Kiszla vs. Keeler: Should CU Buffs dump Pac-12 Conference and join Big Ten?

Kiz: Did y’all hear? Texas and Oklahoma are joining the Southeastern Conference. Well, I’ll beryllium gol dang. There’s your impervious anybody tin make a sensation for grits if you bribe ’em with capable caller cabbage. Perish the Big 12 and hail a caller epoch of super-duper conferences. College shot is connected the verge of money-grubbing chaos. How should the CU Buffs respond? And if the Mountain West crumbles, wherever would the CSU Rams go?

Keeler: Whether you’re the Buffs oregon the Rams, the reply is the same: Work the dang phones. No substance however galore Chip Dillers plead for calm and reason, each is not well. (Unless you’re a Disney exec.) Pandemonium is knocking astatine the door. The Big 12 could beryllium toast. The NCAA, astatine slightest arsenic we knew it and mocked it, astir surely is. The autonomous powerfulness conferences that already tally shot themselves are a bully stake to splinter disconnected completely. There could beryllium 60-to-65 FBS schools who clasp each the cards, and different 70 wondering what to bash with their departments. Whatever it takes to onshore successful the erstwhile group, you bash it. Even if it means reaching retired to the Big Ten, the Pepsi to the SEC’s Coke, you bash it. For the Rams, though, a telephone from assemblage football’s Premier League would beryllium the parent of each agelong shots. At CSU, you judge the ceiling and bash everything imaginable to sphere the floor.

Kiz: Yep, the Buffs tin consciousness smug astir bolting the Big 12 erstwhile the getting was good. But has the Pac-12 ever made consciousness for the shot program? The honorable reply is no. And, information beryllium known, everybody successful Boulder misses the Cornhuskers from Nebraska more than we’d similar to admit. I don’t cognize if the Big Ten volition travel calling, but the Buffs should signifier saying, “Yes, please!” if the telephone rings. CU has nary recruiting vantage against USC, which has a formation successful its backyard. But manager Karl Dorrell mightiness people large successful recruiting if helium tin springiness workplace boys a prime betwixt the flatlands of the Midwest and the mountains of Colorado.

Keeler: True, but here’s the thing: Culturally and financially, the Pac-12 fits. From the Rockies westward is wherever CU’s bosom and fundraising dollars mostly reside. Did Larry Land enactment retired arsenic promised? Two vessel seasons aside, heck no. The Buffs are torn betwixt a shot contented rooted successful Midwestern/Southwestern rivalries and an medication that sees itself much aligned with Stanford and UCLA. But you’re perfectly right: CU being chided everlastingly arsenic the “Berkeley of the Big Eight” was what made it unsocial successful the Big Eight and the Big 12. In the Pac-12, it’s conscionable different Berkeley. California has 13ers. Utah has 13ers. Michigan doesn’t.

Kiz: When the going gets weird, the weird crook pro. I don’t cognize if there’s a sliver of amateur idealism near successful assemblage athletics, but there’s surely large wealth to beryllium made. That caller shot stadium up successful Fort Collins is successful imminent information of becoming a $220 cardinal achromatic elephant, due to the fact that arsenic wealthiness disparity successful the athletics grows, the Rams look doomed to gaffe from an after-thought to a have-not. The Buffs indispensable travel the money, wherever that leads them. I’m guessing the currency volition beryllium greenest successful the Big Ten.

Keeler: The Big Ten volition twist logic and morals to support Ohio State and to marque the Buckeyes happy. The Pac-12 is arsenic unchangeable arsenic USC, Oregon and Washington privation it to be. But it’s each schoolhouse for itself close now. In a playoff world, wherever the Rose Bowl and each different ineffable cattle is getting tipped by tv money, what’s to halt the Pac-12’s large 3 from the temptation of breaking away? The Big Ten likes wealth and rank successful the Association of American Universities, successful that order. The Buffs whitethorn not beryllium sexy capable to determination the needle connected the former, but astatine slightest they beryllium to the latter. The Rams person neither. And that wealthiness gap, the 1 betwixt the “haves” and everybody else, is lone going to turn larger.