If you saw this happening when you woke up this morning, you are either a liar, or you are from the future and I would like to know your time-traveling secrets.
Like everyone else I suppose, I didn't understand where Dan Beebe was getting some of the numbers he was throwing around yesterday when he was talking about extra money to help keep the league together. Then came this critical piece of information:
Once Neb and CU made their moves, a TV network saw realignment about to blow and stepped forward with the plan stop chaos and save B12.
California Golden Blogs, SBN's Cal blog, has a great post about why "a TV network" would suddenly come to the table with all that extra cash. Highly recommended read.
One USF thought to close. I was frantically going through all the scenarios this morning with a co-worker of mine, who went to Texas A&M and probably hates life right now. (Texas ended up completely owning the Aggies when the Longhorns agreed to stay in the Big 12. It gave the Aggies no choice but to stay, because the money was about the same as it would have been in the SEC, and Texas A&M would have been trashing their most cherished rivalry if they left.) He said the biggest thing USF needed was a stay of execution. It would give us valuable time to continue building up our program so that the next time everyone feels like expanding, or when this revised Big 12 inevitably blows up in a few years, we would be in a stronger position.
Today's events bring us much closer to getting that stay of execution, in the form of the BIG EAST staying completely intact. Nothing happening is a good thing for USF. We may hate "a TV network" for all the dumb things they do, but from a totally selfish point of view, right now I think Bulls fans also owe them (and those magnificently arrogant bastards in Austin) a vote of thanks.