Let's talk some sports, specifically college football, and even more specifically the Big 10 and Big 12. For those of you who aren't familiar with these two conferences, here are the teams in the Big 10 and Big 12:
BIG 10: Leaders Division: Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern
Legends Division: Illinois, Indiana, Penn State, Purdue, Ohio State, Wisconsin
BIG 12: Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech.
For those of you who can count, you realize what I'm about to discuss. If you can't count, then you are probably an athlete in one of these two conferences. The names are misleading: the Big 10 has 12 teams and the Big 12 has 10 teams. This will be the first year where the this is the case. The problem lies with the Big 10. The Big 12 had previously done the right, not confusing, thing of changing their name to how many teams they have. In 1996, the conference expanded from 8 teams to 12 (The 4 teams from Texas joined, Baylor and the schools with Texas in their name) and they changed from the Big 8 to the Big 12. The Big 10, however, stopped changing their name a while ago. The last time was in 1950, when Michigan State became the 10th team, is when they changed to the Big 10 from the Big 9. They went astray in 1990 when Penn State joined the conference and they failed to upgrade their name to the Big 11. Now with Nebraska entering the conference this year (They left the Big 12 for a better conference, where as Colorado left the Big 12 for more money and easier competition, for the most part, in the correctly named Pac-12), they are now twice as wrong and bringing utter confusion with the Big 10 and Big 12 being oppositely named.
Now you are probably thinking "What's this kids point here?" and "Is he going to give a possible solution?" The answer is, stop getting ahead of me. Enjoy the ride and I'll get to my point when I want to. Now, I could go down a long, pointless path of tying the confused conferences for why student athletes aren't as bright as other students, but the reality is that's just because they are lazy and rely on their athleticism to get them by and use that for a living. My point here is that the conferences should stop with the numbers in their names. Look at the SEC: no number, so when they add or drop teams no one cares or is confused. It just so happens that the main three conferences in this new realignment, the Big 10, Big 12, and the Pac-12, all have numbers. In fact, these are the only 3 conferences named with a number. So I think that, in the next year or two, that these conferences should make a decision about whether the want to stay with an incorrect number and be the punchlines of terrible jokes, update the number to what is correct, or prepare for the future and change their name to something more bad ass without a number.
Well, that's my take on misnamed collegiate conferences. I know, pretty entertaining and educational, right? Don't get used to it. I foresee myself going on more opinionated, less educational, more entertaining rants in the future. The biggest question is, what will I rant about next? I guess you'll have to wait and see, same as me.
No comments:
Post a Comment