Welcome to the University of Texas Conference

Eliminate Nebraska: Check.

Eliminate Colorado: Check.

Eliminate Big 12 Championship Game, a game in which we came within an eyelash of losing last year: Check.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the University of Texas Conference.

When the Big 12 lost Colorado and Nebraska last week, the conference was on life support. Apparently that's right where Texas wanted it to be. UT manipulated this entire realignment situation to get more money while playing weaker competition.

Mission accomplished.

The resurrection of the Big 12 is nothing more than a stay of execution for the embattled conference. Sure, the conference higher ups will tell you that it's in the best interest of the league to continue on as a 10 team conference. They'd be wrong. The shift of power to the south, which is what ultimately sent Colorado and Nebraska packing, only becomes amplified with this 11th hour deal. In this new look Big 12, the winner of the Red River shootout between Texas and Oklahoma will essentially have a cake walk to the BCS Championship Game. Something tells me that's not going to go over well in the long run.

Texas' manipulation of the rest of the Big 12 is baffling, but the big picture is even more frustrating. College football took two steps toward the era of the super-conference last week. Sure, it wouldn't be a playoff, but it'd be a nice substitute. After all, we may not settle it on the field, but eventually, the major players would be on equal footing.

Monday evening, it took four steps back.

With this new Big 12 setup, we are farther away from a college football playoff than we've been since the pre-Bowl Coalition days. Do you think that the other conferences are going to allow a playoff to exist when they're not playing on equal ground? I don't.

Texas gets TV money. Texas gets its TV network. Texas will probably get a lot of Big 12 championships too. But it made a lot of enemies in the process. Hope it was worth it.

TCU athletics in select company

Only four schools in the country have top ten football and baseball programs this year. TCU, Texas, Alabama and Florida. All finished in the top 10 in football and have baseball teams make the super regional round.

It marks the second year in a row for TCU, a little fish in a big pond. The Horned Frogs are a small private school in Fort Worth that doesn't even have an enrollment of 10,000 students. Yet, they are becoming a force in college athletics. The football team has three top 10 finishes in the last five years. The baseball team is in their 2nd super regional in a row.

TCU baseball opens Super Regional play Friday at Texas. First pitch is 2 pm on ESPN2. Saturday's game is at noon on ESPN. Sunday's contest, if necessary, is at 3pm on ESPN.

Oh look at those Frogs.  Taking out Texas in Austin and heading on to the College World Series!