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Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Kansas and Iowa State Sought To Join Big Ten in 2010

The Big 12 is always in danger of falling apart, by far the most unstable of the five major conferences in college athletics. Just about every major realignment rumor has, in some way or another, involved the Big 12 or Big 12 schools. Many of those rumors have turned out to be true. Over the past five years the conference has lost Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Texas A&M while gaining TCU and West Virginia.

Currently with ten members, Oklahoma president David Boren set realignment tongues wagging this summer when he publicly endorsed expanding. All sorts of articles followed, including this one at Outkick, analyzing the potential targets for the Big 12 and suggesting the conference should go to 14 members.

Many also wondered -- was this Oklahoma's president publicly creating space for the Sooners to leave the Big 12 in the future?

Well, earlier today came interesting news that hadn't been public before. According to an Omaha, Nebraska newspaper article which you can read in its entirety here, five Big 12 schools explored joining the Big Ten in 2010, a move that would have taken the Big 10 from 11 to 16 schools and created a Big 10 west division comprising Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Kansas and Iowa State from the Big 12 alongside Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota from the Big Ten.

According to the article:
"A Big 12 athletic director, who spoke to The World-Herald on condition of anonymity, said he contacted Big Ten athletic directors and presidents with whom he was familiar in June 2010.

The topic: Was the Big Ten, which had 11 members at the time, interested in adding five Big 12 schools?

The feedback from Big Ten school officials was positive, both sources said. The sticking point was devising a revenue-sharing plan to satisfy all. It would have taken at least three to four years for that many incoming schools to hit the financial payoffs sought for moving."

Nebraska, of course, wound up joining the Big Ten to take the conference to 12 members. Texas A&M would become the SEC's 13th member and Missouri, a school that also flirted with the Big Ten, but wasn't evidently included in the group of five that sought to leave together, would become the SEC's 14th. The Big Ten also added Rutgers and Maryland to get to 14.

In a sign of how falsely pious universities can be when their rivals move up to a better conference and they get left behind, Kansas, a school secretly attempting to join the Big Ten, ended its rivalry with Missouri when the Tigers joined the SEC. Kansas's rationale? Mizzou's lack of commitment to the Big 12. Yep, it's conference realignment hypocrisy of the highest order.