up for debate. That the Big Ten championships in wrestling would be tougher than the NCAA wrestling tournament if those teams were added would not be debatable. Oklahoma is a football power so it can drag along its ugly stepbrother, Oklahoma State, to the Pac-10. We are talking about the Kansas basketball program. The Iowa wrestling program is just as legendary. It has won 8 national championships. Everyone associates Dan Gable with the Iowa program. Dan Gable wrestled at Iowa State not Iowa. The only wrestler to ever go undefeated in his career, Cael Sanderson, wrestled at Iowa State. Five gold medal wrestlers have come out of the program. It is going to be cut adrift.
I could not be more excited about the expansion. I love adding the new teams and I think this increases the chances of a national championship series but when I look at the fate of these legendary programs, it is a sobering thing.
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