Today, at 4:22 p.m., somebody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, came across this corner of the Interwebs and, in the process, became the 100,000th person to visit BOTC.

I must say, this represents an impressive increase in traffic on this site in the last four months, as it was the end of July when BOTC made it to 50,000 hits.  To illustrate how much things have picked up around here, it took almost an entire year to get to 50,000 visitors, as the site began on August 14th, 2007, and the milestone was reached 50 weeks later.

Not coincidentally, the increase in traffic occurred right around the time that Panjandrum and EMAW joined the site as editors/authors.  Lastly and most importantly, thanks to all you readers for stopping by, reading, commenting, and spreading the word about BOTC.

We'll Carry The Banner High!

From Tim Griffin's mailbag today:

Korey writes: Tim, why do they play the Big 12 championship game in cold weather in Kansas City at night and they play the warmer weather SEC championship game indoors during the day in Atlanta?

Tim Griffin: It beats me. It makes perfect sense to play the Big 12 title game indoors at a place like San Antonio or St. Louis or what will be an indoor stadium in Arlington once it's finished. Bob Stoops almost came out saying that today in his press conference saying he was "cool" to the idea of playing outdoors. But Stoops didn't say he had an ideal location to play the game.

But if it's raining and snowing Saturday night, I'm betting he'll have a lot more to say about the notion of playing the biggest conference game of the season in the elements.

 

If the question had been posed to me, my answer would likely have gone as follows:

TB: Because football is an outdoor game!  You don't say where you're from, but I'm going to go ahead and guess you live south of the Mason-Dixon line if you're complaining about a game being played in cold weather.  Have you people forgotten that both teams are outside playing in the same weather?  It's not like one of them is indoors, nice and toasty in a controlled-climate environment, while the other is outside where it's below freezing and snowing.  If your excuse for playing poorly or losing a game is the weather, you don't deserve to be playing in the game in the first place.

Further, we already moved the conference's headquarters from Kansas City to Dallas.  We now move the conference basketball tournament around even though it gets played in front of 15,000 empty seats when it's in Dallas.  I don't mind football being played two out of four years in Dallas or San Antonio, but let's try to remember that we're a conference and the North schools should get a shot at having the game in their backyard as often as the South gets it.  Kansas City is the location that makes the most sense, logistically, in the North.  St. Louis is only marginally a Big 12 town and doesn't seem to have any interest in hosting the title game anymore.  I don't know that Denver has ever expressed interest in hosting it.  Hell, Denver would be just as cold and snow-prone as KC.

I don't seem to remember hearing anyone complain about the weather during or after the thrilling Border War game played by Mizzou and KU this weekend at Arrowhead Stadium.  The temperature hovered just above freezing, and most of the game saw rain and snow fall with varying degrees of intensity.  The teams scored quite a few points and put on a good show for the fans.

Now, if your point is that it might make more sense to have the game in KC, but play it in the afternoon, I'm with you there.  I believe the Big 12 CCG has been played in the afternoon before.  But TV tends to be the entity that decides those things, not common sense.

Reader ksubailey passed this along to me, from a friend of hers who went to the Garden City stop on Bill Snyder's barnstorming tour today.  Thanks to her and her friend for sharing this information.

"I just wanted to let you know what coach had to say in Garden this morning. Coach Snyder said that he has heard from between 150 - 200 former players that want to help and be a part of the program coach plans on many of his former players to talk to his team. He did say that he has hired 2/3 of his staff but cannot not announce because many are still in season, he still has 3 assistants to hire. Sean and Coach Snyder were in Dallas this weekend at Texas playoff games where he talked to Terence Newman, Newman told Coach that he was more prepared than any other rookie coming into the NFL (mentally, socially, and physically) and owed that to Kansas State, Newman also told him as soon as the season is over he wants to come back and talk to the players. Coach Snyder stressed the importance of the stadium being full each and every game. Coach said he was recruiting in Wichita until 12 last night, so maybe Bryce Brown? I also got my picture with Coach which was cool. Anyways thought you would like to know the info."

Note: I have no idea if Dan Beebe actually reads this site or not.  My guess would be not.  Nevertheless, I wanted to take the opportunity to comment on this situation, and this was the best I could come up with.  Sorry.

Mr. Beebe --

You have a mess on your hands.  Three teams in the South division of your conference tied for first place, and they all went 1-1 against each other.  That is the very definition of a nightmare scenario in a tiebreaker system.

Now, you have the fans of one of the three tied schools, the University of Texas, urging you to change the tiebreaker because their team got left out of the conference championship game.  This puts you in a difficult situation, because UT has a lot of money, a lot of fans, and a lot of sympathy in the local, regional and national media.  If they want to make an issue of this, there will be a lot of people on their side.

No doubt about it, UT's players, coaches, alumni and fans have reason to feel left out.  The Longhorns had a great season, surpassing their expectations and putting themselves in the discussion for the Big 12 and national championships.

All that notwithstanding, Oklahoma and Texas Tech had outstanding seasons as well, and would have every right to feel left out if they were in UT's position.  The problem is, when there is a three-way tie and only one team can be chosen, by definition two of the teams are going to feel slighted. 

In this situation, clearly only one team can be chosen to play Missouri in Kansas City for the Big 12 title.  Texas, like OU, Texas Tech and the rest of the Big 12, came into the season knowing what the rules were.  Each team played their eight-game conference season.  Those games failed to separate the teams by record.  The first four Big 12 tiebreakers, all determined long before the season began, failed to separate the teams.

Now Texas fans want this fifth tiebreaker changed.  Please, please do not cave in to the pressure.

Let's face it.  Once you get down to a fifth tiebreaker, you're grabbing at straws to separate a trio of deserving teams.  Texas fans would have you believe the chosen method is unfair.  They cite the SEC's tiebreaker, which tosses out the lowest-ranked team and uses head-to-head between the top two teams if there are less than five spots separating them in the final BCS standings.  In this case, that would favor Texas.

The problem with that method is that it is inherently unfair to Texas Tech and other "non-name" programs.  While I can say nothing to put a favorable gloss on the Red Raiders blowout loss to Oklahoma, it is only one loss.  However, because Tech is not a traditional power, they did not get the benefit of the doubt.  While still ranked, on average, fourth by the computers, Tech is ranked eighth by the coaches and the Harris poll.  In other words, Tech is being dragged down by the bias of human voters who permit Oklahoma and Texas one loss without permanent punishment, but do not extend the same courtesy to a team that doesn't have the name recognition of the South heavyweights.

When the Big 12 was formed, UT and the other former SWC schools got their way on far too many issues, including drastically reducing the number of partial-qualifiers permitted at each school and getting a revenue-sharing agreement that guaranteed that, eventually, the schools in heavily populated areas would receive significantly more money from the conference each year than more remote schools.  It should come as no surprise that these rules disproportionately benefit schools like Texas and Texas A&M.  They view this as "their" conference, conveniently forgetting that it was the Big 8, with national powers such as Nebraska, Oklahoma, K-State and Colorado that bailed out a corrupt and failing conglomeration of Texas schools.

It should have been a great decision.  The old Big 8 got more TV sets, which it needed with most of its schools located in flyover country, and the old SWC got a chance at a fresh start in a conference not hampered by corruption and bad football.  Unfortunately, the initial rules gave the new schools quite a bit more than they deserved, given their contributions to the conference.

In summary, we've been down this road before, Mr. Beebe.  Let's not go there again.  If you do cave, I will hope with all my heart that Texas ends up on the short end of whatever new tiebreaker is proposed within the next five years.