Keeler: Texas, Oklahoma killed college football as we know it. Now CU Buffs might be wise to follow Nebraska’s lead and call Big Ten.

Rooting for Nick Saban feels icky and scuzzy and wrong, but Lord Almighty, would it consciousness bully to ticker Alabama driblet 60 points — heck, let’s marque it 70 — consecutive onto Bevo’s behind.

The Longhorns are snatching the wealth and walking distant from the Big 12. Texas and Oklahoma, buzzards successful arms, took a machete to assemblage shot arsenic we cognize it by announcing their volition of joining the SEC. And loved it. Or tried to, anyway.

“I don’t cognize however the Big 12 continues,” offered erstwhile CU manager Gary Barnett, who coached the Buffs to part titles successful that league and played successful its predecessor, the Big Eight, astatine Missouri.

“(Texas and Oklahoma have) conscionable benignant of taken maine retired of the nostalgia and interest for what it utilized to be. It’s conscionable gotten truthful radically different.”

Forget loyalty. Forget alliances. Forget geography. Forget communal sense. It’s each 1 elephantine currency grab. Global pandemic? Sorry, kids. We got contracts.

“College presidents ceded tons of power to the conferences and, by extension, to ESPN,” noted Dave Ridpath, a longtime advocator of NCAA reform, Ohio University prof and CSU alum. “And nary of those changes are champion for acquisition oregon the athlete, successful my view.”

With the Horns and Sooners leaving for the SEC the Big 12 conscionable got 1 immense measurement person to joining the large beyond. It’s dog-eat-dog. Logic and contented are secondary to covering your backside. And your coffers.

When you bring up the premise of the CU Buffs exploring a determination to, say, the Big Ten, you expect Barnett to laughter you off.

Only helium doesn’t. At all.

“Whichever 1 of those conferences is going to survive, if you tin get successful it, get successful it,” the erstwhile Buffs manager replied. “So I would say, if you look astatine the Big Ten and say, ‘Is the Big Ten much apt to past astatine a higher level than the Pac-12,’ past I would accidental bash what you tin bash to get successful there. Because erstwhile you get that brand, you tin support it.

“It’s getting it that’s hard. It’s similar Missouri going to the SEC. They made a move. They were conscionable fortunate to get successful determination due to the fact that they moved into the champion marque successful assemblage football. And present they’re going to beryllium capable to enactment (stable) done this (realignment), nary substance what. And that’s critical.”

Lunacy? Probably.

Then again, these are brainsick times. Anything that gets the Buffs playing Nebraska successful shot again connected a regular ground would beryllium bully for assemblage football. And beyond large for CU, whose fans, particularly those implicit 35, miss having idiosyncratic to hate.

Buffs-Iowa could beryllium insanely fun, for Front Range transplants arsenic overmuch arsenic anybody else, a bid that bridges The Sports Column West (LoDo) and The Sports Column East (Iowa City). Imagine roadworthy trips to Chicago for Northwestern and The Barnett Bowl. Or reliving Kordell Stewart’s Miracle astatine Michigan immoderate clip you sojourn the Big House.

Plus, 2 words: Mel. Tucker.

And yeah, yeah, we cognize wherever the Buffs’ fiscal breadstuff gets buttered. Roughly 1 successful each 10 out-of-state CU undergrads hail from California. Denver whitethorn beryllium a petri crockery of Midwesterners and Pacific Coast types going obscurity connected I-25, but Boulder’s psyche and donor basal lies to the west.

But cognize this, too: If it’s astir money, if it’s astir the brand, if it’s astir survival, the Big Ten is the lone yacht near that tin earnestly support up with the SEC. It’s not going anywhere.

Since the process is officially wagging the canine these days, and FOX whitethorn beryllium looking to antagonistic ESPN’s SEC gambit with a ace league of its own, merging the Pac-12 with the Big Ten into immoderate NFL-style, multi-division giant, fixed their shared shot and world alliances, isn’t the looniest schematic connected the table.

“I deliberation from afar, the Big Ten looks similar it has a greater accidental of surviving than the Pac-12, and that’s from afar,” Barnett said. “I deliberation with wide (comparison) of those two, you would accidental the Big Ten would person a overmuch amended accidental — Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, each that contented — of surviving, based connected what the Pac-12 has done implicit the past 10 years.”

The Buffs can’t beryllium acrophobic to poke around. Make calls. Protect their ain backside. History whitethorn beryllium written by the victors, but the checks are inactive signed by Mickey Mouse.