[KChiefs1]

The Missouri Compromise:

Politics have never been a game I could easily play.
Compromise always seemed like giving up something that should not be given.
And perhaps that, at the core, is what is wrong with the Big 12 Conference as it is so comprised today with three teams gone and a fourth, Missouri, headed for a pivotal Board of Curators meeting on Tuesday.
That meeting looks more and more as if it could determine if the Tigers join secessionists Colorado, Nebraska and Texas A&M.
It seems the most popular course of action by many – perhaps most – Missouri fans if judging by the tsunami of emails and text messages flooding those who would make the decision on whether Missouri stays or goes (most likely it seems to the open arms of the Southeastern Conference).
But forcing myself to play the politician, here are the basic tenets of a plan that, borrowing from history, we’ll call the new Missouri Compromise.
It is based not on individual rights but on the tenet that we the people of the Big 12 Conference as so populated today would be served by a greater good if only:
1. Revenue sharing from this day forward is an equal proposition for all schools. No matter what teams appear on television how many more times than another, the payout is split equally to all on the major TV contracts existing or signed in the future for all games. This would eliminate any Tier 3 games shown only on networks established by individual schools. Any and all football games not picked up by the major TV partners of the conference would be made available on a Big 12 Network with games of only regional interest being offered in those regions. Monies – if any – from those broadcasts would still be shared with all conference members.
2. Any school desiring to have its own over the air or cable or Internet network could keep – after selection of men’s basketball games by Big 12 media partner networks – the rights to the rest of its men’s basketball games for telecast on any available outlet and keep all, if any, monies accrued from those telecasts. Further, telecast revenue of any other intercollegiate athletic event – including women’s basketball - would now and forever belong to the individual schools. Other content that might be considered to give an individual school an advantage – say in recruiting – over other conference members would be allowed or denied by a simple majority vote of all conference members.
3. The Big 12 Conference will expand, as soon as possible, to rebuild league membership to 12 schools, thus enabling the Big 12 to go back to divisional play in football and hold a league championship game.
4. The slotting of teams in Big 12 Conference-allied bowl games will be established by simple and hard and fast rules based on overall record, then head to head competition and ultimately an equitable tiebreaker like a flip of a coin. Bowls under contract with the Big 12 would no longer have the power to choose a league representative but would be assigned that team as the result of a merit-based slotting order.
5.Any and all other matters – including designation of where league tournaments and individual sport championship games will be held – are put to a simple majority vote of all conference member schools.
Could such measures take the politics out of the Big 12 Conference? Could they help establish a more perfect union without the need to further compromise? Could the haves of the Big 12 possibly agree to any of this?
Hey, I’m just a sportswriter who is slogging toward retirement in February of 2012. So feel free to tell me I’m naïve and that none of this could possibly work.